NS Basic/Palm Contest Results
The winners have been picked for the first NS Basic/Palm Programming Contest. The winners and honorable mentions have been listed on their site, along with screen shots. In most cases, the developers posted their programs and even their source code.

eTales for Children
DDH Software, developer of the popular HanDbase database app, has launched a series of eTales, colorful stories for children that can be viewed on color Palms. -Kevin Doel

Pocket Wine Guide
neohand, inc. has released Amy Reiley's Pocket Vineyard, a wine education and database tool for the Palm. It consists of four components: a database for collecting and sharing your personal tasting notes, an vintage chart, a food-pairing database to match your meal with the right wine, and a glossary of 400+ wine terms. -Dave Horwich

Finally! Now for all Palm users in the greater Houston metropolitan area there is a place where you can go and meet others like yourself and learn from fantastic speakers. The first ever HAL-PC Palm Users Group meeting is this Saturday, August 12th, at 4:00 p.m. Moana Tupas will be there from Palm to present the BRAND NEW M100 and Palm VIIx. James Hromadka, senior editor at visorcentral.com, will make a presentation on the Handspring Visor, a number of Springboard modules, and his website. If you've been debating whether to make your next device a Palm or a Visor, this is the meeting to come to.

HandSpring has borrowed an idea from the online bookstores and has started a sales affilliate program. Through the program, affiliates can earn money every time a Handspring product is bought based on a referral from their site. As a special launch promotion, charter affiliates will receive a 10% referral fee for new customers and a 5% referral fee for repeat customers through December 31, 2000. After that time, all affiliates will receive an 8% referral fee on each new sale and a 5% referral fee on repeat sales.

Sony Electronics Inc. has launched its Sony Handheld Developer Web site which offers important information to third party hardware and software developers who want to make use of Sony's exclusive Jog Dial and Memory Stick slot featured on its forthcoming Palm-powered handhelds. It is free to anyone willing to register.

I have set up a portal which aims at being the most complete database on Open Source software for PalmOS, which is, at the present time, certainly the most opened OS for palm-sized devices. Anyone who has written Open Source Software for Palm devices is invited to submit their link to the site.

New PalmInfocenter web server
Just a little note that we are back on our new webserver. The site should be faster and more reliable and the ASP errors should be gone for good. -Ryan

AvantGo IPO
AvantGo is going to have its initial public offering soon and they just announced that their stock will debut between $9 and $11. They are going to offer 5.5 million shares to raise money for more marketing efforts and to continue the company's growth. They had revenue of $3.8 million last quarter with losses of $11.5 million. During the same quarter last year, they had losses of $2.7 million on $0.9 million in revenue.

PDA Toolbox Bug Fixed
Last week, the developers of the PDA Toolbox were finally able to correct the long-standing bug that meant that the Palm apps it created couldn't be used on OS 3.5 devices. We published a review of the PDA Toolbox a while back.

The New England Palm User Group, based in Boston, is a non-profit, all volunteer organization that exists to foster and promote the growth of the Palm OS platform. We hold monthly meetings, operate a web site and message board and offer additional programs for Palm users. We have several exciting meetings coming up - please visit our web site for details. Membership is FREE! Join today.

3Com and Extended Systems have agreed to co-develop Bluetooth solutions for the Microsoft Windows platforms. The companies will cooperate to deliver a complete suite of Bluetooth data management applications, protocol stacks, and hardware adapters to consumers, manufacturers, businesses and OEM customers.

eBookNet.com is looking for opinions about Stephen King's experimental publishing ventures, "The Plant" and "Riding the Bullet". According to a survey carried out by Carol Fitzgerald of the Book Report Network, only 1% of those who downloaded Stephen King's "Riding the Bullet" actually read the book. eBookNet.com is sounding the call to all Palm readers: we need your help to find the truth. They are conducting an online poll.

You also might be interested in the latest EBN article, "Could New Palm m100 Bring eBooks to the Masses?"

Palm sent out a press release early this morning confirming the launch of the new M100 today. The 2 meg Palm M100 features a small, durable, modern design which enables use of interchangeable fashion faceplates, as well as a full line of accessories such as the PalmPix, the Portable keyboard and mp3 players. It includes a new Note Pad application that captures handwritten notes, a clock application and a new HotSync cable, not cradle.

The Palm m100 handheld lets users customize and personalize their handheld through colorful faceplates that snap on and off. The Palm m100 ships with a black faceplate, with optional faceplates available in Silver Mist, Blue Mist, Green Mist, Pacific Blue and Ruby Pearl at an estimated street price of $19.95 each.

Update: The Palm site had been updated with lots of pictures of the new devices.
* Updated further with more info on the m100's new features.

Though overshadowed by the m100, to some people two other announcements from Palm today are even more important. The Palm Ethernet Cradle is now available and Palm has officially announced that the 33.6 PalmModem will be available soon.

The Palm Ethernet Cradle allows Palm III and Palm VII series devices to HotSync with their desktop PC over a corporate network no matter how far they are from the PC. I'm sure you are aware you can go to one of your co-worker's desk and use their Palm cradle to HotSync to your PC. Well, this Ethernet Cradle eliminates the need for another PC to be involved.