Opps Duqu infection linked to Microsoft Word exploit

"The Duqu computer infection was spread with the help of an infected Microsoft Word document, according to a report.

The research says the Trojan exploited a previously unknown vulnerability embedded in Word files, allowing Duqu to modify computers' security protection."

BBC News - Duqu infection linked to Microsoft Word exploit

Yelp and how dumb is social media

Yelp sent me the following email. Now what is interesting is the idea that Yelp might have a hunch, which imp lies some kind of AI. And the hunch seems to be about me.

Well actually I have not had brunch in a restraunt ever in my life. I might actually love brunch because I have never ever gone out to have it. It has never crossed my mind to have brunch.

Its not that I am ignorant of brunch, for a year I worked as a waiter at a place that did one of the biggest brunch trades in the Chicago area. I have very familiar with the practice of brush, of what is eaten in brunch and of when it is eaten.

The thing that strikes me in this email, as in so many other social media effort to understand me is how not only is it wrong, but like Facebook and Twitter recommends it actually contradicts my own clearly expressed interests.

Anyone who knew me well enough to have a hunch on me, even if it was an AI tracking me on social networks, would clearly know that I have a tendency to hiking on Saturdays. Rather than having a tongue feeling like wall paper and a empty pantry I am far more likely to be out on trail in the green belt around London. Anyone who followed my fairly regular posting to Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and blogger would notice this pattern. Saturdays I generally stop posting, because I am out of mobile service reach, if I post post photos of nature or photos from various locations within and around London when I can't walk in the woods because of rain.

So its pretty clear that Yelp has no hunch at all about me. Okay its a marketing email. No sin there.

But the problem is that this email illustrates the key problem about social network services. Social network services from Facebook to SharePoint talk a big talk about understanding social networks they manage, but do nothing about it. Their data is held in extremely dumb networks and their conclusions about users are at best shallow and often stupid.

Now for civil libertarians such as myself this is not a bad thing at all. Its probably a good thing that computers really can't understand our motives given all the facts about us that are being gathered. If software could understand us, well the prospects for democracy go pretty dim pretty quick.  I believe that smart computers that understand social networks can be a danger to our democracy, and may need to be regulated if they ever emerge.

But why does social networks feel the need to lie about understanding me. Why not just be honest and say we offer you a communication channel that you can use as you want and nothing more? Why imply you have some social intelligence you don't have?

My observations from watching online dating market is that this is precisely the question more and more social network users are asking. Online dating services used to advertise that they somehow would help you find the right person. This false promise only lead to high levels of disappointment by users. Now more and more online dating is selling itself on availability and access not intelligence.

My vision of social computing is pretty simple, computer can not understand people in a reliable way that will mean much to any given user. But computers can make resources of communication and search available to users who can then use the tools to make the social patterns they need. The human genius has to be enabled, not replaced.

Occupty Wall Street is the hot ticket in New York

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET

Foursquare for OccupyWallStreet

currently checked in: 21

This tops Brooklyn Bridge with 11 and all other trending sites in New York, making the Occupy Wall Street the largest ongoing even in New York right now.

'via Blog this'

RIM and Microsoft Office 365

RIM is rolling out a new cloud-based service for Microsoft Office 365.

(Credit: RIM)

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has launched a new service that not only extends access to Microsoft Office 365 but lets businesses better manage their BlackBerry devices.
Currently available as a beta for Microsoft Office 365 customers, BlackBerry's Business Cloud Services offers four key benefits to potential customers, according to RIM:

• Access to Microsoft Exchange online email, calendar, and organizer data from BlackBerry smartphones.

• BlackBerry Balance technology, which lets users see both personal and work-related content on their phones but keeps the two separate from each other.

• Online access to smartphone security features where users can remotely lock or wipe their smartphones or reset their passwords.

• An online console where IT admins can manage and secure the BlackBerry smartphones used by company employees.

"BlackBerry Business Cloud Services is an easy and cost-effective way for businesses and government agencies to extend Microsoft Office 365 to BlackBerry smartphones and manage the deployment in the cloud," RIM Vice President Alan Panezic said in a statement. "We have been working together with Microsoft and select customers through an early access program and we are pleased to now launch an open beta for the service."

