NetizenKane asks: "OK, so I dropped my Visor, and the screen is, shall we say, less than 100% readable. I can still use it, alarms work, etc., and I've been able to get by through hot syncing and editing and all. Handspring wants $85.00 to replace the one I have, which I suppose is OK, however, someone makes those LCD touch screen displays, would it be possible to order one from the manufacturer and replace it myself? Has anyone else tried this?"

the80y writes "For some of us hacking everything we own is obligatory. Well for all of us of this nature who own a Palm or Visor check out this Japanese site @ 'Palm de COOL!' it has the most intense customizations i have yet to see. I just wish I was fluent in Japanese not every thing is mirrored in English. Does any one know if there are similar sights in English espeacialy relating to replacement cases (i.e. clear cases) available for the Palm IIIc?" My favorite is the crank to power a palm if your battery dies. Unfortunately I haven't watched enough anime to translate this stuff *grin*. Anyway, you can figure out a lot of this just from the pictures and the english parts.

Boone^ writes "ZDNet is reporting that they've licensed technology from SpeechWorks that will allows users to update/retrieve information on their Palm PDAs via telephone when they don't have them with them. Eventually the entire Palm would be voice activated. "

calc writes "Linux has now been ported to the Cisco 2500/3000/4000 routers. Click here for more details." This seems like a fairly logical (albeit not so useful hack). I mean, one would assume that cisco's have some wacky hardware in them... but then again, using standard tools to config them seems allright by me. And you could use your router as a web server if you were on crack *grin*. [Update by nik]: Not the first time a free operating system is used like this. For example, routers from Juniper run a modified FreeBSD, while Effnet base many of their products on NetBSD.

Vassily Overveight asks: "After the 400th time hauling my PC out from under my desk in order to mess with the cabling, I'm wondering if there's a better way. I'd like to find a means of bringing frequently-accessed I/O ports to the front of the machine so that I can attach/detach things like my palmtop, digital camera and camcorder, microphone, headphones, etc. with ease. Frontx has made a good start with a drive-bay installable set of ports for multimedia (audio-in, earphone, microphone, and game port), with promises of other port types in the future, but I'd like to find out if there're any other offerings already available (particularly in the form of an external box) that also provide front access to serial, parallel, USB, firewire, etc."

A reader writes: "Nokia has announced an media terminal at IBC'2000 (International Broadcasting Convention, Amsterdam) which seems to be a serious competitor for the home. It includes DVB receiver, x86 PC hardware running Linux & XFree. The hardware supports also recording the TV stream to the hard disk (TiVo functionality) and other cool stuff."

JeffMagnus writes: "EETimes is carrying this article about a new MP3 player extension for the Handspring Visor. The MP3 player fits into the Visor's Springboard expansion slot or can be used as a separate device. The MP3 player is built by Good Technology, Inc."

jonfromspace asks: "We just recently moved into our shiny new office, and low and behold, we have a problem. It seems that there are 3 50HP "Chillers" beneath our office, and whenever they fire up, an entire 1/4 of our office gets filled with this crazy magnetic feild! We tested this theory by placing a box and a monitor on a chair, and moving it around the office. As we entered our Bermuda Triangle, the tell tale signs of magnetic interference appeared on the monitor (Rainbows, Moirre patters, etc.) This field has caused 2 RAM Dimms, 1 HD, and 1 Mainboard to fail in less than a week. We currently have our entire staff on one side of the office, and we need to solve this quick! Does anyone know of a way to shield our office? The Electrician we asked suggested placing a large steel plate on the floor of our office and grounding it to the pipes. Is this a viable solution? Are there companyies that deal with this kind of problem?"

Smev writes: "Today, (Friday) Michael Ethetton (a.k.a. 'Maven') of Gambit Studios, author of Liberty for PalmOS, will make a special guest appearence in #palm (efnet). Not only will you be able chat with him, but he will be giving away 2 copies of the Liberty GameBoy emulator as well. This will be happening after 9pm Central. You can connect via http://www.palminfocenter.com/chat.asp or connect to any efnet server with an IRC client and join #Palm. Connect to #Palm for more information."

