ReadWriteWeb

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."

OffiSync is launching an all-new version of its Microsoft Office to Google Docs synchronization tool, a plugin that's a "must-have" for anyone still straddling the two worlds of office suites: that is, the desktop-based world of Microsoft software and the web-based world of Google Docs. In the updated version of OffiSync, set to arrive minutes from now, you'll be able to co-author documents in real-time between Microsoft Office and Google Docs, no matter what version of the Office software you use. There are a few other new features too, including improvements to search, added Google Sites support and the ability to store any file type, but it's the co-authoring feature that's today's biggest reveal.

Microsoft is announcing two new features to Bing Maps today - an integration with Oodle to show rental property listings and another integration with Foursquare to visualize check-ins, tips and a variety of other data.

Although the two seem only related by the map visualization aspect, they might be useful hand in hand to find that new apartment that's close to where everything (or nothing) is going on.

Bing now knows a lot more about cars and will also give a select group of users the option to compare the performance of different sports teams. Microsoft just announced these updates at the Search Engine Strategies event in New York. The new comparison answers for sports will be rolled out to only about 5% of Bing's users at first. In addition, Microsoft will also begin to roll out some minor design changes to a small group of users today that will better highlight Bing's assets like weather and travel search.

Microsoft just launched a new version of its Bing iPhone app. The iPhone app gives you comprehensive access to Bing's core services, including Bing maps and directions, as well as news and image search. Besides offering better stability and a few interface tweaks, the new version of the Bing app also integrates more tightly with the iPhone by giving you access to your contacts in the mapping feature and making it easier to copy and paste URLs and share interesting results through email.

Microsoft just announced the launch of the first developer preview version of Internet Explorer 9. This release is clearly geared towards developers and only features a very stripped down user interface. The developer preview does, however, include Chakra, Microsoft's new JavaScript engine, as well as a new hardware accelerated graphics subsystem and additional developer tools.

Great news from Web hosting company Network Solutions this morning. A company representative tells us that Microsoft will withdraw the copyright complaint against long-time watchdog website Cryptome.org, and the site will be back online later today.

Yesterday Cryptome published a 22-page PDF called the "Microsoft Global Criminal Compliance Handbook". Cryptome publisher John Young said he believed the document showed "improper use of copyright to conceal [...] violations of trust toward its customers." The Electronic Frontier Foundation said Young was within his fair use rights, but the watchdog site was pulled offline none the less. After 14 years spent posting 40,000 sensitive documents, Cryptome is a legacy resource online. Its return is something to celebrate.

As of today, Facebook Fan Page status updates will begin appearing in Google search results, according to a tweet by Google. The announcement means that we will begin seeing results from the nearly 3 million fan pages, but not from the more than 400 million users.

Google currently controls around 90% of the search engine market, according to StatCounter, with Yahoo and Bing its closest competitors. Will Bing's exclusive access to Facebook user updates change this at all?

We recently reported that a watchdog site, Cryptome, was removed from the Web for refusing to take down a copy of a Microsoft document.

This document, called the Microsoft Online Services Global Criminal Compliance Handbook, or "spy guide," gives details on how law enforcement can grab user data from a wide range of Microsoft services, from Windows Live ID to Xbox Live to Hotmail.

How does a large corporation balance end user privacy balance with the need to cooperate and comply with law enforcement? Read on to see how Microsoft handles this issue.

Due to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaints filed by Microsoft, whistleblower website Cryptome [link to a backup version of the site] has been disabled by its ISP, Network Solutions.

The complaints were due to the fact that Cryptome published a 22-page Microsoft Global Criminal Spy Guide. Microsoft claimed copyright infringement, Cryptome's editor refused to budge, and the site was taken down this afternoon.