Stowe Boyd / /Message:
The Growing Backlash Against PR Spam, And The Rationale For MicroPR  —  Gina Trapani, of Lifehacker, has created a prspammers wiki where she and others can publicly out PR firms that are spamming bloggers at their personal email addresses, or using other unsavory spammish practices.

IDG News Service:
Microsoft to Limit Capabilities of Cheap Laptops  —  Microsoft is launching a program to promote the use of its Windows OS in ultra low-cost PCs, one effect of which will be to limit the hardware capabilities of this type of device, IDG News Service has learned.

Joel Hruska / Ars Technica:
Security flaw turns Gmail into open-relay server  —  A recently-discovered flaw in Gmail is capable of turning Google’s e-mail service into a highly effective spam machine.  According to the Information Security Research Team (INSERT), Gmail is susceptible to a man-in-the-middle attack …

Fred / A VC:
Three Reasons To Use Disqus  —  First, I’d like to be perfectly clear that our firm, Union Square Ventures, is an investor in Disqus.  So I am clearly biased about what I am about to say.  Second, I’d like to point out that the reason we made the investment is largely […]

Dan Farber / Outside the Lines:
Is Microsoft stalking Powerset’s search technology?  —  While Powerset is preparing for the public rollout of its unique, semantic search engine, Microsoft may be interested in acquiring the startup, according to sources.  —  I asked Barney Pell, Powerset co-founder and CTO, whether there was any truth to a Microsoft-Powerset […]

Yuvi / The StatBot:
The All Time Techmeme Leaderboard from The Statbot  —  The Techmeme leaderboard is limited only to the past 30 days.  Here’s the Top 100 Sites on Techmeme, all time: … http://www.techcrunch.com … http://www.nytimes.com … http://www.engadget.com … http://news.com.com

Robert McMillan / IDG News Service:
Hackers Find a New Place to Hide Rootkits  —  Security researchers have developed a new type of malicious rootkit software that hides itself in an obscure part of a computer’s microprocessor, hidden from current antivirus products.  —  Called a System Management Mode (SMM) rootkit …

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Spotplex Suffers Identity Crisis, Stumbles Into DeadPool  —  We introduced Spotplex in February 2007 as a potential Digg killer that served up popular stories by monitoring how many people read them.  Somewhere along the way, it also turned into an Alexa-like analytics service.

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Three’s Company Or Three’s A Crowd?  Google To Launch “Friend Connect” On Monday  —  Don’t they say good things come in threes?  Well, regardless, we’ve heard from multiple sources that Google will launch a new product on Monday called “Friend Connect,” which will be a set of APIs …

Spencer E. Ante / Business Week:
Facebook: Friends with Money  —  The social network taps a fresh source of funds for $100 million and will buy more servers to support its growth in users and applications  —  Facebook is about to stuff more cash into its already full coffers.  Having raised $360 million in the […]