Tag Archives: jobs

Malware Detection in Live Search and Webmaster Tools

Live Search has recently released some great new features that I want to highlight. The first is from the Webmaster center, which is the team I was hired on.

With the new Webmaster Tools, you can now see which pages on your site are infected with malware (aka drive-by downloads). The links are clearly highlighted and disabled so that you won’t accidentally click on them.

webmaster_crawl_issues

Not only that, but you can also see what pages that your site links to are infected with malware. This is great if your site allows any user-generated content and it’s possible that some link spam has made it on.

webmaster_outbound_links

In addition to these improvements in Webmaster Tools, the general Live Search engine is using the same malware detection to notify users of bad pages in the general search results. To see this, click on the link as if to visit it and you’ll get a pop-up instead.

livesearch_malware

If you run your own site, get signed up in Webmaster Tools and make sure you’re not contributing to the malware problem. If you do find that your site has malware on it, once you’ve removed it you can request that your site be reanalyzed.

For more info, check out these other blogs and articles:

First two weeks at Microsoft

It has been an insane first couple of weeks at Microsoft. In actuality, though, I don’t know if I can count it as two weeks of experience. I’ve had two days of orientation, one day for the company meeting (which was awesome, by the way), and two more days for training in Live Search specifically. So really I’ve had only a week of work.

The team I’m working in is great. Everybody really knows their stuff and it’s fairly intimidating trying to comprehend all the knowledge (both project and organizational) that you need to drink from the fire hose. Supposedly, it takes an average of 6 months before most people feel like they’re contributing 100%. That seems like a really, really long time, given how fast things move in the Internet age. So far, I’ve mostly read code (fixed one small bug, and found another), and done online training (of which there is a LOT–you don’t have to do everything, but there’s a an awful lot there to choose from). It’s easy to start feeling caught between wanting to contribute as soon as possible and not wanting to screw up other people’s work.

I’ve also got to come up with my yearly commitments this week–a daunting task when you don’t know anything. 🙂 Thankfully, my lead is a lot of help. There’s a nice big section for personal development and I’m planning on reading Scott Meyer’s Effective C++ and More Effective C++. They’ve been on my list for a while, but now I can get graded on it!

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it explicitly before, but I’m working on the Webmaster team as part of Live Search. The Webmaster tools are the interface between web site owners and the Live search index. If you have a web site, you should definitely create an account with our tools so you can see how your site is performing.

About Live Search in general…

Over a year ago I briefly tried Live Search as my main search engine, but quickly moved back to Google. About 6 months ago (before I was contacted about the job at Microsoft, incidentally), I decided to look at Live again–HUGE improvement. I have very rarely gone back to Google since then.

There are also some really exciting new features coming for both Live and the webmaster tools, so give them a try now and again in a few months. I can also personally attest to the fact that the Live Search team takes feedback seriously. If you have any issue with your site, or the results of your query–write up a little note and send it to the feedback page, or even send me an e-mail and I can make sure it gets sent to the right people.

P.S. My blog entry about my interview experience did make the rounds and a number of people commented to me on it….weird feeling…more infamous, than famous. Lesson: Make sure you never writing something you wouldn’t mind other people reading back to you. (I don’t think I did…)

Top 10 Reasons Why I’m Excited to Work at Microsoft

My last post was well and good (definitely read the comments), but I think I should be serious about my new employer because I really am excited to work there. Here are some reasons why:

  1. The opportunity to work with people smarter than me. The chance to meet some of the people I admire in the software community.
  2. The projects and technology under development always inspire me. Almost every event I’ve gone to has had me come away wanting to look into some other cool technology and thinking of the ways it can change the world.
  3. A real career path as a software engineer.
  4. Chance to change projects whenever I want. During my interviews, many people were quite open with me: they get bored with a project eventually and want to switch after two years or so. Microsoft’s culture easily allows this.
  5. Compete with Google. Google needs some real competition. Just as Firefox lit a fire under the IE team, MS needs to light a fire under Google.
  6. The benefits are awesome. They truly treat you well.
  7. They are extremely open on telecommuting.
  8. How many companies can you work at where your stuff affects so many people? There aren’t that many…
  9. The challenge. I love challenges. I love learning new things, and working hard to solve problems. Challenges are how you grow.
  10. The area. Beautiful country. Cheaper than DC. The rain.

What will be more interesting is to compare this list with what I come up with in a year.

Free Resume Review – Professional Service

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  • Personal contact and expert advice from a resume or cover letter professional.

Go check them out if your looking for resume advice, need a career change, or just want to see how your resume measures up. Also, thanks to them for sponsoring BuyMeALego.com!