TidBITS#436/29-Jun-98 (http://www.tidbits.com/) examines Florent Pillet's new Palm Buddy for Macintosh OS users. This shareware application (US$20) lets PalmPilot devices transfer data to and from their Macintosh desktops using drag-n-drop. The application also supports plug-ins and can back-up your PalmPilot's data, and can be downloaded from this URL: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/fpillet/#palmbuddy.

True North (http://northisup.com) has released NY CrossTown 1.5 -- "a direction finding application for New York City" that runs on PalmPilot and Newton devices. The software can be ordered and directly download from their WWW site for only US$12. A free demo is available to test out.

Michelle Campanale and David Essex have a major handheld reviews article entitled "Computing Out of Your Palm" that starts on page 103 of Byte published for Jul98. The article looked at: Casio Cassiopeia E-10 (recommended as a Byte Best Buy), Everex Freestyle, HP 620LX, LG Phenom, Philips Velo 500, Psion Series 5, Sharp Mobilon HC-4500 (recommended as a Byte Best Buy), and 3Com Palm III.

ParaGraph (http://www.paragraph.com) has announced that their "natural handwriting recognition" engine available in their Windows CE product called "CalliGrapher" is being bundled with NEC's new MobilePro 750C device (http://www.necnow.com).

NEC American's new Beacon Data Pager, which uses FLEX messaging, has a screen that can display 8 lines by 21 characters, and 128-Kb of storage can now be purchased via mail-order from Preferred Paging and Wireless for US$249. [Wireless Today; 29Jun98]

Glenayre Technologies has announced a ReFLEX based messaging device the size of a small pager called "AccessLink II." The unit will use IrDA to connect to desktop systems and handheld devices. [Wireless Today; 29Jun98]

The Jul98 Red Herring has a massive "Wireless Briefing" report that starts on page 76 and goes on until page 116. There are closer looks at: Nokia, General Magic, Sierra Wireless, Telesystems, the paging industry, satellite communication services offerings, and detailed financial information on the top private and public companies devoted to the wireless marketplace. You can learn more about Red Herring via http://www.redherring.com.

Five Speed Software (http://www.fivespeed.com) is going to be releasing Dashboard 1.0 for the Newton sometime early in the morning of 01Jul98. You can learn more and check out a screen shot using this URL: http://www.fivespeed.com/dashboard/.

Kenneth Wong (kenneth@chapters.org) notes the release of v3.0.1 of Simon Bell's Simple-mail for the Newton. This new version fixes a "routing slip formatting bug that caused crashes." You can download the new version via http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/town/road/aah66/.

Joachim Bondo (joachim@bondo.dk) reports the release of v1.2b2 of his Deep Green (chess game) for the Newton. This new version includes a modifiable "Concentration" level preference that makes it possible to actually win a game of chess against Joachim's AI computer player in Deep Green. You can learn more via http://www.bondo.suite.dk/newton/deepgreen.html. This beta will expire on 01Oct98.

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com)