LiveSide - News blog : Hotmail

Adding Photos To Hotmail Messages Possible Again

Sunshine — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:16:57 GMT

Back in August, the Hotmail team temporarily removed adding photos to the body of Windows Live Hotmail messages due to a security issue in the upload tool. They have been building an updated version of the tool and now you can add Photos again! Yes, that’s right, the Tool is back!

Instead of adding pictures as attachments to your Hotmail messages by clicking Attach and then File and then selecting the pictures you would like to include, Hotmail brings you a tool so you can more efficiently select and add multiple photos to a Hotmail message in Internet Explorer in a couple clicks: select Attach and then Photo.

Source: Adding photos to Hotmail messages – an anticipated return - Windows Live

Someone went phishing: Thousands of Hotmail accounts compromised

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:02:00 GMT

Tom Warren at Neowin.net is reporting on the temporary release of thousands of Hotmail addresses and passwords, apparently gathered in some kind of a phishing scam. Microsoft is “actively investigating”, according to Neowin. While this is never good news, these compromised accounts don’t appear to be a breach of security within Microsoft or Hotmail, but rather a phishing scam.

We monitor Twitter for a number of keywords/phrases, and are amazed at how lackadaisical some people are at protecting their identities. We also came across a tweet pointing to a website promising “Free Microsoft Points”, which shows at least one way email phishing can/could take place. On the website, potential victims are asked to send a points “generator algorithm” to an email address (obviously, do not do this!!!!!):

"<your email address>start generator<your gamertag>

/v3.0/<how many microsoft points you want>

/generator.mc.v3<yourpassword>generatenow"

So, send us your email, gamertag, and password, wait (don’t change your password!), and you’ll get free points! Sad to think how many people (and we would think especially kids who are eager for a free way to get more game time) would/do fall for this. The site has been reported, but at this writing is still functioning.

Unless you are prone to fall victim to such scams, you’re probably ok, but we agree with Tom Warren that it’s a good idea to take the extra step and change your passwords.

Update: WindowsLiveWire has a post up on the issue, and protecting yourself from phishing

Hotmail begins upgrade rollout

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:50:58 GMT

We told you last week about some upcoming changes to Hotmail, all part of “Wave 4 M1” (M1 refers to Milestone 1, a development marker. Wave 4 development is currently well into M2). Well after some hurried changes to some of the wording in the post we showed you, those changes are beginning to roll out. The post on windowslivehelp.com has been changed (to remove references to Wave 4 and M1) and to update the timing, which now promises these upgrades “by the end of September”. One of our Windows Live friends, Vasudev, tweeted today that he’s been upgraded, and we’ve heard from others as well.

A post on Windows Live Wire verifies that the changes are indeed coming to Hotmail, including keyboard shortcuts, “view online contacts” for Web Messenger, a download all attachments as .zip feature, and auto-save improvements for email drafts.

This isn’t “Wave 4” complete by any means, if anything it’s just the tip of the iceberg (along with our first look at Office Web Apps on SkyDrive earlier today), but it’s a good indication that the ice is beginning to thaw and we should see a lot more from Windows Live in the near future.

Are you seeing this latest version of Hotmail? Let us know in the comments.

Windows Live Wave 4: M1 released; Hotmail changes

Kip Kniskern — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:51:00 GMT

We know Wave 4 is coming, and now thanks to WindowsLiveHelp.com, we know at least a few of the changes coming (here already?) to Hotmail. We don’t appear to be seeing any of them here, yet, do you?

In a post on August 28th (thanks mynetx for spotting this!) titled “New/changed features in Hotmail Wave 4 M1 Release”, we find out that M1 of Wave 4 was released August 31, and rolling out over the first few weeks of September. We haven’t seen anything else about these changes, but here they are, according to the Support Blog post:

Auto Refresh of Inbox: Inbox is refreshed when a user is logged into WebIM, instead of after 60 seconds.
Auto save Drafts: emails automatically saved to drafts as they are composed. Current auto save is set to 3 minutes
Keyboard Shortcuts: “Lots of keyboard shortcuts, including shortcuts to match both Yahoo and Gmail.” Here’s a list of the keyboard shortcuts.
Contact Picker Improvements:
- edit contacts in compose
- recent email data used in auto-complete and contact picker
- copy/paste enabled in IE
- a “verify recipients” feature added
Download all attachments: multiple attachments to an email downloaded together as a .zip file
WebIM Contact List: “view online contacts” added:

Mobile browser improvements: backend changes to improve mobile performance
Action Bar at bottom of page: Reply/Forward/Delete is now available from both the top and bottom of an email.

