I'm absolutely convinced of two things:

Cingular will announce their BlackBerry Pearl 8100 as early as this Monday.

The Cingular BlackBerry Pearl will officially be available on the Cingular website and in Cingular stores on Friday, November 17.

Not only do I rely on numerous tips and leaks for this prediction. I am relying on the logic of the calendar.

Let me explain further.

With our most accurate information pointing to a launch next week for the Cingular BlackBerry Pearl, it's no surprise that the Cingular Wireless'own BackBerry Forum is seeing quite a few threads and traffic for Pearl-related posts.

At the top, I show you a scree grab of the seven most recenlly posted-to Pearl-related threads on the Cingular Forum. Now let us see what some of these threads are saying.

A string of unfortunate, successive events can lead to your ringtones being disabled on your BlackBerry Pearl.

That's according to a newly posted Knwoledge Base Support document on the BlackBerry Technical Knowledge Center.

Fortunately, the problem only seems to occur in one scenario-one which finds four steps being performed in sequence.

Ounce of prevention- so don't do what we are about to tell you crashes your ringtones.

Follow along and I will tell you what happens in this scenario:

"BlackBerry in an evening gown" is what a reviewer in the Ottawa Sun called the Pearl. Interesting idea really.

The only disappointing thing he found about the Pearl was the black plastic got a lot of fingerprints. He liked the new track ball better than the scroll wheel.

This review also rated the sound quality on the Pearl high, a 4 to 4.5 out of 5. However he preferred having all of the keys separate, but admitted the Pearl set up was easier than the keys on a normal phone.

He did mention having trouble with the lock and unlock of the keypad. He complained that sometimes he had to try multiple times to get the phone to lock or unlock. I am curious, any other Pearl users notice that problem?

YouTube-r madseeq sends me a link to a new video he's put up in which he demonstrates the BlackBerry Pearl GPS feature in a real-time application.

We follow madseeq around as he's guided by a GPS-equipped Blackberry Pearl connected via Bluetooth to the Nokia LD-1W GPS puck.

Let's see where he's headed from here.

New York Times product reviewer David Pogue- who sometimes is like a one-man Engadget over there- is out with his annual "Buzz of 2006" round-up of best and worst technology of the year.

In the technology "bright spot of the year," David ranks the BlackBerry Pearl and Treo 700p in a tie for the top spot in the smartphone category.

To give you an overall idea of the other devices that keep the Pearl and Treo company, they are the CanonSD800 IS in the small camera category; the Nikon D80 in the Digital SLR category; the CanonHV10 in the Camcorder category and the iPod Nano in the Music player classification.

In the Boy Genius report, scoop-ster BoyGenius includes a grab off a Cingular Wireless rebate information sheet.

Real interesting. Several devices that Cingular has not fomrally announced appear on this sheet.

One of them, the BlackBerry Pearl, appears that it will have a $50 mail-in rebate.

It's in the second column, but yes, know this nugget is not too easy to spot in the large grab.

So guess what I did for ya.

Loyal BBHub reader Dorian Banks attended Friday night's Tragically Hip concert at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver, B.C. (Note: The Hip are there this coming Monday and Tuesday nites as well).

Three more things you can say about Dorian.

One, as chief operating officer and Chief Technical Officer of MetroBridge Networks in Vancouver, Dorian brings rank and cachet to his technology endeavors (I guess he would spell the word endeavours).

Two, Dorian uses a BlackBerry Pearl. I Photoshopped the above photo to make it somewhat darker and more viewable.

Third reason, and one more photo, after the jump.

Blogger Matthew Miller of ZDNet's Mobile Gadgeteer isn't exactly the biggest fan of the BlackBerry Pearl.

He writes that if enterprise users have some power of the purse when it comes to choosing a smart phone, "then I highly encourage them to check out the more capable Palm, Symbian, and Windows Mobile offerings and prepared to be blown away compared to the BlackBerry devices.

Why the diss?

Terrible fonts, balky application switching; poor email interface, for starters.

"It will be interesting to see if IT personnel start taking an honest look at the other mobile device solutions that are available," Matt wrties, "and what RIM will do to improve their operating system as they start to feel the pressure from Palm, Symbian, and Windows Mobile."

Are you having trouble with the back door on your Pearl? Some Pinstack users are and they have pictures of the source.

Take a look at the back without the cover on. Towards the top on a Pearl that is doesn't have door troubles there should be a piece of foam poking out where the arrow points.

If yours is missing you are probably having issues with a lazy door that wants to come loose. One idea on Pinstack is the Canada made Pearls have the foam, while the Mexico Pearls do not.

Easy solution to the problem, keep the Pearl in a case that covers the back and keeps it from falling off.

Are you seeing this problem? If so what are you doing to fix it?

When you enter http://www.blackberry8800.com, you get to a BlackBerry Pearl page.

Considering that the BlackBerry Pearl is the 8100 series, this makes me want to go "hmmm." Why is the view I am getting of the Pearl, with the 8800 URL still intact? Shouldn't I have been redirected to the main BlackBerry page?

First, a backgrounder. By now, we've established that the next major series of BlackBerrys will be the 8800. So it is not implausible that BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion would reserve that domain, and rather than place a "coming soon" holder, would employ what is called a "redirect" to the Pearl page.

But from what I can gather, this doesn't seem to have happened. The view here is not the same as the main, Flashed-up Pearl page.

Flickr member and confirmed geek anxiousdog (click Read below this post for his Flickr photostream) managed to export "Seinfeld" and "King of Queens" shows into his BlackBerry Pearl.

I think they look pretty good.

That's King of Queens," up there at the top of this post.

"Seinfeld," along with pointers to where you can learn how anxiousdog did this- and you can to- well, that's also after the jump.

BlackBerryForums Member phungy (I wonder about that moniker, BTW), is on the case (OK to say "ba-boom ba bing" silently to yourself) with a review contrasting three Seidio skins/cases for the BlackBerry Pearl.

That'd be:

Seidio's Jet Black Silicone Skin, their Super Slim Crystal Case and their Rubberized Case.

Put phungy for the Rubberized Case. He likes the feel much better than the silicone skin, and thinks the Rubberized case "feels nice and smooth," too.

That the Jet Black Silicone Skin case at the top of this post. It's a case, not a descriptor of a human being.

OK, two more pix for ya:

On Brighthand, a handheld-centric news and reviews site you all should check out, the BlackBerry Pearl finished October third in terms of the frequency in which device reviews and information was accessed.

As you see in the graph, the BlackBerry Pearl review achieved 1,028 reads, or 4% of 24,040 clicks. That's third, behind the HP iPAQ hw6900 Mobile Messenger and the Palm Treo 680.

"Even though this is a smartphone," Brighthand notes, "not one of RIM's larger cellular-wireless handhelds, it still breaks new ground for this company, as it is its first BlackBerry of any kind with support for playing music and displaying video."

Note: I've updated this post with more recent information.

A BBHub reader named Scott writes to tell me he was at the New York Marathon Expo today, where BlackBerry had a large booth.

"I asked them specifically when Cingular would have the Pearl," Scott writes. "They grinned and essentially said it would be before Dec 11th.

Scott notes there is a Free companion ticket offer valid until then. He also tells me BlackBerry reps said the Pearl woul d be on Cingular before December 11.

But hoo boy, that's not all.