The San Diego Palm-OS User's Group (SDPUG) has scheduled their next meeting for September 6. - Dane Terry

The next meeting of the Atlanta PUG will be Sept 11. Topics will include demoes of Presenter-to-Go, Documents-to-GO 4.0 and the Handera 330. -Ed

Way back when the Sony N610C and S320 were announced, we also learned that the company would be making an adapter that would allow them to play MP3 audio files. While this adapter hasn't yet been officially announced by Sony, it has shown up on several online stores.

J & R Computer World has a listing for a Sony PEGA-SA500 Clié MP3 Audio Adapter, which it says allows the user to play music files from the Memory Stick. It works with both the N series and the S series. It is listed at $130 but is backordered. No picture is available.

Franklin Covey now has a Palm m500 series compatible metal hard case. It has a rail that fits in the left channel slot to hold the Palm and an open window for the infrared port. It also sports a windowed I.D. slot. It is available now for $50.

HandEra has released a statement that calls QVGA an "emerging standard for Palm Powered devices". QVGA is HandEra's name for screens with 240 by 320 pixel resolution, additional display fonts, and a collapsible virtual Graffiti area. So far the only device that supports QVGA is the HandEra 330 but Mike Walter, vice president of software development for the company, said there is a "strong interest within the industry in licensing HandEra's technology," implying that we can expect to see other, non-HandEra, QVGA devices in the future. HandEra's statement says that these can be expected within the coming year.

To some, one of the few things holding the Palm platform back from being perfect for games is its weak support for sound. The unamplified internal speaker on most Palm OS handhelds is extremely limited. For Visor owners, a good solution for this is the Beat Plus. Frequent reviewer Robert Zach has been testing one of these Springboards and brings us his impressions.

Clearly, the biggest news stories of the week were about the FCC releasing info on the Palm i705 and Handspring Treo k180 and g180, all of which are wireless handhelds expected to be released before the end of the year. The FCC later withdrew their approval for these.

But that isn't all that happened. David Nagel was appointed head of Palm's OS subsidiary and Sony announced a European version of its N series, the N770C. The Palm OS even acquired a new licensee, AlphaSmart.

At last, your dream of owning a Palm made of 50 pounds of butter can be fulfilled. Gearworks created this sculpture for the Minnesota State Fair and is now auctioning it off on eBay for charity. As the site says, you can use it to "message & track incredibly large butter-sculpted mobile workers, field service vehicles". -Rob

Handspring has posted HS Updater 3.5.2 v.1.5 on its support site. It is for the Prism and Platinum only and fixes a problem that causes a Fatal Alert with unspecified third-party software. Handspring posted v1.4 of this in July but withdrew it because it created more problems than it fixed. -Ed

It will probably not come as a surprise to anyone that Palm is already working on a successor for the m505. According to a source, the m525 will have an improved color screen and 16 MB of RAM. It will also have a battery capable of keeping the enhanced screen's sidelight on for eight hours. It will be announced in March of next year at Cebit 2002 in Hannover Germany.

Phillip Redman, a technology analyst for the Gartner Group, said that neither 802.11 nor Bluetooth is likely to win out as a single wireless standard. Bluetooth will be used to create connections between devices while 802.11 is a more robust networking method.

However, he said that 802.11 is more expensive than Bluetooth and uses more power, which will limit its inclusion in many mobile devices.

A new web service called AppArtist allows non-programmers to create Palm OS apps. It uses a drag & drop interface. Currently, users can place buttons, labels, and bitmaps onto forms, and can navigate between forms with button actions. It also has an app icon editor. The next version will allow database functionality so users can create more complex apps.

The service is initially priced at $10 per month, which includes unlimited service and support.

The FCC, which earlier this week gave approval to both Palm and Handspring to release new wireless handhelds, has now changed the status of these products to Pending and removed the information about them from its site.

This isn't an indication that the FCC has actually found problems with the devices. Instead, both companies simply forgot to request that the information on their new products not be made available to the public until closer to their official release dates.