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

Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP/Vista/2000/Server 2003/Server 2008 (KB950759)
Security issues have been identified that could allow an attacker to compromise a system that is running Microsoft Internet Explorer and gain control over it. You can help protect your system by installing this update from Microsoft. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

Security Update for Windows XP/Vista/Server 2003 (KB951376)
A security issue has been identified that could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to compromise your Microsoft Windows-based system and gain control over it. You can help protect your computer by installing this update from Microsoft. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

Security Update for Windows XP/Vista/Server 2003 (KB950762)
A security issue has been identified that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the affected system to stop responding. You can help protect your computer by installing this update from Microsoft. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

Cumulative Security Update for ActiveX Killbits for Windows XP/Vista/2000/Server 2003/Server 2008 (KB950760)
Security issues have been identified in ActiveX controls that could allow an attacker to compromise a system that is running Microsoft Internet Explorer and gain control over it. You can help protect your system by installing this update from Microsoft. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

Security Update for Windows XP/Vista/2000/Server 2003/Server 2008 (KB951698)
A security issue has been identified in Microsoft DirectShow that could allow an attacker to compromise your Windows-based system and gain control over it. You can help protect your computer by installing this update from Microsoft. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - June 2008 (KB890830)
After the download, this tool runs one time to check your computer for infection by specific, prevalent malicious software (including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom) and helps remove any infection that is found. If an infection is found, the tool will display a status report the next time that you start your computer. A new version of the tool will be offered every month. If you want to manually run the tool on your computer, you can download a copy from the Microsoft Download Center, or you can run an online version from microsoft.com. This tool is not a replacement for an antivirus product. To help protect your computer, you should use an antivirus product.

By Kevin McLaughlin, ChannelWeb
9:00 PM EDT Mon. Jun. 09, 2008

From the June 09, 2008 issue of ChannelWeb In the latest salvo of its ongoing war against software piracy, Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) late Monday announced the filing of 21 lawsuits in federal court in 14 states against resellers who it claims have been illegally distributing its software.

Sharon Cates, an antipiracy attorney at Microsoft, says many of the resellers targeted have been using a tactic known as hard disk loading, which involves taking a single piece of software and loading on multiple PCs, and then selling those PCs to unwitting customers.

In this scenario, not only do customers run the legal risks involved with using unlicensed software, they also lose out on upgrade rights, access to technical support, and key security protections, Cates said. Hard disk loading also leads to Microsoft’s honest channel partners being undercut by unscrupulous resellers, she added.

“A lot of people don’t know what kind of media they are supposed to get when they buy a PC, and that makes it easier for the software pirate to fool customers,” Cates said.

Cates says software piracy continues to be huge problem for Microsoft, which has been diligently tracking down those who distribute counterfeit or improperly licensed products as part of its ongoing Genuine Software Initiative.

While today’s lawsuits are civil cases, Microsoft has also been pursuing criminal cases against certain resellers. In August, a U.S. district court handed out a 46-month prison sentence in a criminal case to a Georgia man convicted of using fake certificates of authenticity to sell pirated versions of Microsoft software.

These efforts are beginning to have an impact on the software giant’s bottom line: Last November, Citigroup enterprise software analyst Brent Thill predicted that Microsoft’s efforts to battle software pirates could add up to an extra $1 billion in fiscal 2008 revenue.

Configuring Visual Studio to Debug .NET Framework Source Code
It’s finally here - the launch of the .NET Reference Source project. This post (hopefully!) contains everything you need to know. Over the past few weeks, we ran a pilot of this feature and collected lots of great data that helped us work through some issues and understand where people were likely to have problems.

First, though, if you have any problems, please make sure you’ve followed all of the steps exactly as described. If you’re still having problems, please check the FAQ/Troubleshooting section at the bottom. If that doesn’t work, post a comment below and I’ll look into it.

BASIC SETUP
Note this functionality is not available on the Express versions of the Visual Studio 2008 products.

1) Install the Visual Studio 2008 QFE. This Hotfix just updates a DLL that’s part of the Visual Studio debugger that fetches the source files, more details on the download page.

UPDATE: If you get an error installing the Hotfix , try inserting your VS 2008 DVD and then running the Hotfix EXE again. We’re looking into the root cause - it’s related to having a prior version of VS 2008 (e.g. Beta 2) installed on the machine. But this workaround should allow the Hotfix to install properly.

UPDATE (1/18): There were some problems with the QFE link above that have been addressed, sorry for the inconvenience, it’s fixed now.

2) Start Visual Studio 2008 and bring up Tools > Options > Debugging > General. If you are running under the Visual Basic Profile, you will need to check the box on the lower left of the Options Dialog marked “Show All Settings” before continuing (other profiles won’t have this option).

(more…)