Hotmail getting a major upgrade this summer!
It's official! Microsoft have just announced that Hotmail is getting a new design and some impressive upgrades!
Wow! For full details of all the new stuff, go to the What's New page on the new Windows Live Preview website. Go to the preview website, and also read the announcement, this is good stuff. Microsoft, please hurry up and launch the new Hotmail!
Best of all, Hotmail will now be fully integrated with SkyDrive! This will be really useful. Every time I've sent or downloaded an attachment in a Hotmail email, I've always felt there should have been a SkyDrive button to go with it.
SkyDrive is rapidly becoming by far the most useful online storage facility, thanks to the new Hotmail, the new Office Live, and of course Office 2010 -- all of which are integrated with SkyDrive and able to use this as their file storage system. SkyDrive is becoming my new hard drive -- it has everything! (MS's domination of the market with MS Office gives them an advantage that Google can only dream of. Google are planning to integrate their web-based office apps with their web-based storage, but they have taken too long, and besides the number of people using Google's desktop publishing apps is negligible compared to MS Office and Windows.)
Here's my wish-list of the features I want added to SkyDrive... If MS can give us these features, it would make SkyDrive absolutely perfect!
- The ability to upload bigger files (up to 5 GB would be nice)
- The ability to link directly to files on SkyDrive (by providing a permanent URL for a file on SkyDrive)
- A public API for SkyDrive (in fact, there already is an API, but we need it to be made public please!)
18 May 2010
Tags: hotmail windows live upgrade new design redesign features new look update skydrive cloud web apps
Comments: 7
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Just wish they remove the footer ad from the outgoing emails from the web version of windows live mail (they already removed it from the desktop Windows Live Mail software though).
http://prateek203.tumblr.com
Hello Prateek, I must admit, I use Hotmail Plus, so I don't have ads in the emails I send from Hotmail online. I think ads are a fair price to pay for the service if you don't want Hotmail Plus. However, I agree that it would be nice to have ads removed from emails. Perhaps they will do so. It's reasonable for the user to experience ads, but less reasonable for the recipient of an email to experience ads to subsidise somebody else's webmail service.
Breaking news: Office web apps now live on SkyDrive!
http://office.live.com
Hotmail customers received an email today announcing the imminent upgrade. If anybody without a Hotmail account is interested: click here to see the official email sent to Hotmail customers.
Prateek, for what it's worth, now SkyDrive has a "Remove ad" option under the advert. MS are listening to our wishes. :)
Having said that, I very often find the ads useful. They tend to advertise new features rather than just random products. E.g. today the ad was for the new features on the MSN Homepage, including integration with Facebook and Twitter, genuinely interesting news, videos and pictures, and the MSN Video with its state-of-the-art Silverlight video player.
Incidentally, MSN is really harnessing the power of the social web these days, I tweeted about it a few minutes ago:
MSN with Facebook and Twitter
Facebook and Twitter on MSN.com
New #FollowMSN website
Update: the new Hotmail rollout is now imminent!
The new Hotmail could go live any day now! The team are just waiting for the process of migrating our emails over to the new data structure to finish running. I can hardly wait to start using the new version! :)
Yay! My Hotmail account was upgraded today! It seemed most of my contacts had it yesterday, I was beginning to feel left out. Enjoy!