A reader sent to us the story that the fruits of the Palm/Sony alliance have been unveiled. Yes, it's the Palm V - sort of. It's got a jog dial with navigation - but the kicker is the Sony memory stick that's built in. That means for all those times that you fill up the memory with Kyle's Quest...I mean important notes, you can swap the stick out. Not amazing, but cool for a first product.

For those who must, absolutely and without fail, take apart anything electronic which crosses the threshold of their homes, Toolsmith writes, "Here's an interesting site explaining how to upgrade your Palm m100 to 8MB of memory. "Kaizo" is Japanese for "Upgrade". They show pictures of an m100 being upgraded from 2MB to 8MB. Here's the link. Has anyone tried this one yet?"

taracta asks: " Does anyone know the operating system for the iPhone from Infogear? I am trying to find out if it is possible to improve its Java capabilities. It is an extremely good Internet appliance and my computer illiterate girlfriend uses it exclusively. With its touch screen it is easy for her to use. However, the support for Java is limited. Most of the time it seems to lock up when accessing Java applets. Is there a work-around or upgrade?"

nlaporte asks: "My neighbor just threw out his old Primestar satellite dish and receiver. Thinking that I might be able to use it, I picked them up. As Primestar is defunct (aquired by DirecTV), I was wondering if anyone knew how (or knew of a Web site that told how) to reuse the old dish and/or reciever for receiving other satellite broadcasts, i.e. NASA TV or Voice of America, etc. What about using it for another pay satellite service? Is this dish I picked up worth keeping, or should I chuck it?" I hope there will be more uses for the glut of satellite dishes that have popped up all over America and the rest of the world...otherwise garbage dumps are going to get real interesting over the next few years.

Marcus writes "Saw on Shugashack that NVidia has just filed a lawsuit against 3dfx seeking an injunction to stop all 3dfx Voodoo3/4/5 boards from shipping. NVidia's statement was 'This innovation is achieved through the annual investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development. We cannot allow the fruits of this investment to be misappropriated.'"

muks writes "Here's an article on Tom's Hardware about IBM's Deskstar 75GXP. It has some good points on why we still need UltraATA/66 and faster IDE interfaces while hard drive transfer rates don't keep up. "

Alien54 writes "According to this Forbes Magazine article, the time for Fiberless Optical Networks may have arrived. Wireless optics have been given up for dead until very recently. But now better technology and lower product costs have enabled some to solve most of the problems. AirFiber (a company mentioned in the article above) is emerging as one of the favorites in wireless optics, and seems to have a set of good answers for the inevitable "bird and fog" questions: Can a flock of birds take down a network by flying through the lasers? Can a heavy fog send your precious information into the ether?"

An unnamed correspondent writes:"Transvirtual has released PocketLinux for the iPaq. It features Video4Linux, mp3 playing ability, web synchronization, Kaffe OpenVM, GUI Themes, and displaying in standard or portrait mode. PocketLinux runs on VTech's Helio, iPaq's, and various other platforms." PocketLinux V.P. of Engineering Peter Mehlitz took some time off from the LWCE booth the other day to tell me about Pocketlinux -- read on for some details.

starflyer45 asks: "Does anybody know anything about the inner workings of this thing? the Global PC. What's the processor, the harddisk space? What's the OS for that matter? It's supposed to be a dumbed-up version of a computer that "anyone can use", but being one of the "not anyones" I want to know the nitty-gritty details with all the 'hertz' and 'bytes' intact."

Codeine asks: "As we press harder and harder against the physical limitations of speed, why do CPU manufacturers continue with the costly faster single processor model, instead of focussing on multi-processor designs? The new IBM Blue Gene seems to be acknowleging that more/simpler processors is the way to go (very like non-AI, millions of neurons). Why aren't we seeing commoditisation of SMP?"

ebroo writes: "The Linux Agenda VR3 handheld from Agenda Computing just so happens to be Linux based." Not nearly as impressive as the iPaq which I've now seen running X with handwriting recognition, but much more practical and very inexpensive. I'm not sure if you can actually buy one yet tho...