3DAGames is about to release the first of a line of 3D games for all Palm and compatible machines. The first product is called 3D Star Fighter Pilot, which is virtually finished, and is currently just passing through final testing. The plan is to have it on sale by Thanksgiving. Pricing is not yet available.

Copytalk, which was announced in September, is now open for business. Subscribers to its service call a toll-free number and dictate contacts, calendar entries, expense reports, email messages and other information using natural speech.  Copytalk transcribes this information and sends the email as though it came from a desktop app and returns the data to a Palm Powered handheld wirelessly or during synchronization vwith a PC.  Subscriptions start at $25 per month for a plan that allows any combination of up to 60 emails, 100 to-dos, 25 contacts, or 30 expense or appointment items, with other plans available to support higher levels of use. 

David Nagel was hired in August to be the head of Palm's Platform Solutions Group, the part of the company that creates and licenses the operating system. In an interview with CNN yesterday, he made it clear he thinks the Palm OS has fallen behind its competitors but he's doing something about that. He said, "When I first arrived a couple of months ago, one of the things that was the highest priority for me was to kick both the apparent innovation and the actual innovation into much higher gear." He went on to list three areas where the company is working hardest: security, speed, and stability.

Northstar has unveiled Mini Keyboard, a sleeve keyboard designed to be a natural extension of the Palm m500 series. It slides onto the handheld to let users thumb-type while holding it in their hand. Mini Keyboard plugs into the HotSync port, weighs just over an ounce, and adds less than an inch in length to the handheld. It will cost $60 when it is available in January. The company is taking preorders now.

Bachmann Software has released FilePoint 2.0, extending the app’s ability to manage Palm OS files on the external memory cards of both Handspring and Sony Clié models. Its folder management system has been improved to allow users to expand and collapse the folder tree as well as rename folders. Other enhancements include faster program load time and improved memory management tools, including a warning that alerts users to low memory on RAM. It is available now for $20.

Targus is demonstrating at Comdex a Springboard digital camera that can be connected to a computer to also work as a webcam. The Targus HandCam can take still pictures or record video clips when attached to a Visor. These are saved to the Visor's memory but the module also has 2 MB of flash memory that are added to the Visor's. The HandCam can be removed from the Visor and connected to a PC with a USB cable, which lets it operate as a Webcam. It can also take still pictures when attached to the PC. It will be available in the next few weeks for $100.

Cutting Edge Software is demonstrating Quickoffice Conference this week at Comdex. This app will let users join a wireless application "conference" and simultaneously see and make changes to the same spreadsheet or document. It will include peer-to-peer and peer-to-multi-peer conferencing capabilities and supports the 802.11b wireless LAN protocol and CDPD, CDMA, GSM and GPRS wireless wide area data protocols. It will be available in the first quarter on 2002. Pricing is not yet available.

The shareholders of Be Inc. have approved the sale of just about all of its intellectual property and other technology assets to the OS subsidiary of Palm. The price was $11 million worth of Palm's stock.

Palm is also hiring many of Be's engineers. The company is planning to use Be's intellectual property and expertise to help add multimedia and Internet functions to future versions of the Palm OS.

For many months, developers of non-memory SD devices have been waiting on the SD Association to to finally approve the SD Input/Output (SDIO) standard needed to make sure all SD devices would work together smoothly. The good news is that the standard was finally approved last week. The bad news is that it comes too late for Toshiba to get the Bluetooth SD card out this year for Palm Inc., as it had been promising since June.

Blue Nomad has just announced WordSmith 2.1, which features several major enhancements, including spell checker, thesaurus, and virtual file system (VFS) support. In addition, WordSmith 2.1 will ship with a carbonized Mac OS Wordsmith desktop application that runs natively under OS X, and FineType Manager, which allows users to delete, beam and preview Blue Nomad FineType fonts. It will be available near the end of this month for $30. It is a free upgrade for all current users.

There are two Cliés available at SonyStyle Canada. The S320 costs $300 Canadian, while the N760C is $800. There are no plans to sell the N610C anytime soon in Canada. -palm_pilot_guy

The new PalmPak Travel Card: Rand McNally Road Atlas contains maps and road travel information for the continental United States, allowing users to create city-to-city driving directions for more than 12 thousand cities, and includes a detailed database of amenities for more than 10 thousand highway exits. It includes over a half million miles of highways and major roads. It will be available soon for $40. -PR