Infoworld reports that M$ has launched a techy weblog service called The Spoke:

Joe Wilcox, a Washington, D.C.-based Jupiter Research senior analyst, doesn’t see TheSpoke as a threat to other blog services, but rather as a tool for Microsoft to win support from young software developers who might otherwise choose to work on projects that compete with Microsoft.
“While there is a blogging component, TheSpoke is not a blogging site. Creating this kind of community is a longstanding Microsoft approach, particularly when it comes to building relations with developers,” he said. “Considering that academia is fertile ground for Mac and other Unix and Linux development, Microsoft is wise to provide alternative resources like TheSpoke, where student developers can gather and build a community.”

According to Technorati a dozen plus folks have blogged about this service. FWIW, I looked at 5-6 of the Spoke blogs and none of them show up in Technorati so this is a pretty new effort and appears to not have linked into the larger community yet.
Welcome to these folks.