I wandered around the Comdex exhibit floors with Larry Clark, who drove up from San Diego for the week. We had a great time at the show and at the parties.

We ran into Milt Hull at the Novell party that featured Dana Carvey. The elections gave him plenty of material. It was a great show.

Palm Computing had a special deal for those of us who were registered as press. They lent us a brand new Palm IIIc, the color unit with 8MB of memory. At the end of the show we were given an option of giving it back or buying it at a special low price. Not surprisingly, Milt and I both ended up buying them at the end of the week.

Kodak had a similar deal to lend us a digital camera that clipped on to the Palm III. The camera took decent 640x480 images but not good enough for me to want to keep it. Milt bought one and I think he will have a review in this issue. A second Kodak offer was available for a 4 megapixel camera that Larry tried but did not buy after the trial.

Included on the Palm was a custom guide to Comdex, created by NearSpace. It had all of the exhibitors and could show you where they were on a floor map. It was, without a doubt, the most useful software I have seen in a long time (even though it has a limited lifetime). They target small areas and do special maps for them. Typical applications are trade shows, shopping centers, and college campuses. Check these guys out if you have a need for a high-tech map.

Another program included on the Palm was a city guide by Vindigo. This free city guide program provides current information about where to eat, shop, or play. They currently only support selected cities but they are adding more all the time. The guide for Las Vegas was excellent. I used it to find a terrific restaurant in downtown Las Vegas on Thursday when there were no parties.

Palm was showing off their entire product line, including their latest low-end model, the M100. Palm currently has a 74 percent of the market share of the worldwide personal companion handheld device market. We hope to get them to come show us the product line during the next year. We will be featuring portable computing products in a future issue of Sacra Blue.

Handspring (the company created by the original designers of the Palm) was showing their line of Palm-compatible devices. This included their new color Visor, to compete with the Palm IIIc, and a high-end model to compete with the Palm Vx. Another attention grabber was the VisorPhone, an expansion module that turns a visor into a cell phone. I hope we can get them to come to a meeting.

Franklin Electronic Publishers, Inc. showed off a new family of eBook readers. These are larger than my Palm IIIc and that makes them easier to read from; they are about the size of a paperback. I see one of these devices in your future. I expect to develop an eBook version of Sacra Blue so that you have an excuse to get one. I look forward to getting them to present to the group so that you can see for yourself.

Healthetech makes an interesting program for Palm devices, called DietLog, that keeps track of your calorie intake and how fast you burn them. This program could be the one that gets you off that weight plateau that you are stuck on.

DataViz makes a Palm program called "Documents To Go" that lets you view Word and Excel files. This may be the program that justifies a Palm instead of the costlier Pocket PCs. I hope to do a full review very soon.

Seiko Instruments USA Inc. makes a very interesting Palm accessory. It consists of a notebook with a socket for a Palm, a small notepad, and a special pen. Everything you write on the notepad is stored on the Palm. It is a lot easier to draw on than a Palm. If you like to brainstorm on paper, this one is for you.

DeLorme has moved their excellent GPS-assisted map system to the Palm platform. I think this is more convenient than laptop-based systems. I expect to get the software and GPS hardware for a full product review. I will try to get them to a meeting as well.

For Palm users wishing for a keyboard, check out Matias Corporation. They makes a small keyboard for Palm devices to let you enter information faster. The keyboard is about the size of a Palm device, only thinner. It features half the keys of a keyboard with enough spacing to let you type. The other half is reached with a special shift key. There is a short cable version, and one that reaches from one hand to the other that you wear. It is strange but I suspect that it will work once you get used to it.

Paranoid Palm users may be interested in MemorySafe by Northstar Mobile. This small device plugs onto the Palm and does a memory dump. Then you have a copy of the contents of your Palm in a module about the size of a car alarm key fob. This would be great if you are traveling far without a laptop to sync to.

The folks from TechSmith were there, showing the latest versions of SnagIt and Camtasia. SnagIt is the excellent screen capture program that you saw last month if you went to the meeting. A review is elsewhere in this issue. Camtasia goes even further in screen capture technology by capturing movies of programs that are running on a computer. I will be reviewing Camtasia in the future.

One Voice Technologies, Inc. has created Ivan, a free program that uses Microsoft Agent software to let you browse the web through voice commands. They offer a starter set that gets you a headset microphone for only $8.75. This one will make a great presentation. I do not know if they will bring the guy in the globe costume.

LIPSinc makes software that uses speech synthesis and real-time animation. This could be used to create virtual salespeople. Interesting technology, but they would not discuss the pricing.

