• Lawrence Lessig: The highest-profile email bankruptcy to date. The copyright attorney (who fought a Supreme Court case against a 20-year extension of all U.S. copyrights) sent a mass e-mail in 2004 asking anyone with important unanswered e-mail to reply, which would flag their mail as important. He carried off the task with aplomb, apologizing for failing to maintain "cyber decency." But rumor has it that Lessig still went through much of his "bankrupt" e-mail.
• Andrew Baron: The producer of the Rocketboom show reportedly declared an e-mail reboot in 2006.
• Michael Arrington: In October 2006, the publisher of the TechCrunch blog came back from vacation and deleted months of e-mails. He also turned off instant messaging.
• The better fix: Sean Bonner: Instead of dropping all his current e-mails, Sean Bonner put a throttle on future mail. The founder of the Metroblogging city-blog network started autoresponding to e-mail this month, saying he only checks e-mail once a day.
• Tim Ferriss: Sean's following what Ferriss recommends in his book The 4-Hour Workweek. Ferriss follows his own plan (and apparently truly works four hours a week).
• Andy Baio: Upcoming's founder says he built a 10,000-e-mail backlog in 2006. He spent six weeks fixing it.

Before you try this at home, remember that the people above can get hundreds of e-mails a day. Try autoresponders before you try bankruptcy; everyone appreciates some sort of response. Consider hiring an assistant, even part-time, for less than you could make by saving your e-mail time. If these measures seem like too much, you're not that bad off. You just need to get quicker at managing your e-mail.

(Photo: Midnight Beep)

• Phone fraud offender Hewlett-Packard takes another giant leap towards becoming even more of the class bully, this time with news that they actually conducted feasibility studies to figure out how to plant spies in news bureaus. To be continued tomorrow. Don't worry, by then we'll find out the government was involved in the conspiracy. [NY Times]
• Ex-Rocketboomer Amanda Congdon finds a new gig touring America. This time around the vlogger is honing her chops on the road to L.A. We just hope blogger Robert Scoble stops propositioning her. [Scobleizer]
• The Baltimore Sun got tired of writing about the ethics involved in snitching and gang violence so now they just interview bloggers like Sean Bonner of the Metroblogging network. We know how they feel. [Baltimore Sun]
• Google Co-Founder Larry Page and I have something in common. Unfortunately for me it isn't making wads of cash or being business-minded, but an affiliation with the University of Michigan, where Google just opened up a new AdWords office. [Michigan Daily]
• Al Gore's pet project Current TV finally launches their own public portal with Yahoo. That's an inconvenient truth for Google, which has Gore on its board and plays content-maker to Google Current, a semi-hourly show based on Google searches like thong girl. [Current TV]

— Beth Gottfried

Yahoo blogger Jeremy Zawodny was the first to call out Canter. Canter replied with a barely readable rebuttal. His defense: Hey, you e-mailed me once, it's only fair.

Now the spam debate is snowballing. Mild-mannered Sean Bonner, founder of the Metroblogging network, says that Canter tried to spam his entire staff. Hard to believe all those recipients once e-mailed Canter, says Bonner. We've got a clear-cut case of spam.

Marc, buck up and tell yourself, "I can make friends without spam."

And then take a class in communication, 'cause damn, that shit is whack.

Opt-Out 2.0: Making Social Software Less Annoying [Jeremy Zawodny]
Yes - indeed we're inviting people in now [Marc Canter]
Spam by any other name... [Sean Bonner]

Yesterday, Metroblogging co-founder Sean Bonner slammed t-shirt seller Threadless for throwing up what he threw down: the blog gangsign. Then BoingBoing picked up the story and taught the controversy: Sean Bonner invented not only the blog sign, but the Bloods gang sign, and he makes five cents every time the gang (a REAL GANG. with BLACK PEOPLE) throws the sign. (It must be true! It's on a blog!)

Today Sean throws down the two-man wiki gang sign. Mothafuckas beware.

Note: This is not an attempt to start linkbaiting with a string of Internet-related gang signs. Anyone who treats it as such will be driven to an L.A. ghetto and left to die.

OMFG! The blog gangsign gets marketed! [Sean Bonner]
Tshirt of "blog gang hand-sign" rips off blogger? [Boing Boing]
Wiki Gang Sign [Sean Bonner]

The joke dot-com du jour (no, not Tagged, this one knows it's a joke) is isolatr, which promises to hide you from other people. Best gag is the "getting lucky" error page.

Metroblogging king Sean Bonner made it. Sez Sean: "Of course I did. Anything hilarious on the web most likely originated with me." Is he revealing "not at SXSW" loneliness? Aw, hell no.

isolatr [beta]
Isolatr launches [Sean Bonner]

Secure Computing, based in San Jose (on Harwood Road — so close to earning a cheap pun), runs an aggressive porn filter named SmartFilter. A-list blog Boing Boing got into the New York Times for fighting its draconian policies. And that's where Sean Bonner found the fetishist.

Filtering director Tomo Foote-Lennox may not be a diaper fetishist now, but ten years ago, he (or someone with his exact name), wrote at alt.sex.fetish.diapers. In this newsgroup, he posted adult-baby party recaps like this:

Kitten, who frequently gets put into diapers on weekends, was dressed to the max. She was dressed in her best taffeta party dress, which almost covers her Attends (if she stands up straight), her fluffiest ruffle socks, and some big pink hair ribbons for her pigtails.

Look, whatever someone wants to do on the weekends, that's usually fine. But Bonner and other commentators are a wee bit worried about having someone with an extreme view of childhood "protect the kids" from supposed sexual corruption.

Still, some posts by one director, written ten years ago? Isn't anyone allowed some youthful indiscretion?

The Strange, Strange Saga of SmartFilter, BoingBoing, and Adult Babies [Suicide Girls]
BoingBoing banned in UAE, Qatar, elsewhere. [Boing Boing]
Review of Kitten's Party in Minneapolis [Google Groups]