Palm Vx Claudia Schiffer Palm Vx is currently available exclusively on ClaudiaSchiffer.com. It sports a unique blue brushed metal case instead of the traditional silver color and comes preloaded with an image viewer, a diet log, a fitness tracker, a puzzle featuring images of Claudia, a currency and clothing converter, and shopping guides with Claudia's suggestions on stores in various cities. It sells for $400. -Ed

Revolve Design is now shipping its Power UniMount docking cradle line, providing in-vehicle mounting and charging. It works with the III series, TRGPro, PalmVII and Symbol SPT1500. They range in price from $90 to $135. -Michael Shawver

Sun announced yesterday that they will ship a developer release of Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME) and the Mobile Information Device (MID) for the Palm OS. J2ME lets Palms run Java apps. It can distribute functions between client and server, and is specially written to run well on devices with limited memory and processing power, like the Palm. MID runs on top of J2ME, adding the ability to download new apps and services to the device across a network, access these apps when disconnected, and provide standard APIs for cross manufacturer compatibility. No release dates were given.

Metrowerks announced today plans to release a version of its CodeWarrior tool suite targeting enterprise application development on the Palm platform. This will let developers create apps that connect Palm-based devices to enterprise databases and applications. The company expects to release these tools in the third quarter of 2001.

They also released a new version of their Palm development environment. CodeWarrior for Palm OS Platform, Version 7.0, runs on either Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac and includes an improved user interface.

BackupBuddy Software made several announcements today. First, the company has changed its name to Blue Nomad. Second, it has released a public beta of WordSmith, new word processor and doc reader.

WordSmith supports rich text, such as bold, italics and underline but also paragraph formatting, justification and font selection on the Palm. In addition, it has built-in support for the Stowaway keyboards and provides numerous pop-up menus, text selection options and Graffiti shortcuts.

Palm chief technology officer Bill Maggs showed a demonstration of Palm OS 4 to developers at PalmSource 2000 today. The OS supports 16-bit color, Bluetooth wireless connectivity, USB connections for syncing to PCs, and support for wireless telephony.

The company is making progress on porting the Palm OS to ARM-based processors. Maggs showed a development circuit board that had some Palm applications running on an ARM-based chip.

Palm CEO Carl Yankowski today laid out his vision for the company and announced several important new technology plans and relationships during his keynote address at PalmSource 2000.

Palm's Vision
Palm's near-term vision includes providing a world-class Personal Information Manager (PIM) both on the device and available via the Web. Also, in 2001, Palm will extend its existing e-mail solutions to include message notification, instant messaging, and seamless access to Exchange e-mail. Palm is adding voice -- first via telephony, then incorporating voice as data into the Palm OS. Palm OS 4.0, which Palm shared with developers today, is architected to enable rich Palm OS-based telephony. In the area of security, Palm intends that its handhelds be used as passkeys and to perform services associated with a wallet. Possible uses include repositories for a driver's license, passport, and credit cards. Palm OS 4.0 includes security enhancements designed to help protect users' data. As industry infrastructure matures, Palm handhelds will be used as electronic wallets, conducting secure transactions -- payments, corporate transactions, offline banking and customized "me-commerce." Mr. Yankowski promised more security-related announcements soon.

Samsung Electronics today announced that they have licensed the Palm OS platform for use in what they are calling "wireless intelligent terminals". This agreement will allow Samsung to develop a family of handheld smartphones that are wholly compatible with all Palm applications. The first product, a CDMA handset, is expected to be available in North America in the second quarter of 2001.

The unit shown off today at PalmSource 2000 appears to be considerably smaller than Kyocera's Smartphone. Excpect to pay about $500 -- roughly the same as Kyocera's Smartphone.

Yesterday, Bear Stearns analyst Andrew Neff said that sales of Palm's and Handspring's devices may exceed expectations this holiday season. He found that 94% of the retailers he surveyed reported demand for Palm devices in line with or better than expectations - and 54% of those surveyed said demand was actually higher than expected. "It is pretty clear, according to the retailers we spoke with, that Palm devices are near the top of a lot of wish lists this holiday season," Neff said. The survey also found demand for Handspring devices was also better than expected, but demand for other PDAs was less robust.

Bluelark Systems announced today the availability of Blazer Personal Edition 1.0, a Web browser for the Palm platform. Designed from the ground-up for fast wireless Internet access, Blazer provides users with access to the full range of Internet content, including HTML, WAP, and i-Mode. While it was designed for wireless Web browsing, it will work with any PalmOS device with an Internet connection. It is available now for free.

With PalmSource 2000 kicking off, there has been a large number of product announcements in a very short amount of time. In addition to the ones already noted (PrintBoy, adAlive), we have announcements from Filemaker, Jawz, NTRU, Synchrologic, and TealPoint.

FileMaker announced the availability of FileMaker Mobile Companion, a complement to the FileMaker Pro 5.0 version 3. With FileMaker Mobile users will be able to transfer and synchronize data between FileMaker Pro databases and Palm-OS based PDAs.

Yesterday, Motorola laid out its plans for integrating ARM chips into its DragonBall product line in 2001. The DragonBall product line will be expanded in the first quarter to two different cores. The core is the heart of the processor and responsible for its main function, processing data. They will be selling both the DragonBall68K, which they already offer at several different speeds, and DragonBallARM. The ARM-core-based processors will let developers to take advantage of future wireless applications while the 68K-core processor will let Palm legacy applications to be used and improved.

"Announcing the addition of the ARM core technology to DragonBall processors is significant because it gives developers and manufacturers choice and scalability," said Ed Valdez, director of marketing for Motorola's Wireless Communications division.