RIM unveils cloud service for Microsoft Office 365 users | Webware - CNET:

Frankly we at the Web 3.0 Lab have never fully understood Microsoft mobile strategy.  They seem to be perfectly happy with the iPhone being out there, they complain about Android though they collect license agreements on most Androids sold, they have a strategic relationship with one of the top business phone vendors and they push their own phone.

For Microsoft the future is the cloud.  Even if the make a OS for small devices this OS may gain them little more than Internet Explorer, a long term headache.  Frankly the web industry would be delighted to see IE in all its version vanish.

Mobile devices are becoming nothing more than windows to the Cloud, and Microsoft's Cloud is a business cloud.  RIM has a well established proven technology that could easily catch up, and the Blackberry remains popular in the Enterprise.  Microsoft should abandon the sinking ship of Windows Mobile and purchase RIM and turn that in to their platform.

But there may be method to the madness, unlike Apple Microsoft and Google make software, and being trapped in a single hardware platform is not where Microsoft wants to be.  But also being forked between two main platforms, where one is highly established does not really make sense either.

See also Microsoft and RIM make partnership
What is Office 365
All my posts on Office 356

Restore a site collection SharePoint Server 2010 using PowerShell

I have just done some migrations from SharePoint 2010 test to production environments using PowerShell.

Some information on how easy this is can be found here.

Restore a site collection (SharePoint Server 2010)

Should you use PowerShell over stsadm.exe?

If you are anything like me you have already done hundreds of such jobs with stsadm.exe. Stsadm.exe is still supported in SharePoint 2010 so why should you take the time to learn a new scripting language?

Well the answer is simple, PowerShell is just so much better than stsadm.exe.  PowerShell should be used for the following reasons:

1. It is now Microsoft Recommendation, don't want to go against that.
2. The language is much more elegant, easier to read and write once you get a hang of it.
3. The language now supports functions and variables, it is now more of a programming language.
4. Its more powerful, allowing you do things like putting site collections in new databases.

So is PowerShell just the new version of stsadm.exe?

No.

PowerShell provides a scripting language very much like PHP.  In fact it is so like PHP that anyone who has done any PHP code will have no problem picking it up. Even if you don't know PHP anyone with basic programming skills will be able to pick PowerShell up easily. For example the following 'Hello world' command will look familiar to any programmer. 

function HelloWorld()
{ 
    $say = "Hello world"

    echo $say
}

This ability to use functions and variables allows you to write, and pre-test powerful PowerShell solutions.  For example imagine trying to script something like this in stsadm.exe

function WaitForJobToFinish([string]$SolutionFileName)
{ 
    $JobName = "*solution-deployment*$SolutionFileName*"
    $job = Get-SPTimerJob | ?{ $_.Name -like $JobName }
    if ($job -eq $null) 
    {
        Write-Host 'Timer job not found'
    }
    else
    {
        $JobFullName = $job.Name
        Write-Host -NoNewLine "Waiting to finish job $JobFullName"
        
        while ((Get-SPTimerJob $JobFullName) -ne $null) 
        {
            Write-Host -NoNewLine .
            Start-Sleep -Seconds 2
        }
        Write-Host  "Finished waiting for job.."
    }
}

Add-PsSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell
 
$CurrentDir=$args[0]
$solutionName="Limeco.UI.WebParts.wsp"
$SolutionPath=$CurrentDir + "\"+$solutionName 
 
Write-Host 'Going to disable feature'
disable-spfeature -identity Limeco.UI.WebParts_LimecoWebPartFeature -confirm:$false -url http://localhost
 
Write-Host 'Going to uninstall feature'
uninstall-spfeature -identity Limeco.UI.WebParts_LimecoWebPartFeature -confirm:$false -force
 
Write-Host 'Going to uninstall solution'
Uninstall-SPSolution -identity $solutionName  -allwebapplications -confirm:$false

Write-Host 'Waiting for job to finish'
WaitForJobToFinish 

Write-Host 'Going to remove solution'
Remove-SPSolution –entity $solutionName -confirm:$false
 
Write-Host 'Going to add solution'
Add-SPSolution $SolutionPath
 
Write-Host 'Going to install solution to all web applications'
Install-SPSolution –entity $solutionName –llwebapplications –ACDeployment

Write-Host 'Waiting for job to finish' 
WaitForJobToFinish 

Write-Host 'Going to enable Feature' 
Enable-spfeature -identity Limeco.UI.WebParts_LimecoWebPartFeature -confirm:$false -url http://localhost 

Remove-PsSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell

Source Sohel Rana

Hey, I am a System Admin not a Programmer, isn't PowerShell just over the top

No again.

