HP's Jon Rubinstein has just announced two new webOS smartphones at todays event. The HP Veer is a new qwerty slider with WiFi, 8GB of storage in a diminutive, credit card sized package due this spring.

The Pre 3 sports a new larger display and keyboard with a 3.6" 480 x 800 WVGA pixel resolution. It also boasts a 5-megapixel camera, with LED flash, HD video and video calling support. It will be available later this summer.

Engadget and Precentral are currently providing live coverage of the event.

HP Palm's WebOS event is going down today in San Francisco. Palm's website has now been replaced with the countdown timer.

The presentation kicks off at 10 AM Pacific (1 PM Eastern). Check back here for continuing coverage and updates.

The long-awaited, long-delayed Palm Pre 2 on Verizon may finally be a reality, according to a pair of separate photographs sent in to Engadget this morning. The elusive handset looks to be hitting the market four months after its initial unveiling this past October. After being initially promised "in the coming months", the Pre 2 will be hitting Verizon in the aftermath of the iPhone launch as well as HP's big WebOS event on February 9th.

According to the leaked screenshots and anonymous tipsters, the Pre 2 is set to hit all Verizon channels on February 17th and cost $100 on a two-year contract. This will apparently be the device's out-the-door price tag with no mail-in rebate attached, despite last week's confirmation that Verizon devices ringing in at $150 or less would still carry a mail-in rebate. There is no word on full retail pricing, unfortunately, nor if the previously rumored VZW roadmap still calls for this device's EOL after two short months of availability. Another sign confirming that this may indeed be a real occurrence is that the Pre 2 has been spotted in Verizon's in-house CelleBrite contact info transfer system

HP now has a new teaser site up on palm.com with a countdown timer until next week's big WebOS event. This site carries the modified tagline of " Think big, think small, think ahead, think beyond."

Alongside the yesterday's teaser video is what appears to be the silhouette of the now-outed Topaz tablet, confirming that we can expect at the very least one new tablet and one new smartphone announcement next week.

Over the past month, a seemingly endless parade of information has trickled out in advance of HP's big WebOS event next week. While some of the dropped hints have been official and other bits were apparently leaked by insiders, the vast majority of the online chatter has been centered around HP's WebOS-powered tablets. Yesterday, however, HP unveiled a tantalizing series of macro shots via an 8-second YouTube video on the heretofore-quiet Palm Blog of what is presumably a next-generation smartphone due to be announced next week

Entitled "Ready to peek into the beyond?" the blog post is light on tease on short on hard info. Nevertheless, the sleek photography gives several clues of some upcoming new hardware.

The BBC has just posted a new article entitled "Can Leo Apotheker make Hewlett Packard a cool company?" that discusses surprising amount of new tidbits about the company's plans for WebOS and the Palm branding.

First off, while he does not make a definitive statement to this effect in the interview, he does hint that the Palm and its related sub-brands (Pre, Treo etc) are headed for extinction. According to the BBC article, the "new product line announced in February will be HP-branded and carry a "new name".

HP's big February 9th WebOS event in San Francisco will be followed by an additional undisclosed "unveiling" on March 14th, something that in Apotheker's words is a "vision of what HP is capable of in the future...the starting point". He goes on to discuss the company's many pieces and areas of expertise, ranging from hardware to software to consumer and enterprise offerings.

Fox News host Clayton Morris is the latest to add to the massive rumor pile on HP webOS Tablet plans. If his latest blog post is to be believed, HP is quite displeased with the recent leaks and held a emergency employee-only meeting reminding HP staffers that leaking such information can result in termination only yesterday. Mr. Morris goes on to detail that plans for an "EduPad" version of the tablet targeted at educators has been scrapped and select collegiate partners will instead receive a 4G/Wi-Fi version of the Topaz. Additionally, word has leaked out about a Sprint 3G CDMA (not Wi-Max) version from an HP insider and the known concerns about what to actually call these devices when they hit the market.

The most interesting part of the report goes on to detail that the specs leaked to Precentral are not indicative of the final, production-ready version of the Topaz. The case design has been modified slightly and the device's battery was reduced in capacity to bring its weight down to 1.5lbs. The rear-facing camera is also gone, a likely casualty of cost and weight considerations. There is also a ruggedized version for military use coming in 2012 despite HP currently not having a government contract to supply the armed forces with tablets.

Much ado has been made of HP's various trademark filings since last year's acquisition of Palm. Now we have word of the filing of three new trademarks in addition to the latest update on last year's must-discussed "PalmPad" moniker.

PocketNow is reporting that several USPTO filing documents [USPTO (1), (2), (3)] indicate that HP has registered the "Touchslate", "Touchcanvas" and "Duopad" trademarks, in addition to the existing "TouchPad". HP is likely just locking up all of these names for safety's sake, but it's very possible that they are still debating whether or not to call this device a "slate" or a "pad" or something else entirely.

Another week has brought yet another massive leak on HP's upcoming WebOS-powered tablets. This time around, Precentral has received the anonymous tip, with a new document that reveals nearly every nitty-gritty technical detail of the device. At this rate, HP may have very little information left unturned for their February 9th event.

Internally, the document nicely confirms every single spec previously rumored: 512mb of DDR2 memory is mated to a Qualcomm MSM8660 1.2ghz dual-core CPU. Commonly known as "Snapdragon", this is the first time a Palm-related device will be powered by a Qualcomm CPU, as Palm's current WebOS smartphones all utilize TI OMAP CPUs. All of the usual hardware acceleration and 3D capabilities are present in the Qualcomm's Adreno 220 GPU, which matches the 1080p video playback capabilities of its Tegras2-powered competitors.

Onboard storage will be available in 16, 32 and 64GB versions, matching the iPad. Unfortunately, no form of removable storage is available on the Topaz, continuing a trend for WebOS devices. Charging and synchronization are handled by microUSB, so this device will thankfully not require a separate bulky AC adapter or a proprietary connector for charging duties like many of its competitors. Unfortunately, there is no HDMI port for HD video output, though this is mentioned as a possible feature of a future Touchstone video dock. USB host mode is also mentioned but the unit will not have a dedicated full-size USB host port like some of its Android competitors.

Responding to some widespread requests (though this move will likely also generate more than a few complaints as well) Access Co. has released a new "Pro" version of their Graffiti app for Android OS devices.

Ringing in at $2.99 in the Android Market, this is essentially the exact same program as the still-available free version, despite its 1.0 version number. The purchase price banishes the ads for Access' NetLife products completely and, thankfully, network access is no longer required to use the program.

The dust has not even settled on yesterday's breathtaking WebOS tablet leak and we've already got a fresh batch of new info, again courtesy of Engadget.

Citing their usual "trusted" anonymous tipsters, the second Engadget piece reveals that the smaller of the WebOS twin tablets, codenamed "Opal", will be roughly similar in size to the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Having extensively used a Galaxy Tab over the past few months since its launch, I can confirm that it a very comfortable form factor that can be easily held in one hand or used in two hands for proficient thumb typing. Screen resolution for the Opal is said to be 1024x768, the first WebOS device supporting this resolution and a solid notch above the slew of Android-based 7" devices with 1024x600 screens. This resolution also conveniently matches the first-generation Apple iPad resolution, albeit with much greater pixel density.