sfr GmbH, based in Cologne, Germany, have released visNotes for Pocket PC and Palm OS. visNotes is an electronic memo, where you can store encrypted confidential data. Access to your memo is protected by sfr GmbH’s visual Key technology, best of all, it’s free.

We know the ZATZ Online Store is fu. It was running on the machine that melted. Fortunately, we’ve got solid backups of everything and we should have it back online tomorrow. We hope.

The Tungsten T5 Update features performance and reliability enhancements for your handheld. The update fixes a problem in the Calendar that can cause a crash when the default view is changed from Agenda to Month View, addresses an issue in Contacts when using the Menu drop down list for new entries, and adjusts the Palm OS soft keyboard to prevent system instability in certain situations.

palmOne has introduced a new member of the Treo smartphone family, the Treo 650 smartphone. The Treo 650 combines a compact, full-featured mobile phone with email, a Palm OS organizer, messaging and web access. The Treo 650 will be available as either a digital dual-band CDMA/1xRTT or a GSM/GPRS/EDGE quad-band world phone.

Experts predict spam will only get worse, more than doubling by 2007. According to spamfilterreview.com, more than 31 billion emails are sent daily, with 40% of those qualifying as spam. It’s estimated that by 2007, the amount of spam will increase by 63% over current amounts. Annually, individual users receive 2,200 pieces of spam and 16% of all email address changes arise in an effort to escape spam.

Astraware’s Price Fall for October is well underway, with a few extra products added to the list of hefty discounts. The prices are down by as much as 50%, and include Insaniquarium, Bejeweled, Tradewinds, Gamebox Gems, GTS Racing, Hellfire, Cubis and more.

Syware announced SerialLink 2.0, the newest version of the company’s serial port integration software for Microsoft Windows Mobile Pocket PCs. SerialLink allows developers to quickly and easily integrate serial input devices into their Pocket PC and Windows CE applications, whether managing inventory, conducting market research, or making reservations. The latest edition includes support for Semtek’s iSwipe, a three-track magnetic stripe card reader for Compaq iPAQ handhelds that can be used in a variety of retail or enterprise applications.

You’ve probably noticed that we’ve been down for quite a while. Our main Web server decided to take a serious poo yesterday. Unfortunately, it was a bitch to get working again. Our pre-tested spare motherboard for this particular monster box turned out to be bad and the second spare initially appeared to be bad as well. It wasn’t, but it wasn’t an exact match for the board it was supposed to be replacing. It required an additional power feed and turned out to be slightly different enough in configuration to require a complete system reinstall instead of just running off the image backup.

That turned out to take a very long time. Apparently, restoring nearly a terabyte of teeny-weeny little files (as Web graphics and HTML files are) can take forever. In any case, we’ve gotten the main server back up and running. We still have to restore the SQL database server and get some ancillary tools working, but this is a big step and, since we’ve been working on restoring the beasty throughout the night, we’re going to take a deep breath for a few minutes before we go back to the grind.

We’re loyal readers of Engadget, a popular and interesting gadget-related blog. This morning, they’re talking about the new Treo 650 phone out from palmOne. Of course, the reason they’re talking about it and we’ve been silent is that we’ve been getting confidential briefings from the source and abide by our NDAs. We’ll have more in news later about it, as well as full reviews.

In any case, the Engadget folks are complaining that the new device doesn’t support WiFi and never will. They also claim “Apparently palmOne isn’t even planning to work on a driver or otherwise add support for SD WiFi cards.” That’s actually not true.

When we were briefed by palmOne, we were told that the WiFi drivers were taking some time and the company didn’t want to hold up the product release. While software development schedules are never predictable, we suspect you’ll see support for WiFi as soon as they get it working. And that is why we never traffic in rumors. We prefer to get the real details from the folks doing the real work.

The Tapwave Zodiac multimedia handheld will be available in Singapore stores on 22nd October 2004. The 32MB Zodiac 1 will be available for a suggested retail pricing of S$525, with the 128MB Zodiac 2 for S$699 (SRP exclude GST). The new retail model for the Singapore market will also come with the Singapore charging kit and the latest Zodiac 1.1 software suite.