Mint.com, a free financial management site I've come to love, is offering users the chance to hop into an upcoming private beta of its service expansion to cover investment accounts such as 401(k)s. 

Mint currently makes it easy to see where your money goes by displaying transactions and balances for online savings, checking and credit card accounts. You provide the username and password for each account, and the site automatically pulls in each day's transactions.

If you're like me and your Web browser has become an essential work tool, take a look at a Lifehacker post put up today about bookmarks.  Along with the tips on using Firefox keywords and bringing Gmail into the mix mentioned in the post itself, readers weigh in with a wealth of comments on their own preferred solutions.

Many of those comments mention Foxmarks, my own preferred tool for Firefox bookmarks.  The free add-on allows for quick and easy bookmarks sync between browsers on different PCs - on work and home computers, for example.  It also means I never have to back up my bookmarks, as I get my whole list in any new browser as soon as I install the add-on.

If you've ever asked a friend or coworker to call you at a particular time to help you escape an interminable meeting or end a bad date, you're in luck. 

Enter your own phone number at a simple new site, phonemyphone.com, and choose a date and time. The site will then ring you (for free) at the time you specify. You could also have it call you immediately, which could be useful if you want to find your cell phone and don't have another phone handy, as killerstartups.com points out.

The Internet Storm Center, which tracks online threats, warns today that a worm is infecting vulnerable Web sites with a database attack.  Though relatively small by Web attack standards with about 4,000 reported infected sites, the assault adds invisible code to a site that can force visitors to download malware onto their PC. Bad PR, to say the least.

IMPORTANT:  DO NOT visit the domain named in the following test, or any sites that show up on a Web search as having this domain listed in their pages' code (including cached pages). Doing so could infect your PC with malware.

We'll never know whether a Microhoo would have been a best-of-both mix-up ready to challenge Google with hot new consumer offerings, or whether it would have been a horrible culture clash that brought both companies to their knees.  Or will we?

I have to say I was surprised when Microsoft pulled out (as were many analysts who knew a lot more than me).  I thought Redmond's increased bid was a sure sign that the companies were settling into negotiations that would surely end with a buyout - though there are now indications that there might not have been a formal, increased offer. Silicon Alley Insider has some additional analysis on the suggestion.

The latest spam can take the form of a subpoena purporting to be from a United States District Court, a calendar invite, or an IRS refund, in 'net cast wide' blasts or more targeted 'spear phishing' usually aimed at businesses.

Those are some of the examples from a draft of Symantec's 'State of Spam May 2008' report sent out this morning.  Along with the expected stats (80 percent of all e-mail is spam, and the U.S. remains the top spam source), the report provided some examples of new dirty tricks that can target your business.

As a work-from-home'r I figured it was high time I implemented a real backup solution. I'd uploaded work docs and other important files to online storage from time to time, and I use Google Docs to write anything that matters, which gives me de facto online backup for those files. But I needed something real.

So I checked out two online backup services, Allmydata.com and Mozy.com.  Both offer unlimited storage for $5 per month (which shows just how cheap storage is these days), along with a free level of service (2GB of free storage with Mozy, 1GB with Allmydata).

Wait, did you hear that?  Me neither.  The Saturday, 4/26 deadline given to Yahoo by Microsoft for its takeover offer came and went without any resolution, and according to a New York Times story today on the topic, "two companies are still not talking."

So the question now is whether Microsoft will give up, or attempt a hostile takeover.  The NYT story says Ballmer hinted at the possibility of walking away last Wednesday, but TechCrunch today posted up bios for 10 people it thinks Microsoft may name to the Yahoo board in a proxy fight. Candidates range from the former eHarmony CEO Jaynie Studenmund and former Nextel CEO John Chapple to the Director and Chairman at Virgin Media, James Mooney.

If you haven't already seen Denny Arar's list of new Web apps she saw at this week's Web 2.0 Expo, be sure to take a look.  I don't know about you, but the faster and faster pace of free service launches make me grin hugely even as my head spins.

Denny looks at six different sites and services, both fun and productive.  Some allow for creating multimedia slide shows or Flash Web pages, while others offer document collaboration and online notebooks. She also checks out Intel's Mash Maker browser extension for creating your own mashup page, and a feature rich but quick-to-use file sharing and communications service.

If the thought of working for a nimble, fast-paced new company gets your blood flowing, you might be interested in a new job-aggregator site that pulls together listings from almost 20 different online sources, large and small.

Hotstartupjobs.com scans sites ranging from big names like hotjobs.yahoo.com and monster.com to smaller players like ajaxian.com and jobcoin.com.  Posts are first split into 'All Jobs' and 'Mostly Tech' categories, and then divided by source.