Palm Inc. has recently sent specialists to inspect some Taiwanese factories in China looking for places to manufacture the next generation of Palm handhelds. They have sent representatives to factories run by Inventec, Acer, First International, and Mitac International according to Palm's executive for North Asian operation, R. F. Jiao. Analysts are predicting that Palm will place initial orders with one or more of these companies for at least 1 million units in 2001. Palm will also work with Taiwanese manufacturers to produce Palm-branded SD peripherals.

USA.NET, a global eMessaging service provider and Palm, Inc. have just announced that Palm will use USA.NET technology to support the Palm.Net wireless service infrastructure. USA.NET will provide hosting of wireless e-mail transactions to and from the Palm.Net service for users of Palm VII series handhelds.

"At Palm, we are squarely focused on offering our customers an exciting assortment of wireless content and application choices, of which email is key," said Barry Cottle, chief operating officer for Content and Access at Palm, Inc. "Tapping USA.NET's secure and reliable messaging infrastructure provides us a base from which we can expand our world-class email solutions for wireless customers."

SiPix Inc., the digital imaging company that Palm invested in recently, has announced the new Pocket Printer A6. It uses thermal technology so there are no ink cartridges but special paper must be used. The A6 runs on batteries and weighs less than 14 ounces (with batteries). Palm handhelds can send print jobs via the infrared port to produce 400 dpi 4 1/8" wide printouts. The printer will ship to retail channels at the end of the month at an MSRP of $150.

It's not a big secret that the Palm VII series has not been one of the company's top sellers. Partially this has been caused by component shortages limiting supplies. However, many users find the wireless service too limited. According to Ken Smiley, senior industry analyst at Giga Information Group, "Only about 40,000 of the existing 100 thousand to 150 thousand Palm VII users subscribe to the wireless service," which he attributes to "poor coverage on a proprietary network."

Even taking Mr. Smiley's high-end estimate that 150 thousand Palm VII series units have ever been sold, that number is dwarfed by the 535 thousand m100's that were sold in the first quarter.

OmniSky has posted release 2.0 Rev. C upgrade for Palm V and Vx only. This includes all the features and content of Release 2.0, and fixes a few bugs found in Os Mail and Os Directory. They have also posted a flash updater for the Visor Platinum/Prism which upgrades the flash memory on the Minstrel S modem with new software that reduces the frequency of serial errors.

It appears that reports of the CUERadio's death may have been premature. This week, the company sent an e-mail saying, "the CUERadio module for Handspring will be released and we are committed to it. "

As the memory capacity of handhelds increases, the memory capacity of their owners is decreasing. At least, that's the finding of researchers from Hokkaido University's school of medicine in Japan as reported in the Sunday Times. According to the study, a growing number of people are suffering from severe memory loss because of increasing reliance on computer technology. Doctors are blaming computers, PDAs, and other electronic memory aids because these lead to diminished use of the brain to work out problems.

If you liked those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books that were popular in the 80s, then you should be really excited by a new AvantGo channel, Ludigames. It offers more than 25 episodes in 3 languages (English, French, German). Each time you complete a chapter, the next one will be downloaded on your subsequent HotSync. The service is free but the chapters, being made up of numerous pages each with at least one graphic, are unusually large for AvantGo channels.

Handspring's CEO Donna Dubinsky said in an interview this week with ON24 that prices for future Visors will probably rise. "Prices will come down for existing products... but I believe that new products, if they continue to be differentiated, can keep the average price, if not stable, even going up over time."

Dubinsky characterized Handspring's business relationship with Palm as being "very good", which is how both companies always describe it. "We compete with them on the device side, there's no doubt about that, but we collaborate with them as a platform partner and I think they value having us in the Palm Economy. As long as that relationship continues to be good and as long as the technology continues to meet our needs and we're able to build the sort of products we want to build , I absolutely think we have a long-term future on the Palm OS."

The Nashville Palm Users Group recently surpassed the 400 member mark. Their next meeting will be this Saturday, February 10 where there will be continued discussion/coverage on PalmSource 2000, specifically dealing with Jeff Hawkin's speech and the Sony presentation. They'll also have plenty of giveaways, as usual. -mashby

The February meeting of the Houston Palm User Group will focus primarily on online applications. Software discussed will include PalmVNC, Blazer, AIM and ICQ for Palm, AvantGo, PalmIRC, and a plethora of others. The meeting will be February 10 at 4:00 pm. -Matthew Mullenweg

SkipWire has released DownStream, a free Palm OS app that lets users download applications wirelessly. Downstream users can browse through hundreds of Palm applications by subject or title then download and purchase their choice wirelessly. Visitors can sign up for a free MySkipWire account, a secure service that remembers which Palm applications have been placed in a personalized account.

Motient Corporation, owner of what they say is the U.S.'s largest wireless data network, has signed an agreement to provide Palm V series users with a modem that will allow them Internet access using Motient's network. The developer of the modem, Wavenet International Limited of Australia, will provide Motient with an initial order of 10,000 units in mid-2001.