Microsoft’s TownSquare internal social network provides employees with feeds and updates about their colleagues

At the request of its SharePoint and Office product development teams, Microsoft ’s Office Labs operation has created and is testing a prototype of an internal social network that can provide employees with feeds and updates about their colleagues.

Chris Pratley, general manager of Office Labs , is slated to disclose details of the prototype — called TownSquare — Thursday at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. He spoke to Computerworld about the project, which was launched in January and has already been used by about 8,000 Microsoft employees.

With a layout that is strikingly similar to Facebook.com’s (in which Microsoft invested $240 million in October 2007), TownSquare is fueled by enterprise news feeds that use Web services to query SharePoint for public information, such as promotions and company anniversaries, about an employee.

TownSquare also notifies users when a document or file is modified. Users can customize their feeds and monitor who is receiving information about them.

In early January, Pratley’s group told 100 Microsoft employees about the network. Since then, 8,000 employees who learned of TownSquare by word of mouth have visited the network at least once, Pratley noted. About 700 use it daily.

Some Microsoft customers, which he declined to name, are testing the TownSquare network for use in their companies.

Office Labs works as a sort of advance development team that tests technology concepts suggested by employees and, as in this case, development teams. Pratley stressed that TownSquare is not a product, but a platform to test the technology concepts. By hammering out the various likes and dislikes of its users before releasing a product, “We’re trying to get version three goodness into a first release,” he added.

“We have instrumentation ?so we know which things people use,” Pratley noted. “We share that with the client teams we work with. They take the knowledge about usage so they don’t make so many mistakes in product design.”

Many third party vendors have targeted SharePoint as the core data source for information to feed their enterprise social networking and other Enterprise 2.0 applications. Several have announced upgrades to their products or new integration with SharePoint this week at the conference.

Anecdotal evidence has shown that employees like the TownSquare tool, Pratley noted. Employees especially appreciate being able to monitor the creation and editing of documents by colleagues, he added. One employee used the network to find a sponsor within Microsoft to fund her trip to the Enterprise 2.0 Conference.

“That is the kind of information that spreads through an enterprise social network,” he said. “By posting it out there, the people interested can pick up on it, and other people can ignore it. It’s a way to keep in touch in a social way with people you work with.”

Like Facebook , TownSquare also includes a photos of users and allows them to note when they are away from their workstations, such as at a meeting or in the cafeteria for coffee.

While some employees have expressed initial surprise at all the information that Microsoft has about them in its intranet, once people see the type of information that is included in the feeds about them, “they see it’s pretty safe stuff and say okay,” Pratley said.

By Heather Havenstein, Computerworld

Virus that causes cervical cancer most common, government study finds
AP News

CHICAGO - At least one in four teenage girls nationwide has a sexually transmitted disease, or more than 3 million teens, according to the first study of its kind in this age group.

A virus that causes cervical cancer is by far the most common sexually transmitted infection in teen girls aged 14 to 19, while the highest overall prevalence is among black girls — nearly half the blacks studied had at least one STD. That rate compared with 20 percent among both whites and Mexican-American teens, the study from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

About half of the girls acknowledged ever having sex; among them, the rate was 40 percent. While some teens define sex as only intercourse, other types of intimate behavior including oral sex can spread some infections.

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MySpace, BBC Reach Global Video Deal

 

The online community MySpace is partnering with the BBC to bring some of the British broadcaster’s programs to a worldwide audience in the site’s first global content deal involving a major network. The move, to be announced Thursday, continues MySpace’s push to become a hub for video, music and other content and more similar to Internet portals like Yahoo Inc. By contrast, MySpace’s chief rival, Facebook, has largely focused on messaging, networking and other social tools.

