INDUSTRY OUTLOOK!

• Matt Hamblen at ComputerWorld covered the recently held Chicago Mobile Computing Conference and notes that information technology (IT) executives appear to be "daunted" on choosing wireless networking protocols and operating systems.
• IDC has a new report that states that the handheld market is "nearly ready for prime time" and software development for handheld devices will "surge" over the next two years.
• Computer Reseller News notes that the "mobile computing" industry recently showed off a host of "new devices" aimed at "easing road warrior woes" at the recently held DemoMobile 99 exhibition.

TouchStar (a company that provides ruggedized mobile computing solutions in the United States, Europe, and Australia) has announced "PenRight! Certification" for their TouchPC products.

SanDisk has announced a new agreement with Korea's Maycom Company to supply them with 32MB MultiMediaCards for Maycom's new Merit MP-100 Player. The Merit MP-100 will be shipping in Jun99, and SanDisk MultiMediaCards (4MB (US$40), 8MB (US$50), 16MB (US$80), and 30MB (US$130)) will be available in retail locations in Japan and Europe in May99 and in other locations by the end of Summer 1999.

ZDNet's PalmPilot Express for 27Apr99 has been posted to ZDNET's PalmPilotSoftware.com. The "Editor's Picks" includes a pointer article to "nutrition and exercise" solutions and a more in-depth article about "dictionary and thesaurus" reference materials. This issue also contains references to the following "Hot Files": DocInOut, SmartDoc, Bubblet, PocketSat, and StockPilot.

J. Rick Adams, MD, notes that JRAd Consulting has released Palmedic v2.4 for the Newton. This patient management solution has many enhancements in this version: support for multiple lists within the chart view, background improvements for program scriptability using Dashboard or GestureLaunch, support for an import/export plug-in, and many bug fixes. The update is free to all registered users, and a trial version is available for download.

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com)