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Today at the Politics Online Conference , Microsoft unveiled a new crowdsourcing system hosted on Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Town Hall . TownHall is advertised as "software that allows you to easily create a destination for folks to voice opinions, identify problems, offer solutions and come together around common interests and concerns." Sponsor TownHall focuses on "rich engagement" in the political sphere, aimed at candidates and politicians as well as political interest groups. It allows for the creation of a social media-rich site that runs across platforms and provides methods for gathering information as well as expressing opinions, by furnishing architecture where visitors can make queries, vote on issues, posit and respond, and create community conversation. TownHall is currently available only for the PC. In the coming months, Microsoft intends to provide TownHall clients for the iPhone, the iPad, Google Android and Windows Phone 7. The software for TownHall can be downloaded free of charge. Users pay to host their site on Windows Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing program. TownHall is just a part of a new Microsoft Initiative called Campaign Ready. The power of social media - the electronic version of listening to what the voters say - started with Howard Dean's abortive bid for the White House in 2004 and came to full fruition with Barack Obama's successful one. Subsequent to his election, Obama has shepherded through a series of open government initiatives, which require federal government agencies to seek transparent avenues toward public engagement. Microsoft has posted more Town Hall screenshots on Flickr. Discuss

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Microsoft's New Platform: Politics

The biggest cloud network in the world is owned by the mob. While you may think that Google, Amazon and Microsoft are the world's largest cloud providers it's really the Conficker worm that has helped criminal networks spawn a botnet of mass proportions. Sponsor How does Conficker meets the definitions of a cloud? According to the Spectre Group ,a veteran technologist explained the connection last week at the Cloud Connect conference in Santa Clara, Ca.: "Conficker controls 6.4 million computer systems in 230 countries at 230 top level domains globally, more than 18 million CPUs and 28 terabits per second of bandwidth, said Rodney Joffe, senior vice president and senior technologist at the infrastructure services firm Neustar. The biggest cloud on the planet is controlled by a vast criminal enterprise that uses that botnet to send spam, hack computers, spread malware and steal personal information and money, Joffe said. In other words, the cloud is mobbed up." The Spectre Group further explains how, Conficker meets the definitions. The botnet cloud is available for rent and and is just about anywhere in the world. It can be used for a variety of purposes, be a denial-of-service attack, spam distribution or data exfiltration. In fact, all that comment spam that plagues blogs could easily be spawned from the Conflicker cloud. Joffe used the presentation at the conference to illustrate the dangers of Conficker and and how it poses a threat to legitimate cloud computing providers. He said at the conference that Conficker has not been as active as it once was, but is still a threat. The Manchester, UK Police Department was hit in February. And it has a huge footprint, all over the world. The operators have a lot of experience, too, dating back to 1998. The Spectre Group says in comparison the legitimate players in the market are far smaller: "By the way, the biggest legitimate cloud provider is Google, based on Joffe's information, made up of 500,000 systems, 1 million CPUs and 1,500 gigabits per second (Gbps) of bandwdith. Amazon comes in second with 160,000 systems, 320,000 CPUs and 400 Gbps of bandwidth, while Rackspace offers 65,000 systems, 130,000 CPUs and 300 Gbps." The Conficker cloud demonstrates the illusions that have to be considered when thinking about cloud computing. It's not just the danger of a a PC being infected by a virus. It's the danger of another computer entering the criminal enterprise. Discuss

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The Largest Cloud in the World is Owned By A Criminal Network

Taking advantage of the increasing importance of social media management for businesses, Spredfast , a finalist at this year's Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW, has received $1.6 million in funding from Austin Ventures. Featured here on ReadWriteWeb in January, Spredfast is the first enterprise-class social media management system. Sponsor Spredfast supports companies at both the enterprise and SMB levels, allowing businesses to manage their social media campaigns through a single dashboard. Spredfast incorporates data from multiple platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr and most blogging platforms (such as WordPress, Blogger and MoveableType). As the information from these platforms is in one location, and as the service integrates both Omniture and Google Analytics, Spredfast facilitates social media automation and then ties social media analytics with Web analytics to secure "click to conversion" metrics. The pricing for the services range from free to $100 per initiative per month. Since its public launch in January, Spredfast has attracted Oracle, AOL, HP and IBM to its customer base. "We've been working to establish Spredfast as the 'Omniture for social media', a valuable tool for anyone trying to effectively manage and measure a social media initiative," said Kenneth Cho, Spredfast's CEO. "Our relationship with Austin Ventures, specifically with AV partner Mike Dodd previously of Omniture, is great validation of the huge gap Spredfast is filling in the social media market and the reception so many customers are having toward the product." Discuss

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Social Media Management System Spredfast Secures Series A Funding

Over the past 20 years the two people most prominent in the world of personal computing have been Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Sometimes they've worked as partners, mostly as the opposite. So in the end who wins? ReadWriteWeb wants you to be the judge. After viewing these 10 videos, it's up to you to decide who gives a better graduation speech, who makes the best cartoon character, and who is better at being funny. Who's the bigger alpha in the dating game, who's better at saying nice things about their opponent, and finally, who is better at leaving their business? Sponsor Tell us in the comments who wins! SuperNews!: Gates vs. Jobs 2,640,083 views Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together: Part 1 1,498,231 views Bill Gates Speech at Harvard (part 1) 1,044,381 views Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address 1,789,794 views Bill Gates' Last Day at Microsoft - CES 2008 625,730 views 1983 Apple Event Bill Gates and Steve Jobs 278,333 views All-time favorites - all about Steve Jobs.com 402,058 views Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates Buy Discount Shoes 117,490 views Prizefight: Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs 60,212 views Bill Gates - Biography (Part1 of 6) 35,374 views Discuss

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Top 10 YouTube Videos About Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs

Sugar CRM is launching a new user interface as part of Sugar 6. It comes with a focus on what is becoming a prerequisite: an emphasis on speed, search and deeper integration with third party applications and mobile devices. The speed issue is one that SaaS providers always seek to mitigate as they want the service to seem as responsive as if it were worked on the desktop. Sponsor To do this, Sugar CRM is providing a revamped set up that when completed is supposed to be optimized for speed and designed for the experience that comes with using a social network. It includes a new, global search, another effort to optimize the experience for the end user. Search is becoming increasingly critical as more data is available for integration with third party apps. Sugar CRM will strengthen its search with an open-source engine such as Lucene . SugarCRM is paying close attention to the user experience, knowing it is a key to acceptance among users of CRM environments. SugarCRM also includes native application support for the iPhone Android and the Blackberry. The company has also introduced a native app for the iPad. Application integration is the hallmark of the emerging social CRM application. SugarCRM fits with LinkedIn, Hoovers and Jigsaw through its Cloud Connectors service, which connects third-party data service. SugarCRM also works with Sugar Plug-Ins for Microsoft Outlook, Word and Excel. But can't this all become a bit overwhelming? All this data flowing into one CRM environment means that the customer needs to think carefully how to organize, discover and share what comes into the network. That's why it makes sense that a search and potentially analytics component will become standards for services like SugarCRM. It's also why SugarCRM has a certain advantage. Open-source platforms will thrive in the data deluge to come. Third-party services become critical as components that make sense of internal and external information. It's just a matter of how those applications are applied so customers can get relevant information that they need for the opportunity at hand. Discuss

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SugarCRM: Speed, Search and the Data Deluge