MySpace, owned by media conglomerate News Corp., will present selected BBC programs through its video platform, MySpaceTV. The clips are to include interviews with celebrities, comedy sketches and classic series such as “Doctor Who” and “Robin Hood.” The BBC already has a deal with Google Inc.’s YouTube allowing the popular video-sharing site to show excerpts of news and entertainment programs. Visitors to MySpace will be able to share clips with friends through such means as embedding them into their personal profile pages. “With the global nature of the deal, this is a great opportunity to put the best shows from the BBC in front of new audiences,” Simon Danker, director of digital media for BBC Worldwide, said in a statement.
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Scandal: Four People, jailed in Lebanon for Facebook comments

 

On January 10, four young men from Université Saint-Joseph’s Zahle campus were held in Zahle prison for a week on charges of making crude and harassing remarks on a Facebook group dedicated to a female student at the university. Another underage female student was also named in the complaint but was released to the custody of her father. The plaintiff has accused the other students of defaming her, a criminal charge in Lebanon.

The bizarre case highlights the ease with which the average Lebanese citizen can find him or herself sharing cell space with dozens of serious criminals, as well as the legal confusion that the internet has introduced here just as it has in the West. With more and more Lebanese both publishing and socializing online, the ambiguous and at times arbitrary legal framework may have a profound chilling effect on the freedom of expression that the country is rightly so proud of.

Crime and punishment:

The individuals involved were careful about giving their own accounts while the case is still open, but what does seem clear is that the Facebook group began as a collection of juvenile jokes revolving around a fellow student. After complaining to university authorities and being told that the matter was not a university concern, the woman took her case to the Zahle attorney general, Abdullah Bitar. When Bitar advised her to come back with evidence of a crime, she and a friend monitored the site for a few weeks and returned to Bitar with printed transcripts of “wall� conversations. (“Walls� are the space on each Facebook member and group profile that allows friends to post public messages). After reviewing the transcripts, Bitar called the students in for questioning.

The students were interrogated from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, January 10. At 2:00 p.m., the courts close, but Bitar ordered that they be held for further questioning. The next day, the attorney general declared that he had enough evidence for an arrest and transferred the four men to Zahle prison. With the court offices closed on Saturday and Sunday, the young men were kept in prison until Monday, at which point a hearing was set for later that week. On Thursday, January 17, the judge at that hearing released each of the four on LL 500,000 bonds and set a final hearing for February 28.

Improvisiong Online:

Speaking to NOW Lebanon, friends and family of the four were dumbfounded. “We want to know, ‘How would Facebook get you in jail?’� exclaimed one. Lebanon has no laws governing internet usage as such, so any legal disputes involving online activities require judges to improvise new interpretations of existing laws. According to sources familiar with the proceedings, when the students’ families protested their incarceration, “the court director referred to the law governing print media.�

Viktor Harmoush, a lawyer for Anthony Jleylati, one of the students, said, “[Bitar] referred to four articles: 531 and 533 of the penal law, and 582 and 584. With 531 and 533, the judge can issue a sentence of one year in prison, or a fine. For 582 and 584, it’s six months, or a fine.� The articles in question deal with slander and libel in print media. They also deal with defamation and, in this regard, they do not specify a medium of expression.

Legal expert Ziad Baroud told NOW Lebanon, “Journalists can be sued on the basis of defamation, but they are never arrested. Journalists have this privilege in the law itself, not to be arrested before the final judgment. But this is not the case for everyone else.�

In many countries, slander and libel suits are civil matters, involving one party suing the other for damages. In Lebanon, “defamation� is a penal matter. The application of the law, however, varies depending on the circumstances and the discretion of the judge. Baroud said, “In Lebanon, the internet and emails are considered ‘publishing.’ I believe they were prosecuted on this basis. It was weird to see it handled this way, but strictly speaking, it was legal.�

Politics and intimidation:

Harmoush challenged the legality of his client’s imprisonment, however, saying, “Mr. Bitar made an illegal decision. It is not legal to hold the boys.� Indeed, while Lebanese law allows for imprisonment if convicted of defamation, it does not allow for “cautionary arrest,� or holding the accused pending trial.

Convalescing at his family’s home in Zahle, Anthony Jleylati was visibly traumatized from his weeklong stay in Zahle prison, which a lack of heating and overcrowding has made one of the worst prisons in Lebanon. “We had to stay together for protection. There were drug dealers and murders, and they offered us cocaine and other things. What’s more, we missed all of our exams, and now we’ve lost our whole last year of university,� lamented Jleylati.

Facebook’s “terms of use� specifically forbid users to “upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.� To get rid of the objectionable content, the plaintiff could easily have complained to Facebook and, very likely, had everything promptly removed. Indeed, once the group participants learned of the legal action being brought against them, they deleted everything themselves, but the plaintiff pressed her case anyway.

Friends of the students noted that the plaintiff’s father is a general in the army, and they believe that the court let his position influence its decision. “The judge himself didn’t understand the charges. And when they confronted him, he asked, ‘Are you going to teach me law now?’� said a friend of the family, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

“It’s an obvious case of intimidation. Because they cannot pin anything on them, they will impose this kind of hardship,� said Wa’il Kheir, managing director of the Foundation for Human and Humanitarian Rights in Lebanon.

He added, “These kinds of things happen quite often; it’s very unfortunate. In many cases, I know very ethical judges who will not accept to be part of this. But others, because of pressure or I don’t know what, they might be.�

Baroud added, “Unfortunately, this is what the law allows. This is what the prosecutor can do, for a brief period of time.� The tactic is almost impossible to challenge, and it is generally very difficult to prove that this sort of imprisonment was done intentionally.

New Rules:

The case now awaits a final hearing on February 28, and Harmoush maintains that his client, at least, will be declared innocent. Yet the questions raised will not be so easily resolved. While there is a relatively straightforward translation of legal rights and privileges between traditional print media and online media such as NOW Lebanon, there are 200,000 profiles in the “Lebanon� Facebook network today, and many more Lebanese that have not even registered with the country’s network. As they socialize with each other, exchanging the same kind of news and gossip and bawdy jokes that they would in person in cafes or bars, what are their rights? What of those who exist somewhere in between journalism and online communities, such as bloggers or website commenters?

These are questions that countries all over the world continue to wrestle with, as technology outpaces policy and legislation. The issues are complex, and there are few points of reference for judges or legislators in need of guidance. Naturally, recourse is necessary for anyone unfairly attacked or maligned, whether online or off. In Lebanon’s more traditional society, women are especially vulnerable to the damage that innuendo and rumors can do to reputations. But some balance will have to be found, and fast. If even allegations of ribald commentary insults could conceivably land one in jail, the effect on free speech in general can only be devastating.

If you’ve had an e-mail account for more than a couple of years, or even just a couple of months, you’ve probably received an e-mail hoax promising you the opportunity to make millions working from home, asking you to donate money to a fraudulent fund, or just passing along a fascinating (but false) story to elicit a widespread response from the public. While many, truly damaging scams are designed to covertly steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from innocent people, this list is mostly comprised of those hoaxes that are just downright ridiculous.

1. Lonelygirl15: One of the most popular Internet hoaxes in recent years, the lonelygirl15 teenager named Bree turned out to be nothing more than an actress named Jessica Rose. The YouTube sensation assuredly broke many lonely hearts who thought they shared a special connection with the web cam princess, the show is still going strong with an average of 70 million viewers, all of whom (hopefully) now know that lonelygirl15 isn’t real.
2. Disney Hoax: Could you imagine receiving a real live e-mail from Walt Disney, Jr. himself? Well, we couldn’t either, but enough people did to make this Disney hoax a real problem. The fraudluent e-mail claims to work with Bill Gates and Microsoft to try out a new e-mail tracing program. The e-mail asks people to forward the e-mail to as many people as possible, and “if it reaches 13,000 people, 1,300 of the people on the list will receive $5,000, and the rest will receive a free trip for two to Disney World for one week during the summer of 1999 at our expense.� We wish.
3. Show Your Bum Joke: According to Hoax-Slayer.com, this hoax “warns that a man supposedly conducting a survey may come to your door and ask to see your bum.� While this hoax is more of a spoof of a hoax, we just had to include it on our list.
4. Internet Wedding Scam: Irish and Scottish folk singer Marc Gunn posts on his website a warning for other musicians about the Internet Wedding scam. A person claiming to be a soon-to-be married man named Pitt Andre wanted to book Gunn’s band at their wedding. Agreeing to pay the 50% deposit upfront, the scammer instead sent a check for nearly double the amount, and then asked for a refund making up the difference. A couple of days later, the man e-mailed Gunn to tell him the wedding was off, and that he wanted all of the money back. According to Gunn, the first check “seemed to have cleared� after three days, and his group sent back the $2500. Of course, the original check inevitably bounced, leaving Gunn and his group “miserable…and $2500 poorer.�
5. Citibank Scam: This scam is pretty tricky. Online banking sites often promise tight security settings and password-protected account access, but even top companies aren’t immune to Internet scams. In 2003, the Citibank website was under siege from a scam artist that designed a pop-up, which “appears to be a Citibank page� and “comes up and asks you to verify your information,� which then “goes to a server in Russia that has nothing to do with Citibank.�
6. Nikki Leotardo: When the immensely popular HBO series The Sopranos planned its final episode during the summer of 2007, there was much speculation as to how America’s favorite mobsters would end their run on television. After the finale, viewers were left hanging, scratching their heads over what could have happened during the blackout from several suspicious characters looming over the Sopranos’ family dinner. A rumor started circulating on the Internet that the man standing at the counter was Nikki Leotardo, Phil’s nephew who had been on the show before and who could have been out to kill Tony. As it turns out, the whole thing was just a joke, and Sopranos fans are still left in the dark about how the show really ended.
7. Killer Bananas: In 2000, an Internet hoax about imported bananas containting flesh eating bacteria that “spread faster than the flu,� according to Kathy Means, vice-president of the Produce Marketing Association. Despite efforts to squash the rumor, people panicked, inciting investigative stories in the LA Times and from the Knight Ridder news service.
8. Neiman Marcus Cookie Hoax: Would you pay $250 for a cookie recipe? What if it came from Neiman Marcus? We hope that you answered no to both of those questions, but one woman claims to have been tricked into paying the absurd amount and then seeks revenge by sending the recipe out in an e-mail blast. As it turns out, Neiman Marcus never put its cookie recipe up for sale and now publishes the recipe on its website, free of charge of course.
9. Money-at-Home.com: How great would it be to manage your own company from home by turning your computer “into a money-making machine?� Unfortunately, the scammers are the only ones making money with this system. An e-mail invites people to send them money so that they can receive “instructions on where to go and what to download and install on your computer� so that you can run the business and start making lots of money. Even if the instructions actually come, you also have to give the scammers access to your PayPal account, where they can control your online funds.
10. Deodorant Causes Breast Cancer: Several years ago, a popular e-mail chain circulated the Internet claiming that antiperspirants caused breast cancer. Thankfully, experts debunked the ugly rumor, and women felt comfortable enough to continue using their deodorant.
11. Don’t Pump Gas on May 15: In May of 2007, an e-mail hoax pleaded with American drivers, “Don’t pump gas on May 15!� The hope was that large oil companies would suffer great financial losses if millions of people refused to fuel up on one single day. An article on CNN reveals that “the chain e-mail urging the gas boycott has been around for several years, surfacing most years in the springtime� and that “many of the numbers in the e-mail are either misleading or flat out wrong.�
12. Bill Gates Hoax: Poor Bill Gates has found himself involved in another e-mail scam, this time with AOL. As with the Disney hoax, people are rewarded for passing along the chain e-mail in $5.00, $3.00, and $1.00 increments. No Disney vacation included in this one, though.
13. ATM Security Hoax: Who needs 911 when you’ve got your trusty PIN number? This scam reports that if you need to call the police at an ATM machine, you can subtlely make the call by typing in your PIN number backwards. The website Hoax-Slayer.com reports that the scam “stated that this method of calling the police is very seldom used because people don’t know it exists,� and assures customers that “the machine will still give you the monies you requested,� despite having typed in your code backwards. Um, we don’t think so.
14. KFC Hoax: Despite what this Internet hoax wants you to believe, the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise does not genetically engineer chicken-related organisms to maximize the amount of meat collected from each creature. This disgusting scam attempt to explain why Kentucky Fried Chicken is now referred to as just KFC, “because they can not use the word chicken anymore. Why? KFC does not use real chickens.�
15. Internet Auctions: Internet auctioning is a legal business, but it can also be a breeding ground for clever scams and identity theft. The Federal Trade Commission cautions people against phishing e-mails which attempt to steal important passwords and banking information.
16. The Helius Project: This popular scam is still believed by many people to be concrete evidence that intelligent aliens do exist. The Helius Project pretends to originate from “an alien species� trying to reach out to humans via the Internet. Where are Mulder and Scully when you need them to debunk your online alien rumors?
17. “Send An Email Ad to 10,000 Opt-in Subscribers�: Number 7 on the “Top 10 Internet Marketing Scams� list from the Real Estate Marketing Tools blog involves a scam that tries to convince innocent people to engage in illegal marketing tactics by sending advertisements to allegedly opt-in e-mail clients. Instead of falling for one of these scams, the author advises readers to start an e-mail campaign themselves, because “that way, you will know for sure that they are opt-in, and you will be able to manage the results.�
18. 419 Scam: This infamous network of scams is also known as the Nigerian Scam because of its West African origins. About.com reports that “in every variation� of the hoaxes, “the scammer is promising obscenely large payments for small unskilled tasks,� like paying legal and transfer fees out of your own pocket.
19. Snowball the Monster Cat: You wouldn’t believe a photo of an oversized cat if it was published on the front cover of National Enquirer, would you? If that’s the case, we’re wondering why so many people believed the picture of an 87-pound monster cat that surfaced on the Internet. Unbelievably, the photo was even talked about on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Good Morning America. Supposedly, the cat’s mother was rescued after being found “abandoned near a Canadian nuclear lab� in Canada; however, the cat’s owner admitted to doctoring the photo and starting the hoax.
20. Dead Fairy Hoax: “If you believe in fairies, then clap your hands!� As with Tinker Bell, clapping your hands won’t bring these little garden fairies back to life, probably because they never existed. An Englishman created and photographed small models of dead and mummified fairies to trick people into believing that fairies once existed. After e-mailing the pictures to friends as an April Fools’ joke, fairy lovers all over the world continue to believe that the photos are real, “even though [the] creator has long since admitted to the hoax,� according to Snopes.com.

