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Now with 5GB

August 15, 2007 by Kris Hoet 7 Comments

I’ve been a Hotmail user for quite a long time already, long time before I started working at Microsoft. I always found it easy to have this email address that was not linked to your internet provider (remember de ‘free’ dial-up services etc) and later on it became even easier when I got to use Messenger.

Now when thinking about Hotmail about 3 years ago that wasn’t all that good anymore. With the coming of Gmail it became more clear than ever that Hotmail needed work…. and a lot of it. The old interface, advertising, 25MB storage vs Gmail’s 1GB,…

But today we are 3 years further down the line, Gmail has close to 3GB of inbox (and you can buy more if you want) en is still in beta and Hotmail has been renewed completely. The backend, the interface it’s all new. Drag&drop, rightclick, … are only few of the new things and this week they announced some other new updates and some pretty cool ones as well:

  • More storage: Hotmail users will get 5GB of inbox for free and 10GB for the paying Hotmail Plus accounts
  • Contacts de-duplication: This will run each time you try to add a contact but there’s also a wizzard to clean up your existing contacts
  • Forwarding messages: You can forward your account to another Hotmail account if you have more accounts and want to handle things easily, this also works to non-Hotmail accounts if you’re a Hotmail Plus user
  • OOF: Hotmail now as an Out of Office as well, to your contacts only if you wish
  • Turn of the today page: I want to go straight to my inbox so I like that one as well

Remember as well that Hotmail is available on mobile as well for quite a long time (http://mobile.live.com) , and that there’s a desktop client in which you can sync all your Hotmail and other webmail accounts as well, called Windows Live Mail. I use the desktop client and mobile version quite a lot myself.

If you only remember Hotmail from ‘back in the days’ then I think you should check it out again: http://mail.live.com

And yes, for the xxth time, I work for Microsoft.

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microsoft, mobile, msn, software, windows live

Windows Live Folders

August 2, 2007 by Kris Hoet 3 Comments

Windows Live Folders is a new Windows Live service (that is only in beta in the US now) which offers password-protected online storage. Since the password projection is done through your LiveID (aka Passport) you have your Hotmail contacts or Live Messenger buddies linked to the service as well.

Folders comes in 3 ways:

  1. Storage for yourself which you can use when you want to access files from multiple computers
  2. Sharing files with friends is where you can store files that you want to share with one or more friends on your Messenger buddy list. In addition to that you can add ‘reader’ or ‘contributor’ permission to each folder you set up this way
  3. Sharing files publicly

Now I’ve just set up my Live Folders and I’ll share my experiences with it later. If you want to give this a try as well, make sure you sign up for it quickly as the team is only expanding the beta for a limited time now.

Here’s what you see once you’re logged on, I didn’t have any files up there when I took the screenshot hence the 500MB is still available which isn’t the case anymore now :)

WLFolders

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beta, community, internet, news, windows live

New Live Search feature

July 29, 2007 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

The update seems to be announced like ‘just another quick add on’, I hadn’t even heard of it from the Search team before via the internal communications (I work for Microsoft), but I think it’s quite interesting.

The update is related to image search, more specifically something that will help you find images containing faces, portraits or black&white images. Try these links to see them in action:

  1. without the new features – jimi hendrix
  2. with new face filtering on – jimi hendrix filter:face
  3. with new portrait filtering on – jimi hendrix filter:portrait
  4. with new black and white filtering on – jimi hendrix filter:bw

I did a few test myself on less known names (like my own, but you don’t want to see that) and results were still pretty good. Here’s a search on Ricky Gervais (filter:face). I wonder how they detect something like that.

rickygervaisimagesearch

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internet, microsoft, windows live

Soapbox back open

June 1, 2007 by Kris Hoet 3 Comments

Soapbox – the MSN video sharing service – is back open for full video viewing. The service started as a closed beta, opened for full public a few months later but went back into closed beta soon after. The reason for this closure was related to the many piracy issues video sharing services have to deal with and the Soapbox team wanted to fix that first before going public again.

soapbox

Next to a few updates on performance, Soapbox is now also using CopySense technology from Audible Magic for proactive automated filtering of copyright content. Other tools to fight piracy will be added as well. Soapbox is still in beta so expect more updates to come soon.

Soapbox offers much of the same as the other known video services (tagging, embedding, commenting, …) but what I find really differentiating on it is the link with Live Messenger. You can very easily IM a video, which means you’ll watch it at the same time with a Messenger buddy whil in a chat conversation. Good fun, I’ll tell you.

Earlier this year (in april) Soapbox already updated much of the UI and better integration with MSN Video.

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beta, internet, microsoft, movies, msn, windows live

New – Windows Live Writer beta 2

May 30, 2007 by Kris Hoet 3 Comments

It’s been a bit quiet on the Live Writer front but the team has been working hard on the new beta which has just been released a couple minutes ago. If you are a blogger and you haven’t tried Live Writer before, you definitely should give it a try, it’s pretty good. It’s a desktop blog writing application that works with all major blog services like WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, … and obviously Live Spaces.

