There are more and more sites popping up for the hottest category in computers: PDAs. PalmCentral.com was one of the first sites out there, established by Raymond Lau, Ph.D., in January of 1997 to provide a destination for the growing numbers of Palm users around the world. This year it became a part of GoPDA.com, a collection of sites, including CEStation.com and SymbianCity.com. Since its union with GoPDA, there have been a flurry of announcements and alliances coming out of PalmCentral.com. Currently they are listed number 52 in P.O.V Magazine's 100 Best Web Sites.

Formerly a software-only site, PalmCentral is moving in the direction of carrying more hardware as well. Going to their site, you can quickly click on the Hardware tab and you can browse by category for everything from Palm devices to cases to modems. There's even a section for the new Palm owner. The site is also enabled with an Amazon.com-like interface, showing what customers who bought or downloaded also bought. There is even a way for users to leave a review for others to read.

There are a couple things I would like to see in future versions of the site. Their web pages do get you your search results quickly, but because their model is for software, all you get when you do a hardware search is a listing of available software with no photos or pricing. That works okay when you're talking about free or shareware downloads, but I would like to quickly browse for price and style when we're talking about Palm cases, instead of having to click on each item to see what it is and how much it costs. As it is, the listing still shows file size and number of downloads, both reading zero. Admittedly, it would be cool if I could download a product, perhaps they know something I don't about transporter technology being just around the corner. But I jest.

These guys are working hard to make PalmCentral the best Palm portal on the web, and they're succeeding. They have over 2000 software developers signed on to their site, and over 6000 titles available for download. They get over five million "page views" a month.

In case you didn't know how developers get their software out, this is one big way. They sign on with a site such as PalmCentral.com and PalmCentral handles all sales, cutting the developer a check every month. It's a good service, allowing developers to get their software exposed to the largest possible audience. And PalmCentral's many partnerships mean that the audience is getting bigger every day. They're content providers for Palm Computing's own Palm.com website, and they've recently announced a partnership with Yahoo! Mobile to provide content that will be going out to pagers, cell phones, PDAs, and other wireless devices.

So if you're looking for something related to Palm, be it news, a case, software or hardware, give PalmCentral.com a look. They have a comprehensive search engine and well-categorized listings of books, shareware, and much more. The list quite literally grows every day.

www.palmcentral.com

-Shawn Barnett