Hotmail DAV Protocol retired; won’t work in Outlook, Outlook Express, or Entourage

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:21:00 GMT

Last June, the Windows Live Hotmail team posted on some upcoming changes to the way Hotmail is handled by client email readers, and as of September 1st (yesterday, most places), the old protocol, DAV, (or Web DAV) has been retired.

If you hadn’t made changes to continue getting Hotmail in Outlook, Outlook Express, or Entourage, and accessed your mail using DAV, you won’t be able to access your Hotmail. The Windows Live Mail team blog has all the particulars on what to do. In a nutshell, either use the Outlook Connector, use Windows Live Mail, or set your Outlook Express settings to receive POP3.

These changes don’t affect Hotmail on the web, so you can always log in and get your mail that way while you get this figured out ;).

Adding Photos To Hotmail Messages – A Temporary Change

Sunshine — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:27:05 GMT

Have you noticed that you can no longer add photos directly into the body of a Windows Live Hotmail message the way you used to? It’s been temporarily removed, here’s why:

During a recent review, we identified an incompatibility with Internet Explorer that caused a security flaw with photo uploads, and we made the decision to temporarily remove the feature. The Hotmail team takes security very seriously and we expect to bring back the photo upload feature by the end of September. In the meantime, you can still add pictures as attachments to your Hotmail messages, by clicking Attach, and then File, and then selecting the picture you want to include.

We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause you until this fix is complete.

The Windows Live team

Adding photos to Hotmail messages – a temporary change

How large is your Hotmail storage size exactly?

damaster — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 02:53:26 GMT

As part of the new Wave 3 update, Windows Live Hotmail was announced back in 2008 to have “ever increasing storage” – according to the mailbox size at the end of each month. Some call it “unlimited storage”, but Microsoft had been careful to not use this phrase. Our friend PicturePan2 from LiveSino.net noticed that the current maximum mailbox size for Hotmail is 500GB, and this includes email accounts as part of Windows Live Admin Center, Office Live, and MSN Premium. Want some proof? Here are some screenshots from PP2:

1. First up is a screenshot from the good old MSN Explorer, where you’re able to check your inbox folder sizes. Note where it reads Max: 512000MB (translates to 500GB)

2. Secondly we have a screenshot from Office Outlook Connector, where it shows you the size of your Hotmail mailbox as well. Another proof of 500GB here in the new Outlook 2010 Backstage view:

We recall that Hotmail’s storage space will be “ever-increasing as required at the end of each month, subject to abuse control.” It is said that you will receive an automatic alert when your mailbox is rapidly reaching the limit before the end of month, asking you to “slow down”. However, personally I have not yet heard of anyone who are close to reaching this limit, so it is not yet known what will happen when you do reach 500GB. After all, 500GB should be plenty of space for most people out there!

Bing! Instantly Find Answers And Add Them To Your Email

Sunshine — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:55:23 GMT

“Quick Add” has come to Windows Live Hotmail. Well, in Australia, Canada, China, India, US, and the UK that is…

With Hotmail’s quick add feature, now enhanced with Bing, you can easily search, find, and insert content from the web straight into your e-mail messages. With just one click you can add restaurant reviews, movie times, images, videos, maps and more.

Give it a try:

Click New to create a new e-mail message.

Select a category from the Quick add pane on the right.

Type what you want to find in the Bing search box.

Click Insert on the Bing search result that you’d like to add to your message

To try it firsthand, go to Windows Live Hotmail and check out the right-hand side of the screen when composing a new message.

Want a more visual explanation? Check out this demo.

Bing! Instantly find answers and add them to your e-mail - Windows Live

Get All Your Email In One Place!

Sunshine — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:42:06 GMT

Hotmail users in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Germany were already enjoying this feature: the possibility to add email accounts to their Windows Live Hotmail account, so they can read all their mail at one place. Starting today users in the US, Canada, and Brazil can add any POP-enabled email account to their Hotmail!

