Rumor: A new report from Smarthouse.com.au claims that the Palm Pre will debut later this August in Australia. The article cites Telstra insiders that claim the device will be exclusive to Telstra for three months. Australia Palm Country Manager Brett Murray remarks that the Pre will be released in the second half of 2009 but would not confirm the report.

The article goes on to claim that Telstra plans to sell the Pre for around $299 AUS with a plan and $899 AUS outright.

According to The NPD Group, an aggressive "buy-one-get-one" promotion by Verizon Wireless helped RIM's BlackBerry Curve move past Apple's iPhone to become the best-selling consumer smartphone in the U.S. in the first quarter (Q1) of 2009. RIM's consumer smartphone market share increased 15 percent to nearly 50 percent of the smartphone market in Q1 2009 versus the prior quarter, as Apple's and Palm's share both declined 10 percent each.

Smartphones, which represented just 17 percent of handset sales volume in Q1 2008, now make up 23 percent of sales.

Rumor: Word is making its way out late this weekend that Best Buy retail stores may obtain a shipment of Palm Pre's for what the Boy Genus Report is calling a "trial launch" on June 7th. The site is citing an unnamed source though they also provide some additional plausible details to add to the claim.

BGR source states that the stores will receive a direct shipment of Pre's from Sprint, however it looks to be a very limited rollout as Best Buy will have to spread out an allotment of 4,500 Pre's across the country. They also claim to have some pricing info, stating that it will sell for $199 with a 2-year contract, $299 for existing customer upgrade and a whopping $999 sans plan.

Rumor: Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research, asserts in a note to clients today (via Tech Trader Daily) that Palm intends to produce a $399 netbook that will run WebOS. The speculation is not without precedent as Palm has stated on numerous occasions that the WebOS will power a family of products and has said in the past that a Foleo followup is not out of the question.

Chowdhry is saying that the device will basically be a revised version of the Foleo and will be powered by an ARM chipset and will use a Gobi 3G wireless chip from Qualcomm for an estimated 8-10 hour battery life. He says the project is being designed by three ex-Apple iPod guys.

Rumor: New information concerning upcoming Palm products has been a regular feature every day this week, so it's no surprise that PhoneNews has some new Palm Eos info as we head into the weekend.

According to the PhoneNews article, the upcoming Palm Eos first brought to light yesterday is now not only "confirmed" for AT&T but "sources within Sprint are acknowledging" the device's existence in a CDMA version as well. No additional details are provided, save for the fact that the Sprint Eos specs are nearly identical to those of its GSM sibling and it should also be available this fall.

Resco's popular backup application for Palm OS devices has just been updated. Resco Backup is an easy-to-use, yet powerful utility to protect your Palm device. It allows you to backup and restore from a memory card and has a large host of options including scheduled backups, encryption, backup set analysis and a number of other features. Updates in this version include a scheduler fix that prevents conflicts between scheduled backup and a phone calls and a updated RBackup log version.

Resco Backup is available now with a free trial and costs $14.95 to register. It is currently on sale for $9.95 for a limited time. It is compatible with devices running Palm OS 5 and higher.

Rumor: Moments after the first blurry-cam shot of an unknown WebOS based device began making the rounds, Engadget has obtained a host of new details and specs on the unannounced device. The device itself may be called the Palm Eos and could be headed to AT&T in the fall if the source is indeed correct.

Engadget's leaked rendering of the device shows it taking a similar form factor to the classic Treo and Centro design. Spec-wise is is said to be a a quadband GSM / HSDPA phone and will supposedly be only 10.6mm (.42" inches) thin. It will measure 55mm x 111mm (~ 2.1" x 4.3" inches), weigh 100 grams (3.52 ounces), and will sport a 2.63-inch, 320 x 400 capacitive display. Curiously absent at this time is any mention of WiFi, though without any official word everything about this unit is still very much up in the air.

Hot on the heels of yesterday's TechCrunch rumor, which in itself sounded much like the tip we received at CES, comes today's first possible blurrycam shot of a purported WebOS-powered "Centro 2" or something other by the Boy Genius Report. The picture is of extremely poor quality but does seem to feature a screen of unknown size with a small Centro-style single sheet keyboard below.

The Boy Genius has very few details about the device, other than the "fall" release date is again repeated and the device is "Centro-esque". While it's hard to tell much from the photo, the mystery device does looks to be a hybrid of styling cues dawn the existing Centro, the current Pre, and the BlackBerry Bold. There appears to be very little wasted real estate anywhere around the bezel or the keyboard.

While not nearly as entertaining or informative as Monday's huge treasure trove of new details, the anonymous blogger behind Inside Sprint Now has returned to reveal some additional behind the scenes Palm Pre info. This latest post lists the full assortment of Pre "quick test" error codes for support personnel.

The error codes are quite comprehensive and detailed in their explanations. Evidently these have been lifted right out of a Pre technical manual for Sprint customer service reps or technicians. According to Inside Sprint Now, this Quick Test screen is a sub-function of the "Device Info" icon on the WebOS launcher.

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch is reporting some news that has should come as no great surprise to anyone monitoring the Palm rumors over the past four months. Citing an anonymous source, TechCrunch is reporting that a "second Pre-like device" is going to arrive sometime later in the year, possibly even this fall.

The rumored device is never specifically referenced as a smartphone within the article but will supposedly address a "different part of the market". It is said to be smaller than the existing Pre and will of course run Palm's new WebOS. The source did not confirm if the device would run on CDMA or GSM networks or if it would feature a physical keyboard.

It has undoubtedly been an unprecedented week in the world of Palm Pre rumors. The excitement for the highly anticipated Pre release combined with Palms newspeak-like "first half of the year" mantra has created a perfect storm for daily rumors and half baked predictions from nearly every corner of the web.

While PIC does not tread as deeply into the waters of unsubstantiated rumors as many other sites do, we still keep our eyes on all the latest gossip and try to cover the more plausible things out there. Read on for our roundup of the latest chatter as we provide an analysis of some of the juicier bits from around the web over the past week.