Starbucks has announced plans to team with Microsoft and MobileStar to offer handhelds, laptops, and other devices high-speed Internet access at select Starbucks' retail locations.

Iomega has announced an external hot-swappable Zip drive that requires no external power -- the "Zip 250-MB USB Powered Drive" (US$180). The device supports both Macintosh and Windows systems.

The "Yopy" Linux-based handheld PDA will be released to developers on 21Jan01. Visit www.gmate.co.kr/english/products/development_kit.htm for more info.

Blue Nomad (formerly BackupBuddy Software) has released a new word processor for Palm OS devices called WordSmith v1.0. Key features: support for fonts, paragraph and character styles, keyboards, and full synchronization on MS Windows (document converters are available for Mac & Linux).

Mobile Insights 2001 Conference will be held 18-20Feb01 at Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak in Phoenix, Arizona. The focus of this event will be: demos, preview of new technologies, informational presentations, and panel discussions. There is currently a US$500 discount if you purchase registration before the end of Jan01 (use code 2001pc).

Handspring has announced the purchase of Bluelark Systems -- the developers of two cutting edge Palm OS solutions: #1.) Blazer (provides rapid transport of web content); and #2.) BlueSky (mobile application platform server).

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com)