It’s a rumor that refuses to die. The Zune phone. We last speculated about it back in July. Now the Zune Phone is looking very likely. A legitimate news organization, CNBC had something to say about it. Jim Goldman says that according a “good source,” Microsoft is “ready to give a major facelift to the company’s Zune music player that could mean its evolution into a new smart phone from the company.” It’s codenamed “Pink” and “will combine the company’s Zune and technology from Microsoft’s purchase of Danger Inc.”

Are you excited? Microsoft has dropped some hints that it wanted to combine Danger’s consumer-friendly OS expertise with the Zune. It makes sense. A ZunePhone made by Danger might be a Microsoft smartphone that is actually worth the wait.

Microsoft announced Monday that it is going to acquire Danger, software maker for the popular consumer-targeted Sidekick mobile device. Reportedly the purchase came after months of negotiations, with Danger receiving a number of different offers and Microsoft doubling their original offer to keep Danger out of others hands. That offer has been rumored to be as much as $500 million, but no official terms of the deal have been revealed.

While Microsoft has done well making software for smartphones the company mostly targets business users and fewer general consumers. The Sidekick from Danger is almost the opposite and is aimed at the younger consumer-based market in which Microsoft seems to be keen on getting into. Microsoft also recently made a $44.6 billion offer to Yahoo to help build a larger online, consumer-facing presence and could have Danger in mind to be part of that overall strategy, working against dominate competitive figures like Google and RIM.

After quite a long time of speculation and rumored pictures, T-Mobile and Danger have unveiled both the Sidekick LX and the Sidekick Slide. The two new mobile communication gadgets are both pretty cool but might each be targeted to a slightly different set of people.

The Sidekick LX looks to be the new, latest and greatest Sidekick with a wider QVGA display, mood lighting with LED lights that blink with alerts and a 1.3 megapixel camera with flash. It also comes with a 128MB microSD card. The Sidekick Slide comes in a little smaller package measuring 4.6 x 2.4 x 0.68 inches and is from Motorola. It doesn’t have the swivel display like the traditional Sidekicks but also doesn’t skimp on features as its set up the same as the LX.