Jeff Hawkins today was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by PC Magazine in their Technical Excellence Awards, held in Las Vegas Nevada during Comdex 2000. The award was given for his early efforts in handheld computing, and his eventual success with the Palm Pilot, culminating in his current work with Handspring. Hawkins was typically humble in his acceptance, and gave much of the credit to the staff and partners he's worked with for years. Also among the Technical Excellence awards was ThinkOutside for their Stowaway keyboard, sold by Palm and Targus. -SB
Handspring has announced that they have become the first Las Vegas COMDEX (13-17Nov00) exhibitor to be allowed to sell products from the trade show floor (two booths). Not only will Visor handhelds be available, but a large number of accessories and Springboard modules will also be available for purchase.
CompanionLink has announced a new "PDA Starter Kit" (US$50) that bundles the following products into one package: 12 screen cleaning kits; 12 screen protectors; three TrueTip Styluses; and one Incipio nylon carrying case.
Socket Communications has announced plans to show off some of their first-generation Bluetooth solutions using Pocket PC devices from Compaq, Casio, and Hewlett-Packard in the Microsoft Partner Pavilion at the Las Vegas Comdex (13-17Nov00).
Vindigo has announced that they are now offering free personal navigation services via a variety of handheld platforms in following new cities: Austin, Denver, Houston and Miami. Services were already available in 12 U.S. cities and London, UK.
CMS Peripherals has announced a new line of Automatic Backup Systems (ABS) with PC card interfaces (supports 95/98/NT/ME/2000) that enable a failed notebook hard drive (bootable or not) to be swapped over to an ABS HD for continued work. The systems will support capacities from 6-GBs to 30-GBs and should be shipping Q1'01.
JungleSoft has announced a new strategic partnership with Hong Kong's JungleSoftNet to expand their R&D and marketing efforts into Asia-Pacific marketplaces.
-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com)