If you’re like me, you’ve probably noticed a growing trend on these blogwebs.  No, I’m not talking about the alarming number of bloggers speculating if Jerry Yang still has the Yin to keep Yahoo in the Yen, or the astounding number of posts about the color of Jay-Z’s next album (mauve).  What I mean is something far, far more sinister.  What am I talking about, oh gentle reader? LINK BAITING.

Yes, Link Baiting, which is

a disgusting monster propagated by the scum of the blogging world

: SEO marketers.  The most sinister practice known to bloggers and readers alike, in which lazy bloggers try and backpack on the natural flow of information around The Network in order to profit on someone elses hard work.  Now, I’m not saying that blogging about Twitter every time the website is down is a sin, the conversation must go on, and laws of attraction will show that what people eventually want are reviews of the things that interest them.  However, these tactics are just price solutions yielding small change to bloggers, while readers face an Olympic mass of information to sort through.

And it’s not the little guys who are guilty here, they have to do everything they can to keep up- because the big guys (cough, arrington, cough) are so busy trying to make and break every grover norquist, dorothy hamill, geo duck, and renae shrider that comes into the world, trying to stir things up and blow them out of proportion so that they can turn a profit, that it’s all the little guys can do to keep up.

This has to be stopped, and TechFaux has set out to do it. So, right now we are offering all link baiters a four day weekend retreat to help them get clean:  come to New York (via Frontier Airlines) and fix up your act!  Put down your keyboards- you can heal your life wild tigers.  You don’t have to be addicted to the hits.  It’s not all about who’s the strongest tagging strike force out here. Come Clean. Hang out! We’ll cruise around the city in our new Zip Car, watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, various former Hollywood stars sex tapes and/or the Glaad Awards on the TF Google Media Server, and just plain kick back, not worry about if the next iPhone App is going to support a secret password protected folder in which to hide your porn (so your wife/girlfriend/child/mother can’t find it when they want to test out your phone and really, what were the odds they would have?).

You don’t have to be part of the problem anymore, you don’t have to be like them.  We can get off the junk that is the 2.0 bubble hype and just have some good old-fashioned blogging fun. Make it about content, not comments. Together we shall overcome.

Shellerific, the first UNIX shell to allow drag-and-drop CSS customization for open-source platforms announced that it is currently refocusing efforts on its exit after user adoption rates were questioned heavily by big parties in the blogosphere.

The software, which is only available for Ubuntu and FreeBSD has struggled for months to monetize their proprietary technology from within the open source community.

The software is available from the Shellerific download store for a monthly license of $4.95 and digitally signed exclusivity agreement in which the end user is required by law to uninstall their other more boring UNIX shells.  The software is published under a proprietary software license.

Turns out this business model hasn’t seen the adoption rates from the Open Source and Linux communities Shellerific had anticipated, so our sources tell us they are looking to shell out (no pun intended) their IP to the highest bidder by end of day today.

Our thoughts?  These penguin humping douchebags need to get with the program.  Don’t they know that there’s nothing in the world that screams “Open Source!” like millions and millions of dollars?

Remember when Myspace was sold for $580 million in cash and everybody began to create their niche social networks based on a similar platform?

We started seeing social networks for pets, social networks for toddlers, and Myspacey social networks for just about any niche demographic you could possibly imagine.

So it makes sense then that with Twitter’s massive popularity comes the same niche fragmentations from microblogging startups.

Think of Prettyr as “Twitter for women to tell each other how pretty they look.”  If it seems like too niche of a market, you might want to reconsider.  The startup just signed the terms to their $6 million Series A, led by San Fransisco-based Aquinas Capital.

Prettyr’s strongest asset is their ability to break down Twitter’s simplicity even further.  Users are brought to a screen with pull down menus and a submit button, only being given the choice to give an adjective of how the other woman looks, and choose what article of clothing they think looks that adjective.

Techfaux was just sent these exclusive screenshots (Click to enlarge):

And the Prettyr ladies were even nice enough to offer Techfaux readers 500 beta invites.

Just mention “Techfaux” in the referral form at Prettyr and they’ll send an invite right over.

Javascript, the popular browser hack known worldwide for its autoredirects and exploitative properties, has been released on two million dollars bail following its araignment today in San Francisco County Court.

While Bay Area authorities were unable to pin any of the more severe charges that they had hoped to bring against the defendant, upon review of a 1998 video downloaded from KaZaA in which the defendant claimed to be a “scripting language with verifiable certifications and protocols,” have brought charges of fraud in the amount of eleventy billion dollars.

Judge Eno was at first unwilling to allow any bail, stating that Javascript “has amorphous properties which cause a great unknown danger to the public at large,” but apparently was convinced otherwise by a certain anonymous local masked man.

More news as it emerges.