Casio has announced a new PocketPC -- the Cassiopeia E-125 (US$600) -- that can communicate with Windows personal computers using USB or IrDA ports. Some key new features: thousands of colors; 240x320-pixel TFT LCD; one CF Type II card slot; 150-MHz RISC VR4122 microprocessor; 32-MBs of storage; and an "action control dial" interface.

Service-Bell Technical has created a "comprehensive and authoritative" reference site of Chinese Laws and Regulations related to doing business in the Chinese marketplace.

Datacom (a subsidiary of Textron) has announced a PC Card for mobile devices (Windows 95/98 or Windows CE) called the "MACH 10/100 diagnostic network analyzer." This tool would be ideal for doing network monitoring, protocol packet analysis, troubleshooting of badly configured devices, and bandwidth utilization.

DDH Software is offering a US$1000 "bounty" for the best custom HanDBase applet to help build-up their online free applet gallery (currently hosting 350 solutions). A panel of judges will select 5 finalists on December 14 and then visitors/testers will judge from December 15 until January 15, 2001. The winner will be announced January 31.

BSQUARE has announce "bInTouch" (US$50) two-way real-time voice communications for PocketPC and Windows CE platforms that works over TCP/IP networks.

Symbol Technologies has announced that they have teamed with IBM to offer seamless encrypted wireless data connectivity to students and faculty of Sacred Heart University in Connecticut. Symbol provided the Wireless LAN technology and IBM provided the ThinkPad laptop computers. The first wave of users is current over 1,100 with the number growing to over 2,600 next year.

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com)