Here’s what’s new in beta 2:

  • Now available in 6 languages (including English, Spanish, French and German)
  • Inline spell checking
  • Ability to add categories
  • Support for Blogger labels
  • Paste special
  • Table editing
  • Page authoring for WordPress and Typepad
  • …

And of course don’t forget about the possibility to add plugins that people can write, which was already there in beta 1.
I’m also quite excited to see in the announcement that Windows Live Spaces, Typepad and WordPress have taken on the new provider customization API which allows to expose additional service-specific features withing the Writer UI, quite nice really.

livewriter.gif

At the same time, the new Windows Live Mail (aka Windows Live Mail Desktop or the Desktop mail client) and the new Windows Live Messenger 8.5 beta have been released as well. So all together, a lot of beta galore at Windows Live – enjoy!

(disclaimer: I work for Microsoft on Windows Live)

beta, blogging, internet, microsoft, windows live
community, internet, microsoft, news, signup, software, travel, windows live

Something is about to happen…

May 16, 2007 by Kris Hoet 2 Comments

First of all there’s I-Merge. This Belgian interactive agency is about to change into it’s new … shape and therefor they launched a teasing campaign to build awareness of this. A lot of us knew that there were big changes to be expected and they could have done the classic PR approach + email to clients to announce it but… that’s not the I-Merge way :) If you go to the I-Merge website, you will be able to get one of the pixels out of their actual logo, basically helping it to fade out. By doing so you get a very real certificate that you’re the proud owner of this pixel… and obviously it’ll help the agency to update you once the news gets out. I own mine already, make sure you do as well. More about this on their blog.

The second thing that’s about to happen relates to ‘Bring the love back‘, something I spoke about earlier. We’re coming really close to the release of this short video and I’m sure many of you will like it. Hopefully it’ll fuel the conversation with advertisers on reaching today’s consumer. I’ll put up a post with the video once it’s live so keep an eye on this blog ;)

advertising, blogging, bringtheloveback, community, marketing, media, microsoft, msn, windows live

Twitter 360

May 15, 2007 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

I just found out about this mashup between the Xbox gamertag and Twitter. It looks kind of complicated still to actually make it work, but that will probably improve soon. Once installed, the Xbox Twitter will check your gamertag status regularly and post updates when needed. This way you’ll see what people are playing on their Xbox.

mackenzie-xbox-twitter.jpg

With the last Xbox 360 dashboard update, Windows Live Messenger can show you the same status message by the way. If you’re logged into Live Messenger on the dashboard (one of the new features), your contacts using Messenger on their pc will see in the status message behind your nick what game you’re playing.

Coming back to Twitter, I haven’t made a post with my thoughts about the service yet, but yesterday I did an email interview with Linda Jones of Twitterati about it. Linda asked me about 15 questions and the interview gives you a pretty good overview about what I think of it today.

beta, community, games, internet, windows live

Virtual Talentum: the results

May 15, 2007 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

Yesterday I spoke about the Virtual Talentum that was organized with Vacature and Windows Live in Belgium. Today I had the change to talk to some colleagues that were present and the event went down really well, making sure that it will be repeated in a few months already. All 90 recruiters (so not 100 like I said earlier) were very happy with the results and they’ve done about 1.500 chats – text, voice, video – web jobsearchers during one evening which is pretty impressive.

Here’s the final quote from Mess.be (they were live blogging the event):

“I’m back at home, but here are some final thoughts. I’m very impressed with the event and with an estimated 1500 virtual job interviews, it was obviously a big success. Really, it’s the world turned upside down when you see dozens of HR managers gather together while sollicitants stay safely at home. Adding Messenger to the mix clearly gave the job interviews a more informal touch, and dozens of recruiters even adapted to the new setting by sporadically using emoticons, and by juggling between a pair of conversation windows. “

As a takeway Mess.be also refers to some interesting tips & tricks for jobsearchers that want to take part in job interviews using IM as a communication tool. And since the Virtual Talentum will come back for sure, they’re definitely worth a look:

  • Do not use an immature e-mail address, but rather firstname.lastname@hotmail.com. Create a new one just for this purpose if necessary.
  • Do not put a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model or last weekend’s party pictures as your avatar. Use a decent display picture or don’t use anything at all.
  • Emoticons are inextricably bound up with IM, but don’t exaggerate.
  • Don’t show the music you’re listening to in your PSM (unless you’re confident that all band names and song titles in your playlist are inoffensive). Instead, use the space to display the URL to your online resume, portfolio or LinkedIn profile.
  • Never *EVER* (NOT EVEN BY ACCIDENT, SO WATCH YOUR CAT) hit the Wink button!
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