I've recently been working on a project for Microsoft UK doing some community stuff for the UK bCentral site which is pretty interesting - especially as it's given me some insight as to how Microsoft builds their sites.
Recently I've been working on some branding stuff which involves using the core Microsoft branding elements - now, how this is done is amazingly cool and to be honest it pretty much sets the pattern for how I think sites should be built...however, it's covered by an NDA - I have no idea why, but it is so I can't discuss it. Well, I guess I can discuss a bit as it mentions the MNP system here (Microsoft.com Network Project - if you've ever seen a .mspx file extension, now you know what it is) - essentially it provides a way to provide common functionality, branding etc...across huge disparate sites with extreme ease whilst maintaining performance. Anyone from Microsoft want to put up a proper article about this system? Here's a bit from the above page which should go some way to explaining what it's all about...
MNP solves this problem, integrating XML-based content from multiple sources using ASP.NET to encapsulate parts of a Web page into reusable components.
"Essentially we create plug-ins that tell MNP how to read different formats," Mulvey said. "Content providers who own the content stores can write a little bit of code so anyone using MNP to build their site can consume that content in their pages."