Sony Deutschland GmbH has officially announced a new version of Sony's high-end handheld, called the PEG-N770C, at the IFA 2001 trade show in Germany. It is basically the currently available N710C except with Palm OS 4.1. The PEG-N770C has the same 320 by 320 color screen as the rest of the N series and OS 4.1 means it can display 16-bit color.

A source has sent in details and some images for what might be a new color Visor, to be called the Prism II. According to the source, its 16-bit screen will have a 240 by 320 resolution with a virtual Graffiti area.

It will have a 33 MHz processor with 16 MB RAM. It will be the first Visor ever to have flash ROM, meaning the OS is upgradeable. It will come with OS 4.01H.

No price for the Prism II was given and the source only said it would be announced "soon".

The winners of the HandEra 330 Software Developer's Contest have been announced. The contest was open to developers interested in modifying their applications to take advantage of the new features of the HandEra 330 and the winners best demonstrated its hi-res screen, virtual graffiti area, and one-hand operation.

The winners include a JPG viewer, several games, a map viewer, a drawing app, a few hacks, and more.

InnoPocket has released the first USB HotSync Recharge Cable for Palm m500 series. This cable allows the user to both HotSync and recharge the handheld with a laptop or desktop without a cradle. It costs $19. They also have available a Serial HotSync cable for the m500 series for $17. It allows HotSyncing but not charging. -Rob

Staples is now carrying four models of the iBIZ Folding Travel Cradle. -Ed

A few weeks ago, Palm announced that it had licenced both Liquid Audio's Secure Portable Player Platform (SP3) and the Liquid Store. A Palm branded version of the Liquid Store is now available, called the Palm Music Connection. This new song download Web page gives users immediate access to thousands of secure digital downloads from a wide variety of artists and genres.

While Graffiti is an efficient method for entering text into a handheld, many people who use their handhelds for long emails and even word processing want something faster and easier. Long-time reviewer Robert Zach brings us this review of the Fellowes PDA Pocket Keyboard, which is a rebranded version of the Cirque Glidepoint.

According to heise on-line, Sony is going to demonstrate a German version of its N series handheld at the IFA 2001 trade show, which starts tomorrow. The PEG-N770C has the same 320 by 320 color screen as the rest of the N series and can play both MP3 and ATRAC3 encoded digital music.

A source who has spoken with a former Palm employee says that Panasonic is going to announce early next week that they have licenced the Palm OS. Even better, they have details on the handheld that Panasonic already has in development.

A name for the handheld is not yet available. It will be one of the first PalmOS handhelds to run on an ARM-based processor. It will use a 32-bit Intel StrongARM SA-110 at 100 MHz. Possibly the most questionable part of this rumor is that this device won't use OS 5.0, but instead run OS 4.2. Until now, it was believed that the first devices with ARM-based chips would run OS 5.0.

Recently, Sony has been moving aggressively into the handheld market. Earlier this Summer, they introduced their first mid-range model, the PEG-S320. News Editor and occasional reviewer Ed Hardy had the opportunity to use one of these for a while and brings us this review.

Semtek Innovative Solutions has developed the PDA Swipe, a three-track magnetic stripe card reader for for the Palm III and VII series. It has uses ranging from wireless credit card processing to driver's licence verification. It costs $195.

The m505 FAQ covers a wide variety of topics relating to the m505, including SD/MMC card use, screen protection, useful applications, and more. -Davy Fields

The Clié-Mac Page is dedicated to helping Macintosh users with their Sony Clié.