I know what I said just a few days ago, but I’m going to be breaking the “no Twitter ever” law. Before anyone gets angry with me, I do have a perfectly good reason for sudden change of heart: News of the Weird!

- A few months ago, St. Louis Cardinal manager/baseball legend Tony La Russa discovered that someone was impersonating him on Twitter. La Russa, of course, did what any reasonable, responsible person would do — he sued Twitter for what he called “trademark infringement, trademark dilution and misappropriation of name and likeness.” Twitter quickly deleted the account, but the manager kept pressing on with the suit. While the little “legal tiff” has since been resolved, the actual result is still up in the air. According to the folks at Twitter, the lawsuit has been dropped completely. The La Russa camp, on the other hand, claims that the miccroblogging giant actually settled with their client for an “undisclosed sum.” Said sum was then supposedly donated to charity. Neither Biz Stone nor Tony LaRussa have yet to comment on the matter.

- By this point the proceedings, nearly everyone at least knows about Gmail. It is currently one of the five most popular email services available in the United States today. It has a loyal fan base, dozens of tweaks and add-ons, and has been the subject of a few of those “…For Dummies” books. What most people don’t realize, however, is that up until yesterday, it was still a glorified “beta test.” That’s right. Gmail has been designed for “advanced users only” for an astonishing five years, three months, and sixteen days. “More than 1.75 million companies around the world run their business on Google Apps,” writes Product Manager Matthew Glotzbach. “[L]arge enterprises that aren’t keen to run their business on software that sounds like it’s still in the trial phase. So we’ve focused our efforts on reaching our high bar for taking products out of beta, and all the applications in the Apps suite have now met that mark.” Despite the move to the landmark “1.0 release,” Glotzbach promises that Gmail Labs will still be working hard on making the overall product better. The new (and not quite) improved Gmail is available now for all users.

- In the sports world, Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco is known for three things: being a prolific, if not streaky, play maker, his gold teeth, and his penchant for doing downright crazy stunts in order to get people talking about him his team. In his eight years in the NFL, the man formally known as Chad Johnson has done everything from getting fake face tattoos to protesting the “creative direction” of his team by not tying his shoes. And what is his latest stunt, you ask? Tweeting during his games. We are not just talking about pregame or at halftime, either. No, Ochocinco claims that he will be doing his Tweeting during the games while he is still on the sidelines, thanks in part to a brand new, customized Twitter application. “You’ll actually be able to follow me and when the season starts, it’s going to get even worse,” Ochocinco said in an interview with KGOW in Houston. “I’m going to really make it fun. I’m going to be taking it to the next level.” Neither the legality of his “plan” nor the release date of his specialized Twitter application are known at this time.