Setting this up is easy:

(1) Click Add an e-mail account on the left-hand side of the Hotmail inbox.
(2) Type the email address and password for your other account, and click Next.
(3) Choose where you want the messages to go, and click Save.

Note: In order for this to work, make sure POP has been turned on in the POP-enabled email service you want to add (this could involve signing in to the service and changing your settings there).

For an extensive review of this feature, read our previous post here. If you are not in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Japan, Germany, the US, Canada, or Brazil, don’t fret! More countries will come later this year.

Microsoft to discontinue DAV email protocol September 1st

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:13:59 GMT

In a blog post on Windows Live Wire, Microsoft has announced that it will discontinue the DAV protocol for accessing Hotmail on September 1, 2009. DAV (or WebDAV) is an older protocol, not suited to large inboxes, and with free POP3 access for all Hotmail accounts now available, the DAV protocol is no longer needed.

If you are still using DAV to access your email, for example from Outlook (not the Outlook Connector), or from Outlook Express or Apple’s Entourage, you’'ll need to make some changes before September. From the blog post:

If you use Microsoft Office Outlook to view Hotmail, download Office Outlook Connector (it’s free) to continue accessing your Hotmail within Outlook 2003 or 2007. If you’re using Outlook 2002, you’ll need to change the settings in your Outlook program. Learn more about this from the Windows Live Solution Center article on Hotmail and Outlook.

If you use Outlook Express to view Hotmail, you can download Windows Live Mail (recommended) for free, or change your settings in Outlook Express to continue accessing your Hotmail there. Learn more about this from the Windows Live Solution Center article on Hotmail and Outlook Express.

If you use Entourage to view Hotmail, you’ll need to change the settings in Entourage to continue receiving Hotmail messages there. Learn more about this from the Windows Live Solution Center article on Hotmail and Entourage.

Hotmail shuts down mobile browser access, for now

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 22 May 2009 05:09:00 GMT

Hotmail has shut down access to mail through a mobile browser via m.mail.live.com, a service that we told you about when it debuted in February. According to a short post on the Hotmail team blog, the service is undergoing maintenance and they “will bring back the service shortly once maintenance has been completed”. Attempts to reach the service are greeted with

Hotmail

There’s a temporary problem with the service. Please try again later

We’ll keep an eye on it and let you know when service returns.

UPDATE: Well that didn't take long. We were just alerted to an update to the blog post:

We have completed maintenance on Hotmail’s mobile browse service in the majority of geographies. For the few remaining customers we are working to bring the service back in the near future.

Hotmail adds POP – GMail makes hay

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:08:00 GMT

Well it was probably only a matter of time, but GMail has introduced a new feature that makes it easier for users of other email services with POP access to migrate their accounts.

Of course Hotmail, after what seemed to be an eternity, recently added in POP3 access for free to all its users. Now we may know why it took so long. The POP3 access allows GMail to forward messages from the other POP3 accounts, making a transition easier.

One of the things that makes free web based mail services interesting is “stickiness”: that is because it is such a pain to change email addresses (along with the actual migration, you have to let everyone know your new address, reprint business cards, change settings on mailing lists, etc. etc.), you’re more likely to stick with the service you have rather than go through all the trouble to change.

And while it’s not a new idea, GMail’s new migrator, which should be available for new accounts no, and then rolling out to existing accounts in the coming weeks, tries to make that whole process easier. Google is using TrueSwitch, which Windows Live users may remember as the 3rd party manager used to move email accounts from Hotmail to @live.com addresses over. However Google has taken it a step further, allowing switchers to bring their contacts along with them, which wasn't available during the hotmail to live.com switch.

GMail has had its share of downtime lately, and has what might be the ugliest interface of any web based mail in existence, so we're not sure why anyone would want to switch, but there you go.

Windows Live Hotmail - Manage All Your Email Accounts From Hotmail

Sunshine — Wed, 06 May 2009 10:44:00 GMT

Now you can add email accounts to your Windows Live Hotmail account, so you can read all your mail at one place.

To do so, click the “Add an email account” link in the left pane. On the next page simply fill in your email address and corresponding password and click Next. This will suffice for most email providers en Internet Service Providers, no need to worry about port and server settings.

In case this automated check does fail, it will say so in an information bar on the page, please check if the settings are correct. You can verify them by clicking on Advanced Options. This will give you the possibility to adjust the incoming mail server, switch mail port from 995 to 110 (secure connection or not), and if you want to leave a copy of the message on the server.

