PalmSource announced that its European Developer Conference is scheduled to take place in Munich Germany, on September 22 and 23, 2003. At the two-day conference, to take place during Munich’s internationally famous Oktoberfest, European Palm OS developers will receive the latest information about the Palm OS platform and learn about the most recent mobile device developments from Palm OS licensees. Registration opens today with a special discounted sign-up promotion of only euro 150–with the first 300 registrants receiving a special complementary invitation to a dinner held at one of the major Oktoberfest tents.

PocketMind released a new version of their music player for Pocket PC–PocketMusic Payer Bundle version 2.0. The new version is available in different international languages: English, French, German, and Spanish. It supports WMA, OGG, MP1, MP2, and MP3 file formats. Now PocketMusic has post processing precise Equalizer with support for all these media formats. At the present moment PocketMusic is the only music player for Pocket PC which supports WMA playback and has Equalizer feature for WMA & OGG files and Extra Bass feature.

Palm, Inc. announced its $99 Zire handheld has won a Gold award in the 2003 Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) competition, co-sponsored by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and BusinessWeek magazine. “The Palm Zire impressed with its attention to detail and its elegant simplicity, particularly for an entry-level product,” said Juror Jim Couch, IDSA, principal, Substance Design Group, Ltd. “The Zire’s appearance conveys a quiet, calm, Zen-like aesthetic that is normally reserved for products selling at twice its cost. Simplifying the user interface, reducing its thickness, size and weight, and incorporating a power source that can go as long as a month on a single charge all contributes to making the Palm Zire highly desirable.”

Beiks LLC announced a new version of its BDicty Dictionary Reader for Palm OS, leveraging the power of the underlying ARM processor that drives Palm OS 5.x devices. BDicty is the first dictionary reader optimized for ARM, resulting in fast searches.

Gary W. Ankney at EduPalm.org writes in with news of Fossil’s announcement of it’s Wrist PDA in Palm and Pocket PC flavors back at the 2002 International CES Show:

Reviewers hailed the fx2001/fx2002 for its cool factor, but questioned the practicality of a Palm OS device with only 190KB RAM and 48KB flash memory, and a nonstandard 102 x 64 pixel screen.

Fossil was listening. Their latest Wrist PDA sports 2MB each of RAM and flash memory and a full (if tiny) 160 x 160 pixel screen. Unlike the old version, you’ll find an internal rechargeable battery and a USB charging/sync device. Some programs may have trouble using the rocker switch instead of the standard buttons. You can choose from three styles, priced from $275 to $295, available from the Fossil Web site starting July 3 (at http://www.fossil.com/tech/TechProduct.asp?Tier1=3DTech). It will ship to vendors such as Amazon on June 30, where it is available for preorder now.

If you can wait another month, you can save $100 when it will premier under the Abacus subbrand (at http://www.abacuswatches.com/). Philippe Stark versions are also planned.

A Pocket PC version is slated for the Fall.

Of course, we have no idea where this bitingly sarcastic comic might have come from. No one we know has ever had this experience.

This is definitely a Computing Unplugged application. In the project described, one Per =D8yvind Arnesen managed to build a device for keeping a single beer cold while out in the sun. He can power the PeltierBeer off of an ATX supply or off an array of attached batteries. A truly amazing use of innovative brain energy. We now have a new personal hero. Just flippin’ amazin’.

The New York Times is running an amazing article. In a sense, the concept is that Google has information about nearly everything, and with WiFi, you can get to that information from nearly everywhere. This may well be THE transformative technology of the 21st Century. Special thanks to ScriptingNews.com for letting us know about this article.

Astraware Limited announced the release of Insaniquarium for Palm OS and Pocket PC devices. The new versions take advantage of the 320×480 HiRes+ Sony CLIE devices and the 240×320 screen size of the Pocket PC, by using a landscape format.

CommonTime announced Lotus Notes software for wireless Palm handhelds. As Palm buys Handspring, Sony releases a batch of Clies and the Tungsten range expands, CommonTime releases a Lotus Notes mobilization product. mNotes for Palm 3.0, new from CommonTime, has Gold release, and now ports almost all Notes functionality to Palm handhelds. The significant difference is that this level of functionality has not been seen on a Palm device in this way before. It