We are doing some last-minute prep and packing our bags for the CTIA wireless technology show in Las Vegas next week, so we'll have limited posting today. But what we do have is a preview of the activity to watch.Here you go:

• Look for Sprint and HTC to be announcing the Supersonic: An Android powered mobile device with a 4.3-inch display that runs on Sprint’s 4G network (i.e., WiMax). It would be the first "WiMax Phone." I’ve heard a reference to this as the “Trophy Wife Phone.” Ha! Good one.
• More Android stuff. Most major networks including AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile have announced support for Android devices such as Motorola’s Droid and Google's phone, made by HTC. Expect the same from Verizon next week.
• Verizon will be having an all-important event in which it is expected to talk about its LTE strategy. LTE is the next-generation of phone networks.
• In case you can’t wait for all the dumbed-down mobile tech news for the masses, CNBC will be broadcasting from CTIA.
• Keynotes: Tuesday, March 23: CTIA Chairman Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets; Randall Stephenson, chairman, CEO and president of AT&T Inc; Iñaki Urdangar n, chairman of Telefónica Internacional, USA Inc.; and J.K. Shin, president, Mobile Communications Business, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Wednesday, March 24: CTIA president and CEO Steve Largent will host two fireside chats with industry leaders Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint Nextel and Bill Morrow, CEO of Clearwire. In addition, John Stanton, chairman of Trilogy International Partners; René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom AG; and Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco, will discuss the evolution of the mobile market and the innovations that will drive new growth. Thursday, March 25: CNBC anchor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera will moderate a keynote roundtable featuring Academy Award-Winning Director James Cameron, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone. The panel will discuss the transformative power of wireless and its continued impact on business, media and the economy. Full schedule is here.
• Tablets, tablet, tablets: Expect lots of previews of tablet-like devices that run on new wireless networks.
• Next-gen smartphones: The usual cast of characters such as RIM, Toshiba, Garmin, Samsung, Sony, and Nokia will be talking about next-gen smartphones that do all this and that. Here's a nice preview (TheStreet.com).
• As usual, government and Net Neutrality policy will be a big topic. The FCC is at it again, trying to mix up telecom. Light Reading has a nice video discussion on the matter. Or, see what Gary Bolton from Adtran has to say about the FCC plan.

Greetings, it's Tablet Wednesday! It would be so much better if it were a Tuesday so that we could call it Tablet Tuesday. I find it funny that people are still trying to print sketchy "scoops" in the hours up to the Apple tablet computer launch. Like this grainy puzzle-pieced photo from Engaget. Holy cow, is that some kind of map... on an LCD screen! Well, that's the news business in 2010. Any piece of incremental information, no matter how shady or inconclusive, needs to be published. With that, we travel onto the world of shady Internet journos, toiling overtime to bring you the n0t-so-much-news: McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw, who I once worked for, tells you all about the tablet. No word on whether the tablet will have an  feature to buy your own S&P ratings.

• The Business Insider rounds up all the rumors. No word on whether Henry Blodget thinks the stock is going to $800.
• Can we link to ourselves? Here's what I think about the notion that the tablet will save the content industry (Rayno Report).
• Apple gets a slew of new patents related to the tablet (Patently Apple).
• Apple Tablet Portends Rewrite for Publishers (Wall Street Journal).

Oh, and in case you thought anything else was going on in the world:

• Treasury Secretary Geithner is getting grilled on AIG (BusinessWeek). He's crispy. Fried. Done.
• Geithner denies role in AIG payment disclosures (Reuters).
• Bernanke says he didn't negotiate with the AIG lenders. (Reuters) Also, rumor has it he's not really sure what "money" is.
• Superbowl ad stokes abortion controversy (Reuters). Not going to touch this one!
• Toyota halts sales on millions of vehicles, stock slammed (Associated Press).
• Roku wants to create a 100-channel Internet TV box (Bloomberg). Memo to Roku: The Internet has infinite channels.
• AT&T to launch Yelp competitor (Forbes). Isn't this kind of like your grandma launching an Internet startup?
• Oracle plans to hire people (InfoWorld). Yes, you too can wash Larry Ellison's car.
• Send inmates to Mexico, says Shcwarzenegger (Agence France Press).
• Five things Obama could learn from Reagan (Time). Somehow, I just don't see Obama reading this article. Or behaving like the Gipper. Or looking like him. Or moving to Santa Barbara. Yep, it's completely confirmed: They're totally different people.
• My vote for the best headline of the day, even though I'm not sure what it means: "Facebook and Twitter? Why not just put a gun to your head?" (Network World).
• The FCC is probing mobile phone termination fees (Digital Trends).
• The Mars rover is dead (National Geographic). Long live the Mars rover!
• Leading space scientist claims Earth becoming invisible to aliens (Telegraph).

