Exciting Times for "Sharing and Social Networking"

The past few months have been busy for me and for my team. I took a long vacation back to Istanbul, giving me an opportunity to disconnect from my work and my blog for a while, and then came back to a new organization, a launch, and a very active Seattle.

As Moz recently summarized in an entry, we went through some reorganizations and the changes they brought. We seem to have settled into a new structure for now: product management and marketing roles have been more clearly delineated, while lines around our products have blurred. As most of you know, I have been working on the Spaces and Writer products for the past two years. In an effort to bring more seamless experiences to our customers in our next waves of planning, I will now be heading a new team focused on Sharing and Social Networking. Product management for a lot of the services you are familiar with, such as Spaces, Events, Writer, Photo Gallery, will now be run from my team, giving us a better view of your end-to-end sharing scenarios. Chris and Charlotte will be the managers on my team, as well as JP, a new product manager joining us to bring you better Memories experiences. My marketing leads like Marty, Marianna, and Pooja will continue to work on marketing, moving to the organizations running US and international execution.

In addition to the organizational changes, we have been busy building software. You probably saw the launch of Windows Live Events and a set of new features last week, especially the improved "What's New" section. Windows Live Photo Gallery also raised the bar with Flickr integration. I am excited with the stuff coming out but am painfully aware of how much we still have to do, in order to bring great experiences together.

I have been receiving a lot of questions lately about "Spaces' social networking" plans. Speculation around our partnerships have also led to the questions "isn't Spaces Microsoft's competitor to Facebook? What social scenarios are you thinking about?" While I cannot divulge any long term plans here, let me clarify one thing: "social networking" for us refers to the set of online experiences that allow users to feel connected with the people they care about. You did not see "Spaces" anywhere in there, did you? That is because I do not equate it with Microsoft's "social network." A lot of players have done a good job building profile networks --MySpace and Facebook most notably. I am a Facebook user (and Twitter, and MySpace, and a bunch of other things) and have a lot of respect for what they are doing. However, I do think that social scenarios will extend well beyond a "profile network," and defining social networking as a "website where I have a profile, friends, FoF, and some communities I share with" may be short sighted. Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail should become amazing social experiences. Our memories experience should tie in. Events and others

should become great social experiences, not to forget MSN. And all these things will be part of our "social networking" plans. Do not equate "what is Spaces doing" to "what is Microsoft doing" so quickly --and I do not think Facebook is thinking so narrowly either. We will continue to develop and improve Spaces of course, but we are trying to think broader to address your needs.

I will save writing about Istanbul to another day. I am excited to be back in Seattle, but I already miss home. Perhaps a good skiing season will lessen that feeling!

Nortel Wants To Buy Something

Nortel (NYSE:NT) has disappointed investors again. Long term telcom equipment and Nortel investors must be getting used to the pain. So what does management do? Lets buy our way out of this mess. Nortel Networks is in takeover mode, CEO Mike Zafirovski has announced. Wall Street has been speculating for a while about the maker of telecommunications equipment.

Nortel who when riding high had acquired many a company using its own stock as currency. This option is not as attractive at the present time. The takeovers will need to be financed in cash. This will compete with internal organic opportunities. If too many internal projects get bumped then in house R&D will conclude "Whats the point" and Nortel will have to make acquisitions.

The sector is still staggering about not having recovered from its last boom. Many companies future's are openly questionable. If you had a neat little start up that was worthy of a lucrative buy out where would you make the deal.

I still think Motorola (NYSE:MOT) should buy out Nortel and hopefully kill two problem birds with one controversial deal.

Computer threat - Network Security

Every TCP package have 'flag bit’ defining content and intention of each package.
Example:

A package with flag bit contain "SYN or SYNCHRONIZE" will undertake to conduct initiation connection from sender to recipient. A package with flag bit contain "ACK" will undertake to inform receiver about sender information.
While a TCP package with beet flag contain "FIN" or "FINISH" undertaking to stop connection from sender to recipient.

To build a TCP connection, need data transfer package between two host, transfer of this data recognized by the name of "TCP Three-Way Handshake" as below picture.

Computer Network Threat

Threat is very harmful to the entire system and also by application at internal and external network.

The threat as follows:

Remote Login - this matter happened when someone capable to connect to a computer and have ability to control to several things related to resource found on the host or computer.

Application Backdoors - some program have special ability to access with long distance (remote access). Some bug program, exactly contain a backdoor or hidden access providing level control the computer and program.

SMTP session hijacking - SMTP is most commonly method used to deliver E-mail. By getting E-mail mailing-list, someone can deliver undesirable E-mail to thousands of or more users. This matter is called unsolicited junk mail or spam.

Spamming conducted with joining SMTP server which not suspect, then deliver thousands of E-mail called redirecting process, so that complicate to detect who is the real sender of the Mail Spam.

Operating system bugs – In application, some operation system have conducive security gap to be exploited illegally.

E-mail bombs - is an Individual attack, someone send hundreds or thousands of E-mail to one address so the victim E-mail cannot accept E-mail anymore.

Macro - To make simple or facilitate procedure an application, many application program permit us to make command which can be run by the program (script). By exploiting ability of script or macro, attacker can cause damage of data at computer.

Virus – Most known to make trouble at computer. The growth of virus from method, way of, making, effectiveness, damage storey, and also speed of spreading is different each other.

Redirect bombs – Hacker or Cracker can use ICMP to change direction of information and attack to other router.

Source routing - At many case, a data package which work through one or some network determined by router pass to route information by the router, but sometime hacker used the package as the real sender.

Another type of computer attack are from (next posted about this) :

Denial of Service (DoS)
Spoofing
Broadcast Amplification
TCP SYN

The method to run the threat above, can be conducted variously including using virus.