I spent last night recuperating from the ride (and re-watching L.A.Story with Shirley, how great was that movie?) so I didn't make time to blog; but here's a filter pass for your perusal...

Don't you hate dislike it when bloggers put up a "test post"?  I can understand wanting to test - I do it all the time - but after the test, why not delete it?  By leaving it up, you're assuming we care about how you blog.  Wrong.  We care about what you blog, how you do it, not so much.  Especially not test results. 

Last night I watched the Ravens squeak by the Titans; great game.  (I was rooting for Baltimore, of course, because if they won and the Chargers win today that means the AFC Championship will be in San Diego next weekend!)  And this morning I watched the Cardinals dismantle the Panthers; not a great game.  Interesting how you just never know.  Just now I'm watching the Eagles - Giants game which stands at 7-5, baseball anyone?  And then of course this afternoon we have the BIG game, Chargers against the Steelers (dum dum dum).  I predict the winner of that game will win the AFC Championship, and the Super Bowl.  Stay tuned... 

During football there are a metric ton of commercials from Verizon for the Blackberry Storm.  (So many that I can tell even Tivo-30-second-skipping through them.)  Funny how it looked so cool a week ago, but now with the Palm Pre announcement it seems rather dated.  Today's cheese is tomorrow's rind. 

Speaking of the Pre, Palm's CES presentation is now available online.  Pretty nice job by John Rubenstein and Ed Colligan, but the star was Mattias Duarte, who led the team that developed the webOS UI and conducted the demo on-stage.  Really compelling.  You could tell he knew he had a tiger by the tail. 

Palm have now introduces the App Catalog, a place for developers to market their Pre applications.  Note the positioning; catalog instead of store.  Palm seems to be doing a lot right, it will be interesting to see how consumers respond. 

One more Pre -note; there are rumors that the device will cost $399, and various "analysts" are saying it must be priced at $250 to compete with the iPhone.  That is not even wrong.  Smartphone pricing depends heavily on the service plan, so the up-front-cost by itself is irrelevant.  And the Pre really is a game-changer, especially for someone [like me] who is unwilling to switch to AT&T...  I'd be delighted to pay $399 for it, provided the monthly service cost is similar to my Centro's... 

Dave Winer: How investigative research happens in the blogosphere.  He gets off to a great start with this diagram, pointing out that bloggers do opinion as well as the pros, and do event reporting better than the pros.  From that it could follow that they do the reporting in the middle, too - and they do - but the example he uses, how he collaboratively designed some thumbnail upload facility, is weak; that is navel gazing about some random technical matter, not investigative research.  Still his main point is valid. 

Truth is stranger than the Onion: Zimbabwe introduces $50B note.  "John Robertson, an economist in Zimbabwe, said he's puzzled by the introduction of the $50 billion and $20 billion notes.  'I am not really sure what these notes would be for,' he said. 'No one now accepts the local currency. It is a waste of resources to print Zimbabwe dollar notes now. Who accepts a currency that loses value by almost 100 percent daily?'  In August, the RBZ slashed ten zeros from the currency. But the zeroes have bounced back with more vigor."  It would be funnier if the Zimbabwean people weren't suffering.  The true joke is Robert Mugabe.