Damn, January is almost over and I am nowhere near accomplishing one-twelfth of what I wanted to get done in 2010. Are you? That's okay, our world leaders aren't there yet, either. They are set to gather in Davos this week for that annual junket known as the "World Economic Forum." Primary objective? To tell us how smart and rich they are. What is the World Economic Forum you ask? It's a gathering of really, really rich people, who do their best to massively screw up a tiny resort town in Switzerland. For one week, we'll get to hear breathless reports of how fast leading business executives and investment bankers are destroying the global economy. It's also an excuse for pundits and TV personalities to brag incessantly about how they got this cherry assignment. Personally, I see it as yet another sign that the global power infrastructure is approaching a modern version of the Roman Empire. But I will watching, and listen, to key figures. One person I always pay attention to is George Soros, who has now apparently been bounced from the Davos headlines by partying, Playboy doomsday ecnonomist Nouriel Roubini. How these two got on the same page I'm not sure. Let's get this straight: Soros is a billionaire, with four decades of successful investment under his belt. Roubini predicted a fairly obvious investment banking meltdown in 2008 and then partied like crazy with hotties for awhile.Who's the bigger brain? At any rate, before I ramble on, here are some more links and newsbits:

• Existing home sales shocked everybody by falling (Bloomberg). Gee, what a shock.
• Ed Whitacre will become the permanent CEO of GM (Wall Street Journal). Hey, I met this guy once! He was running a telephone company at the time. Isn't that funny! I bet he puts telephones in cars.
• Nice Joe Queenan piece on why NBC is making a Leno mistake (Wall Street Journal). "Jay Leno, much like Adolf Hitler, is a master of making secret demands for foreign territory and then acting like the wronged party." LOL! Now that is a good line.
• Wal-Mart Stores to eliminate 11,000 Sam's Club jobs (Bizjournals.com). For this, they gain 10 points in their bid to top the mega-hated companies list.
• The man who lives without money (The Guardian). Better to do it voluntarily, I say.
• Great soundbite alert: British P.M. has been accused of "moral cowardice" (The Telegraph).
• Jim Rogers is calling for a sizable market correction (The Telegraph).
• TechCrunch reports that Steve Jobs has been overheard saying the tablet will be the most important thing Apple's ever done. This coming from the person who thinks he's the most important person.
• An outfit called Flurry says the Apple tablet will be really, really good for video games. Oh great, just what we need -- more brain-dead teenagers zoning out on on shoot-em-ups in the local Starbucks.
• China said it didn't have anything to do with attacking Google's servers (Agence France Presse). Righhtttt... and I'm Brett Favre's sports psychologist.
• Speaking of Brett Favre, what exactly is he going to do for an encore? Las Vegas is posting odds on an over/under on retirement reversal annoucements. The over is at 8 and I'm taking it.
• Brett Favre does Pants on the Ground (HuffPost). Did the reporter really ask him about slapping guys on the butt?
• Woman falls, rips Picasso painting (Agence France Press via Yahoo). I can't tell you how many times I feared my kids doing this.
• Map of the interactinos between the genes in a yeast cell (BBC). Just testing how geeky y'all are. Please, no comparisons to social networking.
• Obama unveils new intitatives for the middle class (Reuters). He's got a problem. First he's got to re-create the middle class.

Greetings for Tuesday, January 19th. That new year goes fast eh? It's almost February. In today's news, we have Massachusetts Politics, Matt Taibbi's slam, a Krafty deal, and a rising stock market. What more can you ask for? Here's a rundown of what's going on, through the eyes of the Rayno Report:

• Massachusetts politics -- what fun!  Republican Scott Brown is grabbing the headlines, with his possible come-from-behind victory over Democratic favorite Martha Coakley in a special election for a Massachusetts senate seat today (Politco). Not only would a Republican candidate taking the late senator Ted Kennedy's senate seat be a shock to the Democratic party, but it jeopardizes the Obama Adminstration's entire agenda (New York Times) Kind of a  big deal!
• The market rallied today. Folks who don't study statistics say it's because of the Massachusetts senate election. Even though we don't know who won. Okay. (Bloomberg)
• The disaster that is Haiti continues (CNN.com). Remember to help out, if you can.
• I'm still laughing at Matt Taibbi's rant on Thomas Friedman's greenish hype (NY Press). He even tells you what it has to do with what midgets think of Austrailia. It was so inspiring, I had to flatter him with my own derivative rant below.
• Interesting, Taibbi is onto something. Conflicts around "greeness" may be rising (New York Times).
• Did anybody notice that China is putting together a national strategic oil reserve? (Kuwait News Agency)
• Speaking of Kuwait, the Kuwait foreign minister has called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "stupid and insane." (Al-Manar TV)
• I guess it's time for another Middle East conflict (Xinhua).
• Avatar is now the most popular movie shown in China ever. That's enough for censors to start yanking it, apparently (Sphere).
• Speaking of battles in China, Google is yanking its Nexus One from China until it can sort out that pesky negotiation with a totalitarian regime.
• Microsoft wants to launch a Zune phone (All Things D). Go ahead, try to stifle your laughter.
• HarperCollins Publishers is negotiating with Apple for books to appear on a new Apple tablet device (Wall Street Journal).
• More men are marrying wealthier women. And women are rejecting rich men for poor men. (New York Times). No word on whether poor men can marry poor women.
• Speaking of wealth, a man masquerading as a fashion model has been bilking wealthy men (L.A. Times).
• The man was posing as fashion model Bree Condon. Here's what Bree Condon looks like, in case you were wondering:
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• The Cadbury board has accepted Kraft's improved $18.0B takeover bid (Associated Press)