Steve Jobs said that Apple would like to sell a Portable Handheld Computer, but if they do it won’t be manufactured by Apple, it would just sell under their name. Apple was thinking of purchasing 3Com’s Palm Computing Division, but hasn’t said anything lately. The closest thing to a PDA is Apples forthcoming P1 or otherwise known as the Consumer Portable.

The closest thing to a concrete announcement was the news that Apple will unveil a small business program next month. With this program Apple will display a series of advertisements to try and get people other than Graphic professionals to buy their computers.

Apple’s Consumer Portable is looking at a Late-April, Early-May release.

Applelinks.com today announced the debut of a monthly column:

Each month, Absurd Notion will take an irreverent look at the world of computing with a decidedly Macintosh bent. Covering everything from games to Y2K to CompUSA salespeople, Kirk will put a unique, satirical twist on the trials and triumphs of being a Mac user in this PC saturated world. As Kirk states, “Absurd Notion” is for those times “When thinking differently just isn’t different enough.”

(http://www.applelinks.com/absurd/) Kirk Hiner’s “Absurd Notion.”

WordCoach 2.0 was released today and is available at http://www.smalltalkfactory.de/Learning/Language/wordcoach.htm.

WordCoach 2.0 is a a program that will train anyone in a variety of languages.

You will travel? You learn a foreign language at school or private? Then you need a language course and WordCoach! WordCoach is the ideal supplement to a language course. Words will be asked and your answer will be checked. Wrong answers will be tested again. The program switch automatically to the next lesson.

There is also the ability to create your own dictionaries with authoring tools for several tests. The type of available tests are: word-to-word test, picture-to-word test, multiple choice test and memory game.

System requirements: System 7.5.1 Power Macintosh with at least 6 MB of free RAM on some 68k-Macs with “CFM-68K Additions” 7 MB on harddisk Color Monitor.

WordCoach 2.0 costs $20.

Today Farallon lowered prices on some of its popular networking products.

Farallons 10/100 Starlet Dual-Speed Hub has 8 auto-negotiating 10/100 ports, an internal 2-port switch for connectivity between 10Mb & 100Mb devices, diagnostic LEDs for at-a-glance 10/100 & link/activity monitoring, and free technical support & lifetime warranty. It is a perfect hub for small businesses and is now priced at $176.

Farallons 4 port, 5 port, and 8 port 10Mb Starlet Hubs are now $30, 37, and $50 and are ideal for small offices or classrooms.

Farallons daisy-chainable Ethernet technology, EtherWave, has 2 self-terminating RJ-45 10Base-T ports and can connect up to 8 devices together as a standalone network. EtherWave network cards are available in Comm Slot for $66, NuBus for $83, and LC for $99 as well as others configurations.

Visit Farallon for more info.

The Roland SMPU-64 USB MIDI Interface was released today and is compatible with iMac and G3 computers that have USB ports or cards. On the MIDI interface are 4 MIDI inputs and 4 MIDI outputs so users can connect many music devices through one USB cable to their computer.

This makes the Roland SMPU-64 now cross platform compatible for both Macintosh & Windows computers. Retail price is set at $250. It is available through Edirol 1-800-380-2580 or www.edirol.com and distributed to dealers in U.S. and Canada by ThinKware.

Trans. Intl. today cut prices on its Apple Memory Upgrades.

The new prices for PC-100 SDRAM for PowerMacintosh G3 (Blue & White) are: 256 Mb… $665 128 Mb…$154 64 Mb …$79 32 Mb …$51

Memory Modules for iMac and PowerBook G3 (Wallstreet) are: 128 Mb…$165 64 Mb …$85 32 Mb …$55

Memory Modules for PCI Mac and Clones are: 128 Mb…$215 64 Mb …$119 32 Mb …$69

MacTreasures today added some new “Treasures” to their web site which include: adapters, chargers and batteries for most PowerBook models and the Newton 2000.

MacTreasures is a web site where you can find Apple software and hardware not found anywhere else, including retail stores.

BeSpecific for Mac OS implements application-specific macros in KeyQuencer and KeyQuencer Lite. As you may know, once you assign a keystroke in KeyQuencer, the keystroke does the same thing in all applications. BeSpecific allows you to assign different tasks to the same keystroke depending on what application is current.

Download BeSpecifit at http://browse.to/bespecific

Bleem, a new playstation emulator currently only available as a demo for the PC to be released in April is coming to the Mac. The programmers state that Bleem will make use of 3D game cards and will run on low end PPC machines, unlike Connectix Virtual Game Station, which requires a G3. The emulator is being sold for US$39.95, which is cheaper than CVGS.

Mac-Mania will keep you posted as we await more information regarding the macintosh version.

Anomaly today announced that they have set up several mailing lists for users of OS X Server. The New Lists include:

osx-admin (for administration discussions) osx-apache (for Apache Server discussions) osx-general (for general discussions about MacOS X Server) osx-samba (for Samba discussion)

Visit http://www.egroups.com/list/osxlists/info.html to sign up or email the following addresses (do NOT add any text to these messages as it will be ignored):

osx-admin-subscribe@egroups.com osx-apache-subscribe@egroups.com osx-general-subscribe@egroups.com osx-samba-subscribe@egroups.com

The mail account you send your subscription request will be the one used for your subscription, so please post all messages for the lists from that account.

For info on Anomaly and the lists visit http://www.sover.net/~jazzyrsb.