Click Forensics has released a study showing that click fraud has hit 17.1%, an all-time high. For those of you who are unfamiliar, click fraud represents the act of clicking on a web advertisement to inflate click-through rates.

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington had an unfortunate encounter at the Digital, Life, Design Conference he was attending in Munich, Germany yesterday.

He describes the incident in post titled "Some Things Need To Change" where an anonymous person walked up to him and spat in his face.

Today, Yahoo has announced a new Yahoo Search BOSS capability called vertical lens technology, which enables partners (often with no search expertise) to create a comprehensive vertical search engine that compliments their core user experience.

For example, TechCrunch has launched a technology-flavored search engine as Yahoo cites as its first example. This search engine allows TechCrunch users to search for technology-focused articles and company info across TechCrunch’s network as well as the web, a Yahoo representative tells WebProNews.

I’ll admit it. I’ve put off purposefully joining Open ID for no real reason. But now, whether we want to or not, you and I (well, I’m guessing you are, anyway) are being jumped in to the world of Open ID. Because not only are Yahoo Mail and Windows Live Mail (aka Hotmail) joining the Open ID ranks, allowing their logins to become Open ID logins, but so is Gmail.

For the first time, Facebook surpassed MySpace in traffic worldwide. In the US, however, MySpace is still ahead of Facebook with 73.7M unique visitors in May vs. 35.6M for Facebook. TechCrunch has more analysis.

It makes sense when you think about it. While Technorati is a great social media search engine, it doesn’t exactly have a sound revenue model. Until today.

TechCrunch is reporting a 9am PST launch of Technorati Media, a new CPM ad network for blogs of all sizes.

Some of you may have noticed that yesterday’s 6pm PDT launch of Gmail Labs came and went. The Gmail team promises that “We are currently in the process of rolling Labs out to English users” but I’ve yet to see it in my Gmail account.

Come on, you know you have those Facebook friends whose profile pages look like their MySpace exploded: their profile takes forever to load, their page is six “page downs” long (well, longer, but you’ve never actually made it to the bottom) and they never met an app they didn’t like. Well, Facebook is trying to do something about that.

Today Socialtext launched Socialtext People and Socialtext Dashboard, significant enhancements that make people a first class object in the wiki platform and give them greater control over their internal and external information.  We also launched Four Solutio

Last week, I posted an opinion piece about TechCrunch’s prominence on TechMeme. There wasn’t a lot of response—if that tells you anything about what my opinion’s worth—but there was a point brought out in the comments section of that post, and a blog post elsewhere echoing. So that’s good enough for me to do a follow-up and extend on a point.

Over at TechCrunch, Michael Arrington has a post announcing that his company is suing Facebook for $25 million for allowing "advertisers to post ads using my picture and name to endorse their products without my explicit permission."

In the nearly three years this writer has been diligently typing away, we witnessed cute and compelling blogs grow into the kind of pre-pubescent youth who rationalize violence as a way of dominating their little island.

Purported interest in Digg by Google and Microsoft made for a hot rumor earlier, but Digg CEO Jay Adelson said rumors is all they were.

I didn’t watch Mark Zuckerberg’s 60 Minutes interview.

At least when it comes to their reading comprehension.

It makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Less people will complete a doctorate as will complete a four year undergraduate degree. Less people will compete a four year degree as will graduate high school. Less education usually means less reading and less reading leads to a lower level of reading comprehension. If the words and sentences you use are too complex a number of people who might otherwise appreciate what you have to say may have trouble following how you’re saying it.

I’m generally in favour of bashing those who need to be bashed, and I definitely like taking the wind out of the Web 2.0 windbags (you know who you are), but I think the blogosphere is being a little hard on Wikia Search. Mike Arrington says that it’s a letdown, Allen Stern at Centernetworks