Yesterday, I received an e-mailed invitation from Palm's media relations team to a press conference that Palm is holding at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month. The tag line reads: "Come to see all that Palm New-ness you've been waiting for." New what? New operating system? New hardware? New direction? Hopefully, all of the above.The e-mail gives me just the faintest glimmer of hope that Palm has a future in the smartphone landscape after all. These last few years have not been kind to the one-time innovator of the smartphone. As Palm coughs up rehash after rehash of its Treo lineup, competitors have turned the heat way up. The touch phenomenon has caught up with nearly every manufacturer rushing to compete against the Apple iPhone and other devices. The Android OS and even an Android device have launched. New and exciting handsets have come from just about every OEM, with the exception of Palm.

Palm has been using the same base operating system on its Palm OS devices for nearly 4 years. That's the Jurassic period in the mobile landscape. Palm has been struggling to bring its next-generation operating system, based on Linux, to market. The OS was first expected to be available by the end of 2007. It has been pushed back again and again, with Palm CEO Ed Colligan suggesting not more than a few months ago that it will be well into 2009 before we see the new OS.

Hopefully the news of this press conference means things are moving along at a faster pace than perhaps Colligan had estimated.

Here's what I hope to see: