When it comes to dealing with blog spam, there is no shortage of tools. Blogger comes with a built-in Google crafted tool, WordPress has Akismet (and Akismet is also available for Movable Type, Drupal, Expression Engine and tons of others), Defensio and others, Drupal has Mollom, and so on. Now Six Apart, the company behind Movable Type, TypePad and Vox, has released their own open source anti-spam tool for bloggers.

TypePad AntiSpam is the product of the antispam technology Six Apart has been using in their TypePad hosted blogs since May 2007. Now the service, which is in beta, is available to anyone, open source, and free -- regardless of how large your site is or how many comments you receive. Akismet, the service this is most akin to, is free for personal use but starts at $5 a month for anyone making more than $500 a month off their blog.

TypePad AntiSpam is available as a plugin for WordPress 2.3 and 2.5 and Movable Type 3.3 and up. Six Apart says they plan to support other platforms with plugins soon, but the API is available for anyone who wants to roll their own.

We just installed TypePad AntiSpam on one of our WordPress blogs (which was running Akismet) and we'll post our thoughts in comparing the services in the weeks to come.

[via TechCrunch]