ZDNET put together a listing of Palm Football tools and apps in honor of the big game this Sunday. Also, Richard Kettner wrote in to mention that the PurePalm.com website has been renovated. The new site includes message boards, news, information, and many other valuable resources.

I just noticed that SPUG has this link to a company that is working on a killer mp3 add-on for the Palm III series. That's not all, the're also working on these additional features into the device: File storage, MP3 player, Voice Recording, Database Server, Text to Speech and many future enhancements. All of that into a standard modem case! I was a little skeptical at first but then I noticed the pictures of the board. The site says it's on schedule to ship in April.

The Solvepoint Palmdock V adapter helps PFU America connect Palm V to PS/2 Keyboards.
SAN JOSE, Calif., January 11th, 2000 - PFU AMERICA, INC., today announced that it will begin shipping Solvepoint's PalmDock V for Palm V(tm) connected organizers. The PalmDock V enables owners of any of the Palm V(tm) family devices to use Happy Hacking(tm) Cradle and type directly into their Palm organizers with most standard PS/2 PC 101/104 keyboards. More...

I have been trying to get on the Palm Eisenbach website for the last few days with no luck. Then this afternoon there was a tombstone saying that the Harddrive had a FATAL crash and repeated tries to retrieve the data were unsuccessful. :-( palm.eisenbach.com was a great resource of Palm OS freeware, once the site is back up help lend a hand and start to rebuild.
Good luck Andre!

Go2Mac reports that the policy for broken LCD replacement is quite good! Apparently the first replacement screen is free, subsequent ones are $75! Check out the full story here. ( Looks like HandSpring is finally getting up to speed! As some comments indicate their shipping time has also improved. -@)

The MacInTouch home page has a note about new Palm models, including the Palm IIIc showing up in BestBuy's inventory Computer. From the site:
"I work at Best Buy, and I've seen the specs on these new models. The Palm IIIc does indeed have a color screen, 8MB of memory, and will sell for $449.99. The new Palm IIIxe has the shell of a the III series, typical III-series screen, but will also have 8MB of ram and a price of $249.99...I'm assuming that this is to directly compete with the Handspring Visor...Best Buy's approximate instock date is 2/20/00, though it could show up anytime near that date..."
Looks like 2/20/2000 could be the debut of color for the Palm OS!

This weekend the ABC affiliate for Tampa Bay, 28 WFTS featured an 8 minute story about Palms for their weekly show "Consumer Update." In an interview with PalmPlanning.com founder, Larry Becker, Host Lisa Hart learned how to beam information and sync with a computer. Photos from the show and a brief recap are available online at: http://www.palmplanning.com "Palms don't get much TV air time," said Becker. "While we hope to promote our training, it's more important to just 'evangelize' for Palm until the general public begins to understand what handheld computing is all about."

OmniSky just posted version 1.5 Beta of the OmniSky Installer and the 1.5 PRC files. There are numerous fixes here's a summary from the website...
Installer. The installer has been modified in two areas. First, we have enhanced the error checking process during the install. Second, we have modified the steps at the end asking you to connect the Palm V organizer to the modem and launch the modem application (Minstrel) in order to register the modem settings.

Os Mail. Modified to fix memory error when exiting the application. Modified to timestamp messages with the correct time (all messages were being stamped with universal time). More...

There is a good interview with Eric Benhamou, CEO of 3com, on the future of Palm devices and net-connected appliances over at the LA Times. He mentions that 3com has a license to the Palm OS and that they are building other kinds of Internet appliances that leverage the Palm OS. Could we see some Palm based webpads in the future? He also discusses the Zen of Palm, the IPO and security and social concerns as we rely and use more and more net connected devices.

The next meeting of LAPUG will be at a different location. We will meet on February 12th at 1030am at CyberJava, an Internet coffee shop, in Hollywood located at 7080 Hollywood Blvd. The cross street is La Brea Ave. and the shop's web page has a map (http://www.cyberjava.com). The main focus of the meeting will be to showcase some of the favorite Palm applications of our users. A video camera will be available to share close-up views of a Palm screen. The Landware GoVox voice recorder will be demonstrated and David Pogue's excellent book, Palm Pilot - The Ultimate Guide, will be reviewed and discussed. More...

If you're a fan of the board/marble game Abalone you should read Geek.com's review of Pabalone 1.1, which lets you play Abalone on the Palm. Pabalone is shareware with a great AI that makes playing (and learning) this classic game a lot of fun.