Kevin Burton, the snooping entrepreneur with a buggy website, has a new problem: Tailrank, his Web news aggregator, is supposed to deliver users the latest dope. But recently, it's been doing so a bit too literally, serving up drug-spam ads rather than the usual assortment of tech headlines. Tipster Micah Lerner writes: "If I funded Tailrank, I would be very upset right now. How will they get investors now?" Oh, I don't know, Micah: Will his investors really be that mad? Or just grateful for the leads on where to score?

In an otherwise mostly geeky email interview about blog indexing, Tailrank founder Kevin Burton declines to share his feelings about Valleywag: "Ha.. No comment." Oh, Kevin. The feeling is far from mutual. [TechWag]

Congrats to Michael Arrington; the TechCrunch editor got a comment on an article from that story's subject. What made commenter Kevin Burton's rant so funny is the line, "I told you via email that there was NO story here but for some reason you decided to post anyway." Yes Kevin, that lack of censorship is what makes blogging fun! (By the way, you really oughta check out Kevin's whole rant, complete with capitalized phrases and exclamation marks hinting at insanity. Then read the one-line comment after it, which made me snort.) Photo of Kevin Burton by Scott Beale

NICK DOUGLAS — Okay, okay, you're sick of hearing about Kevin Burton, but this is hilarious. Kevin commented on Valleywag and denied peeping at women's AIM conversations at wifi cafes, saying he was "joking" to the Wired writer who wrote this as fact in 2004. "If I'm guilty of anything here, it's trust," he told Valleywag. "I expect you to correct your article and update the story." Ahaha, not so fast. Kevin's a long-time chatter on an IRC channel named #joiito. And in 2004, he sounded honestly proud of the "alleged" spying tactic. In fact, he said it was how he wanted to be remembered. Here's a chat log.

J.P. Wain says the identity SFdigitalboy2 from our earlier Craigslist post is Newsmonster creator and Rojo co-founder Kevin Burton. Asked if the CL M4W was his, Kevin denied posting it.

Everyone appreciated a break from sucking down coffee at conferences to suck down free martinis at the Anu Bar for Digg's San Francisco party. The social news site previewed its next version, launching Monday. Thanks to Laughing Squid's Scott Beale for these shots!

Everyone's famous on the Internet! And the webstars really shine in Scott Beale's Wednesday photos from O'Reilly ETech 2006. In this edition, Ted Rheingold of Dogster, 3/4 of the Boing Boing crew, and an episode of escalating violence.

ETech 2006 rolls on, and Scott Beale keeps photographing the folks who make the Internet. Tuesday's highlights include Tim Bray's Indy outfit, Esther Dyson's spelling, and Jen King's primal scream.

In case you're missing the scintillating intellectual discourse of the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, Kevin Burton kindly provides some news. Apparently Flickr developer Cal Henderson has his own classic Geeks Gone Wild pic:

The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (or ETech for the impatient) is in full swing today, after a rousing start on Monday. The event sold out ages ago, but through the magic of Scott Beale's photography, we can pretend we made it in. (If you want to pretend you met Cory Doctorow and he loved your sci-fi story idea, have that fantasy on your own.) Here are highlights from Scott's meticulous Monday photojournalism.

By the way, whomever Fox bought, Kevin Burton swears it wasn't his aggregation site, Tailrank. But under an hour after he jokingly said "Okay, it was me," on TechCrunch, he got a solicitation (which he passed to me) for the management of his newfound wealth:

The effort to invade some innocent wifi cafe continues. Tailrank creator Kevin Burton wants to run a "San Francisco Wifi Bedouin Flash Mob" (which would make a great electronica collective name). Basically, a couple dozen people descend on a wifi cafe, making a show of purchasing power and feeling trendy while doing so.

After the New York Post reported that Google would buy Napster, a Google spokesperson denied any such plans. Looks like someone's trying to float a rumor and sell their stock. Meanwhile, Technorati's looking to sell its search tools, Six Apart might stay solo, and Digg.com is fighting lucrative sale rumors.