For a minute or two, there was some glimmer of hope that YouTube would allow users to upload their videos in HD. Not so, Silicon Alley Insider clarifies. But while chaos reigned in high-definition for a few moments, oft-naked Vimeo founder and HD-video advocate Jakob Lodwick took the opportunity to take a few shots at YouTube.

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington notes the launch of European blog netowrk MyKinda with a swipe at MyKinda's competitor BlogNation. He published emails sent by BlogNation founder Sam Sethi, a former TechCrunch writer, to Blognation's employees and potential venture capitalists. Why? Well, there's bad blood here. And we're not talking about Sethi's feud with Arrington, either.

Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson has had enough of unsolicited emails from PR professionals. So much so, that he posted a list on his blog of 329 PR Hester Prynnes, guilty of promiscuous overuse of their email outboxes. No more will their very unimportant missives waste his time — emails from these people will be summarily blocked. Among the guilty: Flacks from SparkPR, Edelman, Ogilvy, Weber Shandwick, SutherlandGold, Bite PR, and Text100. If you're wondering, Outcast, Hill & Knowlton, and Burson-Marsteller managed to escape Anderson's long flail. Prepare for lots of stories about Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, and Hillary Clinton in the next few issues of Wired.

"Yeah, I suppose you fooled Techmeme about your sincerity. Note that you also fooled Fred Wilson and Josh Kopelman in the process. Training your readers to doubt you can be risky. Sometimes you want your posts taken at face value, e.g. those insisting your company is succeeding." Gabe Rivera, founder of blog aggregator Techmeme, takes on blowhard blogger Jason Calacanis. [Calacanis.com]

Linux creator Linus Torvalds vs. lush-locked Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz. "What I'm trying to do here is wake people up who seem to be living in some dream-world where Sun wants to help people." [crn.com]

Let's recap, ZeFrank posted on October 24th a hilarious video berating Rocketboom's stated audience numbers. The Baron responded later in the day explaining how those audience numbers are derived, with a 3rd party verifying said numbers and ending with a snide remark about ZeFrank being Web1.0 (gasp!).

[ZeFrank]

Of course the headline is an obvious statement on the buck-passing execs and investigators at Hewlett-Packard over an allegedly fradulent leak investigation scandal, but am I the only one who wants these guys to get into a poking match?

Remember UnFaced, the tool that let Facebook users see who checked out their profiles and whether they were romantically compatible? Today in "Hey, can they do that?" news, Facebook not only sent a cease-and-desist letter to site creator John Arrow, but they also disabled his Facebook account until he takes his site down.

Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron hasn't given up the fight with recently fired-or-quit news anchor Amanda Congdon over the 49% stake she claims to still hold in the popular video blog (earlier coverage here). In fact, a week ago (I know, we are so late to this), Drew said he's taking her to court. In his blog, Drew says:

Sun Microsystems is determined to turn its rivalry with Hewlett-Packard into a frat fight.

Actually, this video explains the spat between Valleywag and business blog TechCrunch as coherently as the intro to Battlestar Galactica explains the Cylon War — which is to say, not at all. But it sure was fun to watch.

What happened to the nice Mike Arrington? We don't pretend to know, but now that the formerly friendly TechCrunch blogger has transformed into Fighting Mike, here's a round-up of his feuds and feuds-to-come.

Over the weekend, Michael Arrington (of the popular tech blog TechCrunch) caught Valleywag trying to confirm a rumor. A sharp man, Michael decided to out the investigative reporting before any, well, reporting had been done. He published an e-mail I sent to one startup founder (the head of the trust-monitoring startup Rapleaf — OMG irony!), who only sent it to Michael as an FYI.

So the weekly podcast "The Gillmor Gang" is in limbo as members Michael Arrington, Steve Gillmor, and Nick Carr fight their personal demons. I'm wondering the same thing you are about this tiff: Who are these guys, what's their problem, and why should I care?

Nerrrrrrrrdfight! Shelley Powers (a blogger who's usually getting offended) offends the staff at photo sharing site Zooomr with a hilarious targeted entry, "How to Rollout a Web 2.0 Product." The entry says stuff like:

Rocketboom's former host is still telling her side of the story to the media. It's all starting to look a little mean, since her former partner Andrew Baron offered an olive branch this morning on Rocketboom.

In its latest episode, the video blog GeekBrief.TV leapt into the escalating battle between Andrew Baron (producer of popular vlog Rocketboom) and Amanda Congdon (the show's former anchor). In the video (shown below), GeekBrief host Cali Lewis reads an e-mail from Baron and publishes Congdon's initial video announcement. Cali manages to explain the situation without picking a side.

• Photo sharing site SmugMug uses a paid referral program to encourage word-of-mouth growth. To kill referral links, photo site dpreview.com banned all mentions of SmugMug from its forums, letting SmugMug's CEO know by e-mail. The CEO blogged the e-mail and dpreview owner Phil Askey threw a fit. Now Phil has deleted threads and lied about it, turning a simple issue into a PR nightmare for dpreview. [Mike Lane Studios]

The Sun Microsystems CEO is blogging, Bill Gates is talking on podcasts, and billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban tells reporters to check his blog. It's an age where company heads face their critics and fans directly — for better or worse.