If you suspect an e-mail of trying to solicit money or personal information from you, delete it immediately or report it to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, which is a federal organization comprised of a joint partnership with the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center. While some of these hoaxes seem altogether ridiculous, Internet scamming is no joke.

Dating 2.0 Picks Up Speed

By JENNA WORTHAM
Dec. 20, 2007
It’s Friday night, and your date for the evening just appeared on your computer screen. He’s shifting awkwardly in his chair as he adjusts his webcam, and a comment about American Idol makes it immediately clear you haven’t found your soul mate. You promptly click “End date” and — after a few moments — your next date appears, and you’re ready to begin again.

Welcome to Dating 2.0. A bevy of new services is banking on the booming popularity of web video, text messaging and social networking to amp up online matchmaking for the Web 2.0 crowd.

“We’re the antithesis of sites like Match and eHarmony,” says Stephen Stokols, co-founder of speed-dating site WooMe. “It’s instant gratification.”

A handful of next-gen dating services updates the original online-dating sites’ standard mix of exhaustive personality surveys and poring over profiles in search of a potential mate. They’re the latest twists on internet dating, which drew in 22.6 million people this year, according to data collected by comScore.

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Advice for Problems in a Relationship

I think long distance relationships are challenging, but it’s important that they stay as connected as possible whether over the phone, over the Internet, or meeting halfway as often as possible. I know it is not all that common yet, but there are people who have these videophones and can kind of see themselves in the phone over a live contact in real time. I would recommend that people send surprise gifts to each other to keep them on their toes. It doesn’t have to be anything costly. It could be flower once in a while, just a note, or maybe even to show up unannounced.

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