LiveSide - News blog : Hotmail Plus

POP3 Access for Hotmail here/coming soon?

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:01:32 GMT

A Dutch website, www.iphoneclub.nl, is reporting that at least some users are able to access Hotmail on their iPhones using POP3, which has been promised for Hotmail for free but up until now has only been available with a Hotmail Plus account.

Another iPhone news site, iPhonetunes, has an English translation of the Dutch post.

A quick test here didn’t get it working with a mail client (no iPhone to try), and we suspect this may be a trial in the Dutch market before deploying more widely, but for those of you who want/need Hotmail POP3 access for your iPhone etc, it may be coming sooner rather than later.

Updated: Office Live Workspace, Hotmail, Windows Live Translator

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:40:23 GMT

While none of the updates are in the “mind-blowing” category, three Live services have announce updates this week. First up, Office Live:

We have good news

We have taken all of the findings and with the help of the Office and Windows teams come up with a solution that closely delivers on our primary goal – to make integration as seamless as possible. We can now present to you a single package available as a single download, the “Office Live Update 1.1” which:

Installs the necessary performance updates so that we don’t make roundtrips, and makes the network stacks “smart” so they do the right thing for OLW

Installs the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant that ensures that logging into the browser essentially logs you in to Office, so you don’t get prompted again and again

Installs the new Office Live Add-in v1.1 which shows who you are logged in as right there in the menu flyout.

We have made this available in all our new international languages, too. Let us know how this works for you, as we are still working on further improvements. And, as always, we thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback because it really helps us get better.

Hotmail has been updated, too:

You can check out how snappy the classic version is when you try the following things:

Read messages in your inbox

Delete and move messages

Read messages in different folders

Check for new messages by clicking on your inbox or other folder

The classic version works the same, and looks the same, but now it is more like the full version, updating what you see on the screen without reloading the whole page.

In future releases, you’ll see more about how we’re making the classic version faster and also adding features to it.

The classic version works for a huge range of browsers: Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox 2.0+, Safari 2.0+, and other modern browsers.

Pulling in messages from other accounts

If you’re a paid user, we’re making it easier for you to add a non-Hotmail account! Paid users will see a link in their inbox that says “Add an e-mail account.” If you click that link, we make it easy to pull in messages from your other accounts outside of Hotmail. You can add a POP3 account this way. This feature has been in MSN Hotmail and Windows Live Hotmail for years, but now we’re able to automatically set up many POP3 accounts even if you don’t know your POP server settings.

And improvements to Windows Live Translator, as well:

English to Spanish general domain system deployed on live site

Our team is constantly working to improve our translation quality. As you know, some of our general domain systems are powered by third party systems, while we develop our own technology for these languages. This month we rolled out our own English to Spanish general domain system, which significantly beat our quality bar. Spanish is our highest traffic language, so we’re really excited about improving this system for our Spanish users. Check it out!

Link to Encarta dictionary

Have a word that may have multiple translations in another language? Take the example of “boot” – this could mean a shoe, or a verb talking about starting up your computer. The Encarta dictionary allows you to look up a word and short phrase and offer you multiple translations. In addition to the different variations of “boot” in Spanish around the globe, it also offers an alphabetical list of similar words to help you pick out which version you meant.

Star rating

Translation quality varies widely depending on the content being translated, and the training data we have used to train our engine. Help us improve the system by letting us know where we are doing well, and where we need improvement, by rating our translations. This will help us learn where we need to focus on improvements. This feature is located just below the translated text on the left.

Report offensive translations

Machine translation is an imperfect process – and it doesn’t always catch inadvertently offensive translations! Help us improve the system by reporting any offensive translations that you see.

You can read more about the updates by following the links.

Windows Live Hotmail gets update - 5GB inboxes for free, 10GB for Plus

Chris — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 05:46:00 GMT

Yes the Hotmail team has been quiet for a while since their v1 launch, however they've just launched a small but feature-packed update. As well as offering free accounts the new storage size of 5GB, paying customers (Hotmail Plus or MSN Premium) now get 10GB.

