PalmSource is the annual developer's conference for the Palm platform. This year, for the first time, there was also an Expo for vendors to show off their products. Most of the hoopla surrounding this year's PalmSource was about Palm OS 5, which will go Golden Master late this spring and ship on handhelds before fall.

Last week, HandEra and Epson said that some company would release a handheld with a color QVGA screen within a year, though they declined to say whom. Here at PalmSource, Symbol is demonstrating prototype handhelds that have color QVGA screens which means, of course, they have a virtual Graffiti area. They also have monochrome models. These are prototypes only; the company is looking for a large customer before it will commit to making them.

At PalmSource this morning, there was a keynote speech from Michael Mace, PalmSource's Chief Competitive Officer, on how the new company plans to keep the Palm OS on top of the handheld market.

He said their primary plan is to create an operating system that can run on as many different types of handhelds as possible. As he pointed out, Intel is here demonstrating the multimedia possibilities of their processors while Motorola is showing off how small devices can be and still run OS 5 on its chips. As Mr. Mace said, "The killer application is diversity."

Palm reported on Wednesday that the initial demand for the new Palm i705 has been surprisingly strong. Palm sold over 13,000 i705's in the first week on sale, 4,000 of them through Palms online store. The company also reported that the majority of users have opted for the unlimited wireless service through palm.net.

A news.com report mentions, Palm has been talking about another wireless handheld it plans to introduce in the fall. The device is expected to include voice service and utilize the GSM and GPRS networks and look more like a traditional handheld. The device will most likely utilize the TI OMAP processors that Palm announced in December.

The star of the annual PalmSource convention has clearly been Palm OS 5. As it is arguably a make-or-break proposition for the the platform, this isn't surprising.

Of course, at the heart of the new OS is its support for ARM-based processors. It isn't locked into to chips from any single company and the OS has been demonstrated here at the convention running on processors from Intel, Texas Instruments, Motorola, and Cyrus, though these are all development boards. Palm itself has chosen TI to power its OS 5 handhelds.

In an effort to vastly streamline the delivery of mobile games content to Palm OS devices, Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector announced plans to enhance its industry-leading DragonBall MX1 and Super VZ microprocessors with a portable game application programming interface (API) software from SEGA Corporation.

In conjunction with Motorola and Metrowerks, a Motorola company, Sega will develop this API for next-generation Palm Powered devices. The game API will be integrated into future versions of Metrowerks' CodeWarrior^TM development tools for the Palm OS platform. In addition, Sega Corporation will license the game API to developers.

At PalmSource, the president of Sony's handheld division just gave a sneak peak of a prototype handheld his company is working on. He only showed it for a few seconds, but that was enough to see that it is a clamshell device with a built-in keyboard on one side and a screen on the other.

Aside from showing it off, Mr. Yoshida gave no details on the device, including price, availability, or whether it will run Palm OS 5 or 4.

Update: Sony has officially announced two versions of this handheld. Read more about them here.

During his first keynote address at the annual PalmSource conference, David Nagel has just announced that a beta of Palm OS 5 will be released this week. He went on to promise that the Golden Master version would be given to the Palm OS licensees by "late spring".

This is much earlier than expected. Previously, the beta was expected by late spring and the final version wasn't expected to be available until early fall.

Things are a bit confused here at the PalmSource conference. There has been a power outage affecting the entire city block the San Jose Convention Center is on. This has thrown PalmSource's schedule a bit awry.

The first keynote address from David Nagel originally scheduled for 10 am Pacific time, has been moved to 1 pm. This has left hundreds of attendees milling around with nothing to do for a couple of hours. Everyone is being patient though, possibly because lunch will still be served on time.

With PalmSource just getting underway in San Jose, Palm has posted a Palm OS 5 backgrounder at PalmOS.com. PalmInfocenter News Editor Ed Hardy is attending PalmSource and will bring us detailed updates further into the day and all this week.

Palm OS 5 is expected to ship to licensees in the early summer and features a host of improvements, most notably the transition to faster ARM processors and enhanced security, multimedia and wireless support.

Also officially announced today, is the new name of the Palm OS subsidiary. Lead by David Nagel, the group will go by the same name as the annual developers conference, PalmSource.

JpegWatch is a Image viewer from HandWatch Inc. JpegWatch will read industry standard Jpeg files straight from a VFS memory card and features support for high resolution devices and a host of other nifty features. New reviewer Edward Green brings us this review.