The , once the leader in PDAs and early smartphones, needs a miracle. Palm stock has dropped 80 percent in the last year and a half, and this quarter's sales are expected to be nearly 50 percent lower than analysts' projections. To help turn things around, Palm brought in Jon Rubinstein -- who helped design Apple's iMac and iPod -- to create Nova. BusinessWeek quoted Chief Executive Officer Ed Colligan saying that the new OS will aim at the "fat middle of the market," between the fun iPhone and business-like Blackberry.

Some bloggers are unimpressed. "Good luck," John Biggs comments on his , "Microsoft has been trying to do that all year."

The unnamed author of the Latest Phones and Cell Review blog was also skeptical of Palm catching that market, that "Both Nokia and Android smart-phones were also strong in both productivity and entertainment ... it's not easy to put the incoming Palm device on the smart-phone market map today, since there are many other fierce competitors out there: Samsung, HTC, Sony Ericsson ..."

Crunchgear's Biggs also wonders about the name Nova. Referring presumably to the , he warns that "Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Personally, I wonder about the name for other reasons. Do you really want a dying, exploding star in your pocket?