The first color Palm handheld should surface soon. A 2 February developer event will include preliminary versions of the device. Left hanging in the air is the question of who will sell the device. Rumors seem to lean towards Palm itself or Apple, but all we know for sure is that it’s one of the Palm licenses, a growing list that also includes IBM and Visor. According to one report a color Palm IIIc is already in CompUSA’s inventory.

Following the Clinton administration’s limited relaxation on encryption exports, another major gain is coming our way. RSA’s patent on public key encryption will expire in September.. Hopefully this will lead to public key encryption becoming the defacto standard for many forms of communications, such as email.

For quite a while, there have been rumblings from the US Postal Service about adding internet services. They appear to be getting serious with talk of all sorts of new services. The most interesting is an email address for every physical address in the country. Which begs the question: would you trust the post office with your email?

If you were wondering who the four music giants will be after the Warner/EMI merger, they’ll be: Warner/EMI (US), Seagrams (Canada), Sony (Japan), BMG (Germany)