You can order David Pogue's PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide book directly from O'Reilly & Associates for US$29.95 (Item#420-7). The 488 page book comes with a CDROM with reportedly over 850 PalmPilot programs and a copy of Metrowerk's Code Warrior Lite programming kit.

The 2nd Annual "Handset Technology Conference: Discover the Next Generation of Mobile Handsets -- Position for Profitability" will be held 06-09Oct98 in Santa Clara, California. The cost for the complete conference (training and briefings) is US$2095. You can learn more by contacting IBC USA Conferences at 508-481-6400.

The Florida Times-Union published on 17Aug98 had an interesting story entitled "Wired and Ready" that examines the current crop of wireless service providers (BellSouth, AT&T, Powertel, PrimeCo, Nextel, Sprint PCS, and Alltel) available in the Jacksonville area of Florida. Some 200,000 phones are currently being used, and analysts expect that number to "triple in the next few years."

Scott Weater is an extremely disappointed Philips Velo 1 user who has had a great deal of "woes" getting satisfactory technical support for several Velo 1 devices he has used. Scott highlights his "consumer rights story" at www.velosucks.com.

Deborah Solomon has a large "Technology Extra" article on the front page of the Business section of the San Diego Union-Tribune published on 23Aug98. The article is entitled "Digital Housekeeping: Companies are working on ways to link home appliances" which contains handheld device references. There are also three companion articles: one on distance learning, another on "future phones." and cable modems.

Advanced Recognition Technologies (ART) is now shipping a new version of their "natural handwriting recognition" software called "ARTrecognition" that is optimized for the palm-size PC devices that run Microsoft Windows CE (Philips Nino, the Casio E10, and the Everex Freestyle).

Toshiba is now shipping their new Dynabook 3000 mini-notebook PC in Hong Kong "grey market" stores. Some features: grey-and-silver magnesium case, Pentium MMX 233-MHz processor (3000 model) or Intel 266-MHz Pentium MMX chip (3010 model), 64MB of RAM (max is 96MB), 2.1GB (3000 model) or 4.3GB (3010 model) hard disk. The unit ways 1.12 kilograms and the vertical screen measurement (SVGA) is only 26 cm. The Hong Kong price for the 3000 is running near 18,500 and the 3010 is selling near 21,500. [SOURCE: Maxwell Leveson, "Mini-notebook hits the big time," South China Morning Post, 20Aug98]

Avi Drissman reports that his old Newton website hosted at Detroit Free-Net is being decommissioned and moved to www.drissman.com/avi/newton/. The new site has downloads of all of Avi's current Newton solutions, and in the near future should announce a new Newton utility package.

Otis Bennett reports success in getting his MessagePad 2100 to print to the Citizen PN60i portable printer using the standard "Citizen parallel printer cable" and "Newton Printpack cable" in conjunction with a specialized "cable adapter." This adapter is "Part #: CZ-KB48A" available via PC Service Source (972-406-8583) for US$11.50. The Newton needs to use the Epson LQ driver found in the Newton Printpack solution from Apple.

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com)