The PC Week published on 26Oct98 has an interesting article entitled "PHILIPS CHANGES HANDHELD COURSE" that notes that Philips Mobile Computing Group is going to focus completely on building Windows CE Palm-size PC devices instead of the other two types of models: Handheld PC and Handheld PC Professional.

TDK Systems has announced a new PC Card "ITU V.90 (56Kbps) modem" called the "Global Freedom 5660" that supports Windows CE handheld devices along with support for Ericsson and Motorola GSM phones.

Wired Online reports on "HANDHELDS: THE BOOM GROWS--A new forecast for the smart-device category sees 45% more units being shipped next year than 1998."

Jeff Bailey & Terry Boyd at Resource Industry Associates have announced the transition of their GPS mobile mapping system called "MapPad" from the Newton to Windows CE. The latest version is 3.0 and includes incorporation of GIS functionality with support for "ESRI Shapefile format data files."

InfoWorld has two interesting tidbits of information. The first is in the "News Briefs" column on page 3 that is entitled "PalmPilot founders form new ventures". The new company created by Donna Dubinksy and Jeff Hawkins is called JD Technology and has funding from Kleiner Perkins. The duo will be building PalmPilot related devices for the consumer marketplace and will have products on the market sometime in 1999. The second article is by Ephraim Schwartz entitled "NoteBooks enter Jupiter orbit" on page 33 which covers the latest hardware news about Windows CE savvy Handheld PC Professional devices.

NEC has announced a new "personal digital assistant (PDA)" specific microprocessor that is 1.5 times faster than earlier models called the "VR4121" that runs at 131MHz. [SOURCE: Nikkei English News]

Global Access Pagers has announced plans to build and market a new Windows CE savvy Compact Flash (CF) card formatted "pager" that will more than likely work with operating systems like Windows 98.

Ken Pence notes that MacOSRumors has a very interesting article entitled "Portable line expands" about two new future Apple "digital" devices expected to ship in early 1999.

Jimmy Hong Ning notes that the Apple File Transfer Protocol (FTP) site ftp.apple.com/devworld/Newton_Development has a bunch of Newton resources still available. [Download early, download often. :-)]

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com)