Handspring has had a good first year but they have one potential problem: Their fate is inextricably linked to Palm's. If Palm can't get their act together and update the Palm platform, Handspring is going to be stuck up the creek without an OS.

So, what should Handspring do about this? Should they stick with what they know and stay with Palm? Or should they license Pocket PC? Or what about Linux or even writing a whole new OS of their own? What about doing a combination of these? Add your opinion about what stategy Handspring should follow by clicking on the "Comments" icon below.

A new Visor Smart Cover is available from a small Hong Kong company, Brando. It protects the front and back of your Visor device, without making it into a big brick. Most importantly, the screen protector can be flipped 360 degrees to the back of the Visor. It is available now for US $20. -Brando

iBIZ Technology Corp. has a new travel hardcase for the Palm V series. It comes in titanium or black and is available now from CompUSA stores for $30. -Ed

In just two days, Palm's stock has lost over 40% of its value. It closed Tuesday at $43.62 but finished the day Thursday down $18 to $25.63. This is despite just reporting a stellar quarter and a large majority of analysts rating the stock at "Buy" and a few at "Strong Buy".

The drop has Palm's CEO befuddled. "It's a strange situation," Carl Yankowski said Thursday. "Wall Street apparently expected a [negative] surprise. You're selling all you can make.... [We're] in a hot category and holiday season sales have been strong. " He remains optimistic about the future, saying, "We'll just power through."

Blue Nomad has released WordSmith 1.0b2, which contains numerous bug fixes and minor enhancements. You can download it from the Blue Nomad site. They expect that beta3 will be available around 12/27, and the official 1.0 during the first week of 2001. -Tamara

National Public Radio has a profile of Jeff Hawkins which also includes a detailed history of the development of the Palm. It is available in Real Audio format (14.4 | 28.8). -Ed

Palm Inc. is aware that many thousands of people will be getting their first handheld as a gift in the next few days and they want to be ready for all the tech support calls that will start pouring in shortly thereafter. In preparation, they just announced the Palm Knowledge Finder, a web-based interactive customer-service tool available on their Support page. It contains hundreds of technical solutions compiled by Palm engineers and is designed to provide users with around-the-clock access to Palm technical support.

For those who need a more personal touch, Palm also announced that their Customer Service Organization will be open during the holiday season.

A Hong Kong company, Palm-center.com, which specializes in upgrading Palm memory now offers to upgrade the Visor Platinum and Prism to 16MB. It costs HK$480, which an online currency converter said was about US$61. -icesalmon

PDABuzz has a story about a SmartMedia Springboard that will be coming out in Q1 2001. The MemPlug from Portable Innovation Technology will cost $49 to $59. -Ed

Palm, Inc. just reported record revenue of $522.2 million in its second quarter, up 102% from the $258.6 million generated in the second quarter of last year. Net income for the quarter was $20.3 million, or 4 cents per share, as predicted by most analysts.

Palm shipped more than 2.1 million handhelds in the second quarter of its fiscal 2001, an increase of 45% over the previous quarter. The number of handhelds shipped by Palm to date totals nearly 10.9 million.

Palm has now had four quarters in a row that revenue grown has been more than 100%. Palm's CEO Carl Yankowski, said, "Strong overall demand in the United States and the international markets for Palm branded handheld products, add-ons, accessories and services together with solid supply chain management enabled us to reach a $2 billion a year sales run-rate during our first year as an independent public company."

Palm, Inc. just announced it will buy WeSync, a provider of group information-sharing software for Palm handhelds. Palm intends to use WeSync's talent and intellectual property to improve both their wireless and wired synchonization offerings. Palm will pay WeSync $40 to $45 million in cash or stock, depending on circumstances at the time of closing.

"The Internet is increasingly going mobile, and people are just discovering the value of up-to-the minute, real-time information on the go,'' said Alan Kessler, Palm's chief operating officer. "Wireless synchronization of information such as calendars, contact lists and corporate information is a huge growth area, and the acquisition of WeSync will give Palm an arsenal of talent and resources to apply to its platform and speed great products and services to market.''

It doesn't officially launch until December 25, but if you go to the Palm.Net site now, you will be able to sign up for the new MyPalm service. Interestingly, after all the hoopla over MyPalm.com, going to that address now simply pulls up a note stating that you probably want one of Palm's other sites.

In a recent CNN article, Byron Connell, vice president of Palm's consumer markets group, assured Mac users that his company is very committed to the Macintosh platform. In fact, the executive team at Palm has more years of combined experience at Apple than at Palm.

To prove his point, Mr. Connell promised that Palm will release a Mac OS X version of its desktop software sometime after the final release of OS X. The current Palm Desktop app works only in OS X's Classic mode and won't allow users to HotSync.

Firepad, Inc has announced that it has integrated its products with Palm's Web Clipping applications. Using Firepad’s client/server software, standard Palm OS web clipping apps, can be extended to display streaming video and large draggable, zoomable graphics.

"The goal was to provide a way for developers to add rich content to their applications while leveraging web clipping, which is the Palm OS standard in web content delivery," said William E. Mitchell, CEO of Firepad.