Yesterday, Sony cut its operating profit forecast for the year by a full 10% because of a world-wide shortage in electronic parts. Demand for cell phones and other electronic gadgets has out-paced the world's supply of LCDs and flash-memory chips. This shortage might have an effect on Sony's ability to produce enough of its new Palm-powered PEOs, the PEG-S500C and the PEG-S300.

Sony isn't alone. Palm has also been hit by the shortages, as we noted back in May, and the shortfalls are expected to continue for the rest of the year.

Palm Terminal: IBM alphaWorks download
Palm Terminal (PTerm) is a framework for easy creation of custom mobile computing solutions. The basic idea behind the system is to use palmtop devices as a display terminal for applications running at remote desktop computers. A special hub (proxy server), capable of communicating with applications on one hand (e.g. via LAN) and with palmtop terminals on other hand (e.g. via wireless modem), provides the connection between the two. Download Palm Terminal for free from IBM alphaWorks. -Jeff Condon

New York's CDPUG In The News
CDPUG, and specifically its launch meeting, was recently the subject of a feature article in the Albany Times Union, the full text of which can be found on our web page. The article appeared on page one of the Saturday, July 21, 2000 Business Section, and included a photo taken at our Launch meeting on July 21, 2000. -Scott Almas

SeaPUG's First Meeting Report
SeaPUG had it's debut meeting this past Tuesday (July 18th) and it was a smashing success!

To help our subscribers in over 80 countries, we've added lots of new content to the PalmUser magazine web site:

- a product review listing, giving an overview of more than 60 products that we've fully reviewed in our first 4 issues.
- an online version of our 'Palm web reference' section from the magazine - our personal pick of the top Palm sites round the world.
- a new version of the PalmUser index, now covering every single product or function mention so far in the magazine pages.

Do you eat spreadsheets for breakfast? Is you back aching from dragging a laptop around everywhere you go so you can access the data you have to have? Or even worse, do you keep having to call someone at the office to look up a simple number? Then Cutting Edge Software's Quicksheet 5.0 will free you from endless hassles and let you do your job. This is a very full-featured app that lets you take your Excel spreadsheets with you, edit them on the road, then sync them with Excel when you get back.

The U.S Navy is using 115 Palm devices on the USS McFaul, a guided missile destroyer. The devices will be outfitted with extra security software and will be used to replace paper and clipboards and to improve efficiency onboard the ship.

Targus has announced its new line of carrying cases specifically designed for PDAs. Despite a giving out a press release, the Targus site doesn't seem to have been updated yet.

WorkSpot, Inc., a leading provider of wireless application development and server-side wireless software, has been selected by OmniSky to provide technical resources and expertise in the development of OmniSky's new wireless Internet service.

Bodo Wenzel, a hobby programmer, has developed a GameBoy emulator called PalmBoy v.1.0. His version isn't as complete as the rival Liberty and there is some danger of corrupting all the files on your Palm but it has the advantage of being free. Wenzel said, "This version only renders the background - that's why only some games work. Currently I'm working on this topic and on the interrupts. Please look at it as an appetizer and stand by."

A new free service called ShowtimesToGo will e-mail you a list of all the movies showing in your area and the theater and starting times for each. To get hooked up, simply visit the ShowtimesToGo website, download a small application file, and register for the service. After that, you will receive regular emails containing up-to-date theater show times in an attached Palm database.

Ufo Hayashi, a Japanese artist, has created beautiful protective covers for the Palm V and Palm III series using a type of art called "Kinkaru". Also, he has designed a few cases for both series. Kinkaru consists of decorating the product using gilding and varnishing. Ufo's homepage can be found here, as well as some more pictures of his work here.

Our reviewer, Robert Zach, takes a look at 2 accessories for your HandSpring Visor. The 5-pack of replacement colored styli and the HandSpring Wilderness Nubuck slim leather case. Both items are available from HandSping's online store.

Michael Ethetton, President of Gambit Studios, perhaps better known as Maven, has announced that they are currently working on a major update to Liberty which will be released the first week in August. The update will include multiple-game saving, support for SRAM emulation for games like Zelda, Pokemon, etc. that have built-in saving, and various fixes for compatibility in certain games. All registered users of Liberty will get free upgrades when new versions come out. Liberty is the GameBoy emulator for the Palm that was released July 7.