PowerShell basic functions are much cleaner and easier to run than the same stsadm.exe code.

Example of PowerShell for dummies

Here is a use case.  You have been given two backup files from a development box and you need to install the two sites in a web application, each in its own site collection with its own database.  We assume here you have already added a second content database.

The web application is on port 80, and is called http://test  and the two content databases are WSS_Contet and WSS_Content2.  You need to update 2 backup files, one at D:\backups\home.bak and D:\backups\work.bak.  Work.bak will be restored to a site collection at http:/sites/work

You are just going to be running PowerShell, you don't have time to make any saved scripts.  You were thinking about just using stsadm but your boss, say a project manager, says you must use PowerShell.

Well the good news it is easy.  Very easy to do this.

We assume you know how to get in to PowerShell here, if you don't here is a helpful introduction.

So you are logged in to PowerShell with the appropriate rights to the database.  I have generally logged in to the server with the Farm account and not the Admin accounts

The first step I do is to list out the Web Applications on the server.  You type the PowerShell command:

Get-SPWebAppllication

And you get a list of web applications, there ports and their URLs.  One of the URLS in the example is http://test

Now to restore  the back to http://test on WSS_Content type the following PowerShell command:

Restore-SPSite http://test -path D:\backups\home.bak -DatabaseName WSS_Content

PowerShell will ask you to confirm that you rally want to do this.  Wait until the task completes.

Then to build the second site type:

Restore-SPSite http://test/sites/work -path D:\backups\work.bak -DatabaseName WSS_Content_2

This then takes care of building the new site collection for you, and puts it in the database WSS_Content_2.

Its that easy!

Web 3.0 Lab: Proof We Live in the Real World and Not the Matrix...

Web 3.0 Lab: Proof We Live in the Real World and Not the Matrix...: These two graphics show the geo-tagged tweeting over a several hour period. We have displayed the tweets "Matrix" style, with green dots .

..

Google+ for everyone

Google+: Now open to everyone - TNW Google:

Google+ is now open to everyone. Recently Google+ has had some social policy teething pains, especially around the issue of anonymous access of users. Google+ requires a 'real name' which many users, especially established web personalities who have blogged under a different name for years don't agree with.

But beyond that the tool is simply the best technology for social grid management ever made. And it would probably be worth anyone's time to give it a try.

BCS Overview Demo

Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010 Demo Part 1

Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010 Demo Part 2

Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010 Demo Part 3

Windows 8 Demo

Ireland's Technology Blog has a video with some more new information about Windows 8.  Video requires flash so no Pads.

Microsoft Releases First Test Version of Windows 8 - Ina Fried - News - AllThingsD

Windows 8 looks to be playing catch up with the now dominate Apple for a space it once owned.

BCS - External Content Type in SharePoint Designer 2010

The writing is on the wall for all of us

Once the leader in web presence Yahoo! collapse along with the fall of MySpace is a stark reminder that in the Cloud business moves very fast.

"When the history of the internet industry comes to be written, Yahoo! will deserve a special place in it for all the wrong reasons. Rarely has a company managed to destroy so much shareholder value in such a short space of time. Before Ms Bartz was brought in to run the business, Yahoo! rejected a bid from Microsoft that valued it at around $45 billion on the ground that the offer was too stingy. Today, its market capitalisation is a mere $16 billion or so."

More trouble for Yahoo!: Carol goes out the portal | The Economist

Yahoo! just fired CEO Carol Bartz and it seems the only reason the story is out is the way it was leaked via email. The way the world learned that Yahoo! would have a new CEO was more of the story then the fact that the struggling firm was in even more trouble.

Today Yahoo! is worth $30 Billion dollar less then what Microsoft offered for it a few years ago. In the past 5 or so years Yahoo! has last around $100 of value for every man, woman and child in the United States.

This is despite about 7 billion page views a day. That is a page view of every man, woman and child on Earth. Yahoo! is still one of the most visited domains in the Universe. But in the Cloud you can't just convert eyeballs in to dollars in any direct way like you can on TV with advertising. Yahoo! has failed despite being for the most part rather popular.