Hmmmm, there's just five weeks to go until Macworld Expo San Francisco (also known as "the real Expo," "the One With a Stevenote," "the One That Apple Actually Goes To," "the One With Vendors and Attendees," etc.), which means we're officially entering the Speculation Frenzy Zone. Here's hoping you've carbo-loaded and done your stretching exercises, because there's over a month of high-octane rumor-dishing to endure before we all finally drag ourselves across the finish line and Uncle Steve shows us what he's got wedged way up those long, black sleeves of his. And we can tell you right now that most of that speculation will probably focus on new iPods-- especially the alleged flash-based iPod that some analysts claim is a virtual lock for an Expo debut.

The absolute best flashPod rumor we've yet come across we found via faithful viewer Joao, who directed us to The MacMind for allegedly leaked honest-to-goshness 100 percent bona fide insider info, direct from inside the walls of One Infinite Loop and "confirmed" by a second contact at the company. Based on the 3D mockup the site's posted, the flashPod will be roughly 60 percent the size of an iPod mini and shaped more or less like a Pro Mouse, except only "2.5 inches long, 1.5 inches wide, and just .5 inch thick." It's so small it's meant to be worn around the neck-- and the base unit will cost just $99. Even without a hard drive, how did Apple cram everything into such a teensy package and keep the price so low, you ask? Simple: they left out the Click Wheel. And, um, the screen.

That's right; according to The MacMind, the flashPod's entire interface is a single five-way click pad (up, down, left, right, and center) that only allows volume changes, play/pause, and skipping forward and backward through the library one song at a time-- because selecting a song from an onscreen list is about as passé as actually being able to look at boring stats like the song's title, artist, time remaining, and other soul-killing junk like that. Granted, a 1 GB flashPod would only hold about 200-something songs, but still, does anyone else find it incredibly unlikely that Apple would expect its customers to click right 'til their thumbs fall off just to hear track number 249?

After thinking about it for a bit, though, we suppose we could see Apple marketing the flashPod as purely a music device for active folks who just start a playlist and run for an hour or whatever; if so, the lack of a screen to show song titles and the like isn't much of a loss, because who's reading their iPod screens while they jog? And maybe the flashPod only holds a maximum of, say, ten different playlists, and holding down a button on the top of the unit turns the "skip song forward/back" functions into "skip playlist forward/back" instead. If you've got a 256 MB flashPod, you can only hold six albums' worth of music anyway, so why would you need more navigation than being able to skip between them and then skip forward and back through the songs within? After all, that's slightly more control than the iPod's remote gives you, and plenty of people get along fine using that screenless, scroll-less interface once a playlist has been chosen. There's something to be said for a teensy nothing-but-music device that's basically just the remote.

The genius of this whole thing is that Apple gets to market the flashPod as something you buy in addition to a "regular" iPod; the latter holds your full music collection, your contact list, your calendars, etc., while the former is the one you wear around your neck just to listen to a few tunes while jogging or snowboarding or mugging old ladies in the park. We could really see this happening. And sure, maybe it's too early in the season to be surrendering ourselves to credulity already, but hey, what can we say? We practically invented that whole "willing suspension of disbelief" thing.