The week of the Pre's official pricing and release announcement has seen a flurry of Pre-related excitement from a number of non-tech-oriented news sites and media outlets. In particular, the New York Times has posted two consecutive pieces written by Matt Richtel that discuss Palm's eagerly anticipated new smartphone and its potential halo effect on not only Palm's carrier partner but the entire wireless market over the coming months.

The moment that avid Palm-watchers everywhere have been anticipating since January 8th is finally here. The official Sprint press release has just arrived, revealing final Pre pricing and availability information.

Saturday, June 6th is the confirmed nationwide release date, so Palm and Sprint are definitely looking to steal some of Apple's WWDC thunder. The Palm Pre will cost $199.99 with a with a two-year service agreement and after a $100 mail-in rebate.

The San Francisco Gate has traditionally been a periodical quite supportive of Palm, having written some interesting pieces about Palm that showcased solid reporting and were not overly critical of the embattled smartphone maker. Now SFGate returns to Palm with a new editorial entitled, "New Palm Pre phone can be charged without wires", written by Ryan Kim, who in the past has frequently written about Palm for the Gate.

While the article does not reveal any revolutionary new information, it's encouraging to see a lengthy mention of Palm's new Touchstone accessory, as it has been a bit lost amidst the hoopla over WebOS and the Pre ever since the January CES unveiling.

Recently we reported that Canada's Bell Mobility was slated to have exclusive Canadian rights to the Pre in the "second half" of the year. Now a rather encouraging new detail comes to us courtesy of the Boy Genius Report concerning the Pre's Canadian debut.

According to BGR, our friends in the Great White North may be able to score a Pre as soon as "early August", if all goes to plan. BGR states that the limiting factor for Bell will actually be how many Pre handsets Palm can supply. With Bell Mobility utilizing the same CDMA network technology as rival Telus and Verizon and Sprint in the States, Palm could theoretically certainly reach a large potential audience with their CDMA handsets if all of the aforementioned carriers eventually end up offering WebOS devices.

Several online forums are chiming in with some interesting new Pre developments. Posters have confirmed various reports that Pre 'Advocate demonstration units' are currently arriving in Sprint stores nationwide. PreCentral has an update on this story as well.

IntoMobile are also reporting that the demonstrator Pre are under "strict lockdown" but are arriving in the finalized retail packaging. The units are not meant for public display but appear to be destined for use by specially trained Sprint employees. This, combined with the Pre video training podcasts that have trickled out over the past week, shows that Sprint is taking this handset launch very seriously.

Despite the fact that Sprint will be gunning for as many new and extended contracts as possible upon the Pre's release, there remains a small but faithful group of users with money to burn who only purchase unlocked wireless devices or at full retail without signing a contract. To date, the two biggest remaining questions have been whether or not Sprint and Palm will even offer Pres for sale without contract at full retail price and, if so, what that price will be for the Pre both retail and subsidized.

Last week we reported on an internal Best Buy inventory leak that suggested the full retail price of an unsubsidized Pre would be a staggering $999, though this amount was suspected to be a temporary placeholder price. Now thanks to some clever sleuthing and calculating, engadget is speculating that the full retail price of the CDMA Pre may actually be a bit more reasonable than previously reported.

Chapter by chapter, Palm has been rolling out new sections of their new WebOS programming guidebook, Palm webOS: Developing Applications in JavaScript Using the Palm Mojo Framework".

Mere days after we reported on the availability of Chapter 6, Chapter 7 of the book has just been released as part of the Rough Cuts work-in-progress e-book series from Safari Books Online.

Patent filings aren't always proof positive of upcoming features. Companies will sometimes file for patents on ideas that may never see the light of day, but are cool enough to warrant protecting (and hoarding, in case of potential thermonuclear patent war with rogue fruit companies). Blog Patentseed has taken note of three of Palm's filings this last week (although the filings themselves are up to five years old).

First - and most likely to appear in webOS smartphones such as the Pre - is application 11/863,174 for "Priority-Based Phone Call Filtering".

Poor? Cheapskate? Or do you just like free stuff? Whatever the case, you'll be delighted to learn that Sprint are giving away two Palm Pre packages valued at $1800, including one year of Simply Everything service, a Touchstone charger and (of course) a Pre smartphone.

The sweepstakes begin tonight and will be open until May 18th, so eligible contestants (U.S. residents only, unfortunately) should get cracking and sign up here. The winners will be drawn on May 26 - a date which lends credence to the rumour that the Pre will be released shortly thereafter on June 7.

MaxPDA, a Chinese-language mobile site, has uncovered several high-quality shots of the Pre's finalized retail packaging for Sprint, as well as some of the box contents, with additional details being subsequently reported by PreCentral. The final Pre box is essentially shaped identically to the clever "wedge" design first used on the Treo Pro last year. While we spotted a mockup Pre box at CES, the package design and box contents for Sprint had not yet been finalized.

Some additional pieces of info gleaned from these spy shots are that the device's SKU is PALM100HK and the fact that it has passed all FCC testing and certification. One image shows an affixed sticker listing a "2009-05-04 11:00". This is presumably a production lot decal indicating that this Pre rolled off the line on either April 5th or May 4th.

Evidence gleamed from rumors and various leaks keep adding credence to the probability that June 7th is the most likely timeframe for the Palm Pre's public release. The latest tidbit comes from Best Buy's inventory system courtesy of engadget. The same screen detail that first showed the Touchstone kits price, has now been updated to show a 06-07-2009 'In Stock Date.'

This latest disclosure adds to the string of leaks that mention the June 7th timeframe. There is also a new tip from BGR that Sprint may announce something in the Wall Street Journal on next Tuesday, May 19th.