aka.ms and a squirrel's nest
Today I was setting up a couple URL with the Microsoft Social Experience Platform (SXP) shortening service, aka.ms and in one search on Bing found out that my Microsoft alias, drey, is what you call a squirrel's nest. Instead of typing in blogs.technet.com/drey, I shortened it to aka.ms/drey.
This is also one example of what Windows Azure can do. I'm just beginning to dabble in Azure now that it also have Virtual Machines in the latest preview version. I read through aka.ms to learn more about the service I began to consume. I've received at least 10 aka.ms links in the past, but to put the platform to use for me is pretty cool.
So now that I've gotten a taste for what the Social Experience Platform can do, watch out! I can now link to all shorts of places on various Microsoft sites, like aka.ms/bythenumbers. I'm sure there are more I'll think of this fall, but for now, these two will be sufficient.