Well, here goes one rumor. Scott Rockfeld, the director of Microsoft's mobile communications business, absolutely shot down the idea of a Microsoft-branded Zune phone:

"Microsoft has no plans to make a phone, including a Zune phone. Our core focus has been and will continue to be providing software plus services and working with our partners to deliver great phones. Our partners have been integral in our success to date, and we are excited about the innovation we are bringing to the market together," Rockfeld said.

The Palm Nova rumor is a bit more pernicious, because it's probably true and because it's being reported as fact in a misleading BusinessWeek story. If you read that story through, though, you'll find the reporter cites absolutely no source for his assertion that Palm is definitely introducing the new OS. He just seems to be pulling the idea out of the air. Now, I've done that myself plenty of times, but that's called analysis and speculation, not news.

That said, Palm's Stephane Maes told us a year ago that Nova would be coming at the end of 2008, making a CES 2009 launch just a wee bit late. Mobile analysts are also unanimous that if Palm uses their high-profile press conference to introduce anything other than a radical new OS and devices, they're pretty much toast. Here's what Maes told us about Nova:

With Palm's heritage coming from the personal information management world, the new platform will focus on integrating different kinds of data stored in different locations, Maes said.

"It's a Web-enabled world, where people have contacts in multiple locations. You start thinking about all of the different places where people have information, it's really about managing people's lives. That's a lot of the heritage we're really going to leverage and expand on going forward," he said.