As everyone knows by this morning, Spot Runner–the heavily-funded and once-hyped online-offline advertising agency–is being sued by one of its more prominent investors.

Ad behemoth WPP essentially paints an ugly picture of Spot Runner as the Bernie Madoff of Web 2.0.

It is alleging in a lawsuit that Spot Runner, in a “pump and dump” scheme, sold over $54 million in “secondary” shares to line its own pockets without telling WPP much, all while losing money, running out of funding and not building a sustainable business.

Here’s the background and also an interview BoomTown did with CEO and co-founder Nick Grouf in better days.

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Microsoft made a funny today with a fake internal memo and screenshot of changes to its search product, which is currently called Kumo.

The software giant has jokingly renamed it Omuk, which is Kumo spelled backwards.

No kidding, but BoomTown likes it better!

Here is the new screenshot and internal memo, sent suspiciously on April Fool’s Day.

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While the fireworks were great, the most important thing that “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart elicited out of CNBC’s most famous stock jester, Jim Cramer, was the admission of using the malleable press to float fictional rumors about companies in order to make money on the negative news.

While Cramer at first tried to deny he did it, Stewart had the videotape of the “Mad Money” host talking about the practice, specifically in regards to Apple.

Kind of puts all those Steve-Jobs-Is-Dead-Right-Now rumors from a few months ago into a new light?

While we all know Jobs has been quite ill, grave-dancing rumors written without any serious reporting have also been a troublesome issue, because it was clear greedy short-sellers played a large part in stoking the fear about his immediate demise back then.

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Early this morning, Bloomberg reported that regulators are looking into Apple’s disclosures about the health–or lack thereof–of its iconic CEO Steve Jobs.

And while BoomTown has railed against the creepy obsession the media have had with Jobs’s health and the publishing of rumors and innuendos about it as fact without a whole lot of reporting, I hope it is true.

It is also entirely appropriate that the government agency charged with keeping an eye on public companies does investigate–at the very least, to get the story right.

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