Intelliquis makes a mass mailer program for sending e-mail announcements. I got a copy while at the show that I hope to use for sending out the newsletter notices. This will give me more freedom in the look of the message.

Ontrack Data International, Inc. was showing their SystemSuite, a suite of utilities, and the EasyRecovery program, a program to recover lost files. (It can even retrieve files after a disk has been reformatted.) You may know OnTrack for their ZipMagic program. I took a copy of EasyRecovery back with me from the show and hope to print a review in the near future.

I.R.I.S. makes IRISPen, a USB pen reader. It reads printed text and translates it via OCR into something you can put in documents. It can not only read text from a printed page but it can also read various barcode formats. I hope we can get a review copy to try in the real world and then bring them to a meeting.

Wizcom Technologies Inc., makes QuickLink, an optical character reader that lets you read text from a page and transfer it into your computer. It downloads into your computer via a serial port or optical interface (that can send the information to a Palm). An optional USB interface is available. This would be a good gift for that child just entering college.

IRobot was showing off a great mobile robot that can be controlled via the Internet. It has a camera mounted on the Robot's head that you can change in direction and height. They claim that it could be used to let customers take a tour of your facility. It currently can only wander up to 150 feet from the main controller, but I am sure that will get better in the next generation. At six thousand dollars, they are not going to let me have one for reviews. If you always wanted a robot, this Linux- based system could be a good place to start.

A consumer division of Intel Corporation was showing off the latest versions of Intel Any Point phone line and wireless home network. This is an excellent alternative to pulling cat-5 cables through your home. I hope to get them to send someone to one of our meetings soon.

Proxim also makes a wireless home networking system that looks very promising. Their latest products are a USB device that puts you on a wireless network, and an Internet gateway that connects to your cable modem or DSL. Imagine connecting all of your home computers without any special wiring. The product manager lives in Placerville so we should be able to get him to a meeting without any problem.

Are you ready for smell-o-vision? DigiScents will be shipping a device to add scents to computer games in Q2 or Q3 of 2001. I imagine it will also end up interfacing to DVD players so you can smell movies. We will try to get these guys to come out when they are actually shipping.

Gyration makes a mouse with a pair of gyroscopes in it that detect directional changes. Their target market is for presentations but I think it has a broader market. They have had a version available for a while but the new version is cooler. I hope to get one of these to review when it is actually released.

If you have tried to use a laptop in your car, then you will be interested in the products from Hoodman Corporation. They make hoods for laptops that block most of the sunlight and make it possible to see the screen in bright light. It also makes it possible to use your laptop on an airplane without your neighbor seeing what is on your screen. (Of course that will make them more curious). The hood is nylon with a spring metal form that collapses to a small size. Early next year, they will have a palm-sized computer hood. If you want to use your laptop and a GPS device on your next trip, you should consider one of these before the trip.

For the travelers among you, check the products being offered by Portable Energy Products, Inc. They make a lead acid sealed battery that provides supplemental power for laptops or other battery operated devices. This extends the time you can spend away from an outlet.

You have heard of Belkin-they make great cables. But you may not know that they also make a lot of other accessories. They offer everything from laptop cases to USB hubs. I expect to get some of their products to review. If we can figure out what from their line would make a good presentation, we will bring them in for a meeting.

I want to get Creative Labs, Inc. to come show us their product line. That includes their NOMAD Jukebox (a disk-based player that can hold 100 hours of MP3 music) and BlasterKey MP3 (a keyboard for learning and playing music). I have tried to get them before, and maybe this time I will succeed.

Q-Tek International, LLC is offering a small USB storage device that can hold up to one gigabyte of information. This device has no moving parts and is just a little bigger than a ballpoint pen. To your computer, it looks like a removable drive that you can read and write. Great way to carry backup data. I do not think they will let us have one to play with. Such a pity.

I found a strange service from Peoplestreet. They have created an online service that keeps your business card updated on other peoples' computers. When you change jobs, it updates everyone's database to reflect your new information. While I am not sure I want a self-updating business card on my computer, it is noteworthy. Go check out their Web site and tell me what you think.

zTrace, Inc. offers a free service that helps you recover your laptop when it is stolen. They say 5000 laptops are stolen every week in the US. That is over 700 a day, or one every 2 minutes. I will be evaluating this service to see if it is worth recommending. In additional to the free service they offer a variety of other services that you have to pay for. Expect more information on this company in the future.

I think I have written enough. There were lots of other neat products for future articles. Expect some great reviews and presentations in 2001.