• I am glad to see that Palm Inc. will live again under a unified brand. It was always far too confusing to try to explain who "Palm" was to people that don't follow the handheld market.
• I'm happy to see that the Cell phone vendors (Cingular, Sprint, etc.) seem to be actively engaged in the Palm community. The cell phone vendors had representatives all over the conference, and they seemed to be attempting to involve themselves in any way that they could. The phone vendors are essential to the long term survival of Palm. More on that later.
• I am happy to see David Nagel step down. He always seemed a very nice man, but he was never particularly inspiring or dominating. I'm sure that there were sides of him that I never saw. Perhaps they came out behind closed doors; I don't know. What I do know is that as an outside developer, I never felt compelled to follow his vision. In fact, I never was really sure what his vision was. It seemed to change from day to day. First it was OS 5 and ARM processors. Then, it was Cobalt. Now it's Palm OS on Linux. (I have my opinions on what PalmSource needs to do, and I'll talk about those in a minute.) Developers like leaders with vision. David didn't seem to have it.
• The eager gobbling up of the Lifedrive by developers at the conference store. I have a Lifedrive and I like it, but to see the humongous line waiting to purchase one really surprised me. This is exciting to me because developers are traditionally early adopters. If the device gets good reviews from the developers, those good reviews will eventually filter down to Joe-Public, which will in turn drive sales. The hardware sales will then drive software sales as people try to load up all 4 GB of the device. Definitely good for the Palm economy!

• It was never revealed why David Nagel stepped down. Many news sites speculated on the health of his wife and that the decision was made for personal reasons. This sounds very probably, and I understand the desire to be sympathetic and respectful of David's private life. However, I am sure that investors and developers alike would feel a lot better if someone would give a reason for his departure. I don't need details. Just saying "David stepped down for personal reasons" would suffice. I simply need something to alay my fears of the unknown. As with most people, my own imagination is ofter far worse than anything that actually happens in the business world. Does David know something the rest of us don't?
• It was disconcerting to not have any major new hardware products announced or any new licensees revealed. Sony's absence was definitely felt, and the handful of new devices since last year make it difficult to be excited about the future. There were a few that seemed like they could be exciting such as the Group Sense PDA phones, but without timetables or firm announcements, I remain skeptical. Anyone remember the original Fossil PDA/Watch announcment? Add to that the greatly diminished presence of the Tapwave folks and it really feels like the Palm hardware community will eventually devolove into just Palm Inc. Competition drives innovation so if we do end up with only one hardware vendor, we could see a slow down in hardware innovation. Perhaps the PocketPC and the Symbian presence will continue to drive it, but any diminishing of competition can only hurt in the long run.
• I was very, very disappointed to not see pa1m0ne (now Palm Inc.) come out and confirm or deny the fact that they are working on a Windows Mobile version of the Treo. I'm not sure what to say about this topic that hasn't been said. The only thing I would note is that the market hates uncertainty. Developers hate it too.
• Lastly, I was very, very, very disappointed to not see any announcements of a low cost phone based on the PalmOS. IMHO, this is the key to the future for the Palm market. Do you know why Symbian phones outnumber Palm phones by such a grand margin? It's because you can get them for a penny! Studies have shown continually that the average Joe user doesn't know or even understand the difference between most phones. Therefore, it's human nature that given a choice between two options, the majority of people will choose the cheaper option. If Palm wants to make the kind of numbers that Nokia does, it needs to have more price point options for consumers. Perhaps this is where Palm OS on Linux will take us, but it would have been very encouraging to hear that someone is working on it. In fact, the only thing that was shown was a demo of what appeared to be a very early build of Palm OS on Linux. By all accounts, we still have a long wait in front of us. The longer we wait, the closer Microsoft can get.

• David Nagel, CEO of PalmSource has stepped down.
• palmOne has extended their license of the PalmOS from PalmSource for another five years.
• palmOne has purchased the other half of the rights of the Palm trademark from PalmSource. PalmSource has two years to rebrand themselves.
• David Fedor is leaving his position to work for PalmSource in France.

   "Clearing DBCache of TungstenT5 is carrying out by     
    broadcasting a Notification SysNotifyBroadcastDeferred) 
    HotSync Start/Finish (sysNotifySyncStartEvent and 
    sysNotifySyncFinishEvent)."

void FlushDBCache()
{
    SysNotifyParamType notifyParams;
    notifyParams.notifyType = sysNotifySyncStartEvent;
    notifyParams.broadcaster = sysFileCSystem;
    notifyParams.notifyDetailsP = NULL;
    notifyParams.userDataP = NULL;
    notifyParams.handled = false;

    SysNotifyBroadcastDeferred(¬ifyParams, 0);

    notifyParams.notifyType = sysNotifySyncFinishEvent;
    notifyParams.handled = false;
    SysNotifyBroadcastDeferred(¬ifyParams, 0);
}

• Flight Status: a great freeware tool to give you realtime status of any flight in the U.S. I travel enough that this is incredibly useful. Even more amazing is that it was created by a 14 year old kid.
• DotDotTwo: if you're a developer, how can you NOT have this?
• Palmasaurus: Ok, ok. I know this is my application, but I wrote it because I couldn't find another application to do what it does. Invaluable when searching for strings and data on my Palm.
• 5000: A simple little dice game that is SOOOOO addicting.
• Mirek's Yahdice: A freeware Yahtzee clone.
• Rummy: A shareware Rummy game from Seahorse Software.
• ChessGenius: A shareware chess implementation that consistently kicks my tail.
• Seven Seas!: A great little puzzler from Astraware.
• Noah Lite: A dictionary that I use over and over to settle arguments over words and spellings. Indispensible if you want to look like you know everything!
• Stopwatch: Simple but useful tool to time things.
• Mocha Pocket Telnet: A shareware telnet client that supports SSH.
• Launcher III: A wonderful freeware launcher replacement from the late Bozidar Benc.