PDAMD.com to Offer Medical Starter Kit with the Visor Deluxe
PDAMD.com has announced a Medical Starter Kit created expressly to meet the needs of medical professionals and students. PDAMD.com will resell the Visor Deluxe as part of the kit that includes the Medical Letter Handbook of Adverse Drug Interactions, WardWatch, PregCalc Professional, and Redi-Reference Clinical Guidelines. The Kit sells for $249.00 -- over $140.00 off the retail price. -Erin Reed

PalmCritic.com Launched
This new website offers a weekly newsletter for Palm and Handspring users alike. Each issue of the Palm Critic newsletter has Palm OS tips & tricks, software suggestions, and more to enhance your PDA experience. -Richard Kettner

Street & Smith's Sports Annuals is using Town Compass’ DataViewer technology to give baseball fans all the great statistical information everywhere they go - even at the game! This app lists Y2000 final stats by player, roster & coach Info, ALCS & NLCS Playoff results, World Series schedule, and World Series batting & pitching records. It is available for free right now from PocketDirectory.com.

Back in July, Microsoft CEO and President Steve Ballmer told the Fusion conference that under its future ASP-oriented .Net architecture, Microsoft will extend wireless access to the Palm OS. At this week's Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo 2000 conference., Mr. Ballmer said, ""No offense to the Pocket PC, but we might need to bring .Net services to Palm and other devices." He emphasized that .NET "might" be ported to the Palm OS.

ZDnet is running an article critical of a recent Microsoft event at which the attendants, people influential in the Palm community, were given over $1,400 worth of PocketPC equipment. Some have described this as a bribe to get Palm users to convince others to switch to PocketPC. Dave Johnson, senior editor for PlanetIT, said, "At the end the day the Pocket PCs did not work and yet I overheard people saying that they would be changing because they got goodies."

In a recent ZDnet article, they talk of QNX being ported to StrongArm and of its use in 3Com's new Audrey. Greg Bergsma, a QNX VP, mentioned the possiblility that the Palm OS may one day be "just another layer on top of our OS (QNX)."

Bergsma also said the idea of Palm licensing QNX "is not crazy" but Palm refuses to comment on the subject to the press. QNX said they will have most of their OS ported to StongArm within 6 months.

According to Cnet, Citizen and Handspring are working together to create a credit-card-sized miniPDA that would be slipped into a Visor's Springboard slot, filled with info, then allow a user to access to that info with its LCD screen, removing the need to carry the Visor everywhere.

This product is in the early stages of development, it doesn't even have a name yet, and it might be dropped if it proves impractical.

Writing On Your Palm is reporting that Ted Ladd, Palm Evangelist, recently disclosed that Palm isn't intending to leave the DragonBall chip to move to the StrongARM family of chips until sometime in 2002.

Mr. Ladd also said that Palm intends to stay with the 160x160 screen resolution for "the foreseeable future". They are concerned about compatibility with the huge number of already-created apps that were written with that screen resolution in mind. They are considering switching to a 160x240 screen with the Graffiti area used for screen display when needed, though this isn't planned anytime soon.

HandHeldCrime Publishes More Mystery Stories
A new set of free short mystery stories is available from HandHeldCrime. In addition to new original fiction from Scott Wolven, Beverley Brackett and John A. Broussard the sixth issue features a debate about who was the best mystery writer of the century, and more. -Jamey Dumas

Harlan Ellison’s Award Winning Story as eBook
Fictionwise.com has announced the eBook release of Harlan Ellison’s short story, "‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman." The short story, which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, is one of the ten most reprinted stories in history. -Scott Pendergrast

Two Classic Now Available For Palm
Now you can read both Frankenstein and The Wizard Of Oz on your Palm. -Paul Mester

The Palm VII/Omnisky web clip "Chat" has been updated, and version 2.0 is available for wireless Palm users. A new PQA will be coming out soon, but for the time being, users can get to the new version through the current chat PQA, available on the Chat web page.

A Palm VII wireless unit or a Palm equipped with an Omnisky wireless modem is required. Palms using other connectivity options have not been tested, but any Palm that can run PQA's should be capable of using the Chat PQA.

I emailed TRG yesterday to find out if they have plans to release a color-capable PDA in the near future. Here's what I got in response:

There is a new PDA from TRG Products coming out early 2001. Unfortunately, all I can tell you is that it is not color. The screen will not display colors. It will be a very improved high contrast screen.

In other TRG news, they released BackupPro today, which allows users to backup databases and apps to the Palm's non-volatile Flash memory. It supports devices by Palm, IBM, Symbol, and TRG and OS 3.0 through 3.5. It is available now for $9.95.

After a month's delay, 3Com has finally released the Audrey, the first of its Ergo line of home appliances. The Audrey has an 8 inch, color touch screen, a wireless keyboard, uses a combination of the Palm and QNX Linux OSs and can also sync directly to Palm-based handhelds. It offers e-mail that can be typed, hand written, or voice recorded, a calendar that can be synced with up to two Palms, and access to selected Web sites, called Channels. It is available now for $500-$550 depending on the color directly from 3Com or from retailers.