Once the account settings work you get to the next screen where you can choose if you want to receive mail for that account in your inbox or in a seperate folder. You can even choose a color for the account so you can easily recognize from which account the email arrived, most handy if you choose to receive everything in your inbox.

Of course you can also send emails from the accounts you’ve added, just select the addy from the dropdown when you create a new email message. You will also have to verify that the added email account is yours by clicking a link in an email that will be sent to the added email account.

At the moment the number of accounts you can add is limited to 4. Also note that if you reached this limit and decide to replace one with another by deleting one of the accounts you’ve added and adding a new, that you can’t add a new one straight away:

It could also be that this option is not available in your country, but surely if it isn’t it will soon. I noticed because an article appeared on the Dutch Windows Live Blog, LiveLog Nederland. Normally I use Windows Live Mail to check my mail, so I’m not on the web version that much. I’ve added accounts into my Hotmail anyways as this might come in handy if I ever want to check my mail from my mobile (mobile.live.com) or elsewhere.

Go on, give it a go.

Web IM In Hotmail

Sunshine — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:50:53 GMT

Web IM is coming to Hotmail. It became available to users in France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and the UK last month and starting today it will roll out to Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and the USA. If your country is not in this list yet, don’t fret! The team will be rolling out web-based Messenger to more locations in the coming months.

So now, even if you are on a computer without Windows Live Messenger installed you can IM your buddies! I can think of quite a few situations in which this proves very useful. All you have to do is go to Windows Live Hotmail, sign in to Messenger there and you are set to go.

If you do have Messenger installed and are signed in you will be notified that you logged in to two places (MPOP):

The second image shown is the one that will be shown at the bottom of Hotmail.

You can start an IM from a mail your buddy has sent you by clicking the status indicator next to your buddies name in the header:

(ohh noes I can’t, he’s offline)

or from the People page:

This will result in a web-messenger popup if no messenger on that computer, or the opening of a regular conversation window if you are signed in on Messenger on the computer used.

If you have more than one Windows Live ID, you can sign in to web Messenger and regular Messenger at the same time, with different IDs.
Don’t worry, people can only see your availability if you’ve agreed to be their Messenger contacts. You can sign in and use Hotmail or any other Windows Live service without signing in to web Messenger, so nobody can start chatting with you until you decide to let them know you’re available.

If you are residing in one of the mentioned countries and don’t see it yet, be patient as it is gradually rolling out. Also make sure you got the language set correctly. I normally have Hotmail set to English but found that I needed to set it to Dutch (country in my account is set to the Netherlands, as that is where I live) in order to be able to get Messenger in Hotmail. That is also the reason why you see Dutch in most of the screenshots, if you want to see English ones head on over to the team’s blog post or windowslivewire. Our Chinese sister site www.LiveSino.net, also has a post up about this.

P.S. Offline messaging is not supported (thanks zeke009, I forgot about that).

More Windows Live Mobile Wave 3 Updates for Hotmail, Messenger and Home

damaster — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 03:17:49 GMT

Last time we told you about the new Windows Live Hotmail Mobile beta. Yesterday the team on Windows Live Wire announced that the new Windows Live Hotmail for mobile is now final! Together with the announcement, the team also mentioned the new updates for Windows Live Home Mobile and Messenger Mobile – finally including the new Wave 3 Mobile look for Messenger Mobile! Here’s what they announced:

Windows Live Messenger for mobile has a new look and feel and now links directly to Windows Live Home, so you can easily navigate between services.

Windows Live Home for mobile has an improved What’s new list, with ten items appearing in the list instead of five. You can also see the things your friends are doing online at places such as Twitter, WordPress, Flickr, and more. And you can always read the full text of your friends’ personal messages.

I just went to the Windows Live Messenger for Mobile website on http://mim.live.com and although I’m seeing the new pips (instead of the old buddy icons to display your contact’s status), ~~the overall theme hasn’t yet been updated to the new look~~. Update (April 23): The update has been fully released! What I really hope they’ve implemented is the support for multiple places sign-in, as currently it’s quite annoying that Messenger will sign you out as you’re logged in to the mobile web version. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Check out http://mhome.live.com on your mobile browser for the updated Windows Live Home for Mobile.