The Register is quoting Giga analyst and VP Rob Enderle who says that the reason Bill Maggs, Palm's Chief Technology Officer, just resigned was that he was opposed to an alliance with Symbian and now that he is out of the way, Palm might be basing its next OS on the Symbian OS.

If this is true, OS 5 will be the Palm user interface on top of Symbian's kernel and networking stacks.

CompUSA is offering a TWO HUNDRED DOLLAR rebate on the Handspring Visor Prism. Buy your new Prism at CompUSA between January 13th and January 20th, then send a copy of the receipt, the completed rebate form, and the UPC code from the product package, postmarked by February 3rd, and you'll get a check for $200 in a few weeks.

Revolve Design announced today the launch of RoadWriter™, which helps users to turn their Palm handheld into a mobile office. RoadWriter mounts securely in a car and has an integrated touch-type keyboard as well as dual DB9 Serial pass-through ports at its base for use with external peripherals, such as GPS receivers or wireless modems. It is available with an optional Palm handheld battery charger system.

Prices for the RoadWriter vary between $130 and $235, depending on the model.

Bill Maggs, who has been Palm's Chief Technology Officer for about a year, is resigning and leaving the company. There is no word yet on a replacement. Analysts are mixed as to whether this will hurt the company or not. At the same time, Palm has named Ruth Henniger to be the new vice president of software development. She comes from Cobalt Networks, where she was VP of product development.

Vindigo, the personal navigation app, has just added Portland and San Diego to its growing list of cities. They have also added their first set of personalization features.

Handspring has just announced the results for its fiscal quarter and revenue rose a phenominal 632% to $115.6 million from $15.8 million a year ago. It increased 64% from the previous quarter. Strong holiday demand for Visors and continued channel expansion in the U.S. retail market, along with new distribution channels in Asia all contributed to the strong quarter.

Dispite the strong revenue, the company reported a loss, excluding special items, of $7 million, or 7 cents a share. The analysts' consensus was that they would lose 16 cents. Handspring's gross margins increased to 31.4%, up slightly from the prior quarter.

Yesterday, Toshiba announced its TC35273XB chip, which has 12 MB of embedded DRAM memory and an encoder and decoder for MPEG-4. It was designed to allow handhelds to display good-quality compressed video with minimal battery drain. There have been no announcements which companies might use the new chip, which won't go into production until the third quarter of this year.

While the potential for wireless handheld users to see video of movies, news, weather, and traffic reports is great, faster wireless connections are necessary for this to become really useful.

Good news for those of you who have been waiting for the Ohfish GSM clip-on modem and phone for the Palm V series. On January 15 OhFish made its delivery to those who reserved in advance. They are currently taking orders for the GSM 900/1800 on their site. It costs $350.

OhFish's Dual-Band GSM device allows user to access the Internet in Europe and Asia.

Longtime readers of this site will remember that we were hacked last September as part of a pro-Napster campaign by a cracker calling himself Pimpshiz. ZDnet has confirmed that police investigating the crimes have searched the Pleasant Hill, Calif. home and confiscated computers from a 17-year-old high school student. He will also probably soon face charges for using stolen credit card numbers.

Over the next few weeks, two new add-ons for the V series will be available. One is combination GSM modem/phone and the other is the first in the Hatcker series, which will add new abilities without adding much to the V series' tiny size.

A clip-on modem and phone for the Palm V series able to transmit data at 9.6 and 14.4 Kbps over GSM networks will be launched by the British company UbiNetics on January 31. The GDA100 adds only 110gms weight and 10mm thickness and it duplicates the Palm's accessory socket, letting the Palm be used with its cradle and other add-ons while the modem is still connected. It supports external SIM card insertion and comes with a headset. It will cost £400 (about $590).

Palm has released a significant update to the Palm Desktop software. Version 4.0 offers a fresh new user interface, useful new views, time-saving features; improved security, color themes and new ways to share, send, and receive appointments and address book information. It can be downloaded here and there is also a FAQ at Palm's site.

Thanks to Brad Spry for sending me a link to a Japanese site (translated link) that has some pictures of Palm SD applications that were being shown at CES this week.

Palm chose to support the SD card for use in its brand of handheld computers because of the numerous advantages the card format offers, which includes compatibility, cost, data storage access and security. As an open industry standard, the SD Card is already supported by over 60 companies including Hewlett Packard, NEC, Pioneer, Qualcomm and Thomson. Many of these companies are already developing MP3 players/recorders, digital cameras and smart phones, which will be SD compatible. Because of the card's widespread industry support, it is expected to proliferate in the consumer electronics market and be compatible with a large array of products. Read on for larger pictures of the devices.