Ellie over on the Hotmail team has blogged the full list of changes, here's a few we're glad to see released:

Improved contact management lets you merge duplicate contacts. This is a personal favourite, so nice work by the Contacts team.
Auto-away messages, useful for when you go on holiday
Account forwarding, so now you can forward your Hotmail account to Gmail or Yahoo. Why you'd want to do that I don't know ;)

As is usual with the Hotmail updates, features will be rolled out to the various bays in order to minimise any potential problems. We'll keep you updated on how this progresses.

More on the free Outlook Connector beta and other e-mail FAQs

Matthew — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:21:00 GMT

As of September 27, 2004, all new Windows Live Hotmail accounts, including Office Live and Custom Domains don't have HTTP [WebDAV] support through Outlook and Outlook Express. In fact, for those users who haven't upgraded to Windows Vista, the new version of Outlook Express [Windows Mail] doesn't even have HTTP support for premium or old accounts. It's quite confusing, but thankfully Windows Live Mail is in beta and should relieve some of that confusion.

For business users and those who still prefer Outlook, Outlook Connector is now free for all Windows Live Hotmail accounts. People ask me why they would want connector if they already have HTTP accounts and there are a few reasons:

The beta version now also synchronizes with more folders, including Drafts. In fact, the new folder list will include: Deleted Items, Drafts, Inbox, Junk E-mail, Outbox, Sent Items, [and if using 2007] Search Folders. WebDAV only synchronizes Deleted Items, Inbox, Junk E-mail, and Sent Items.
Contacts! Although Outlook Express supported synchronization through Windows Address Book, that is now gone in Vista. Note--For those who only want to export in contacts in a spreadsheet without using Outlook can go through Windows Live Hotmail.
Only for Premium accounts: Calendar. Unfortunately Microsoft has perhaps added more confusion by withdrawing this feature from free accounts, but on the other hand they still have to give a reason for Premium accounts to pay. Thankfully the majority of features with Outlook Connector are free, but think of it this way: there's Outlook Connector Standard and Outlook Connector Premium. The calendar feature is also quite nice, it will even download shared calendars from Windows Live Calendar. There is also a free Office Online Internet Calendar Publishing Service for free accounts.

If Calendar sync is needed, an MSN Premium, Hotmail Plus, or a paid Office Live subscription would be required. Interestingly enough, Outlook Live [MOOL] disappeared months ago, apparently after the decision to make Outlook Connector free. MOOL had the promise of giving a 1-year lease on Outlook, with any updates to Outlook included in the subscription [i.e. from 2003 to 2007].

Users who try to add a free account should be prompted to upgrade to the beta. In addition, the new Outlook Connector is listed as a supplement attached to the license of Outlook, which seems to indicate that all support would go through Office.

As Chris said, there is more information and screenshots on the Office Online site, however the shots don't have the Outlook Connector menu or toolbar. You would think Microsoft would not want to add to the confusion? For a demo of the connector, see the MOOL online demo [a lot of the features are the same]. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know!

@Matthew

Windows Live Hotmail launches; "Windows Live Mail" to succeed Outlook Express and Windows Mail

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 07 May 2007 11:00:00 GMT

Microsoft just announced that Windows Live Hotmail is launching globally in 36 languages, double the number of languages offered by its predecessor MSN Hotmail. You can read the press release here.

I talked to Paul Major, Director of Windows Live Hotmail, on Friday to clarify some of the details of the announcement (unfortunately had a few technical problems with the recording, so we'll work off my notes :) )

Here are the details:

First, what this announcement means is that new Hotmail accounts (and no they won't have @live.com addresses yet. What Omar Shahine told us in our interview still holds true, and the first order of business is still the transition) will be created as Windows Live Hotmail accounts. Existing accounts will be able to migrate over to the new service, but that ability to switch over will continue to be rolled out over the next days and weeks, as it has been already.
Current MSN Hotmail users will be encouraged to make the switch in the coming months, and Major said that the transition should be largely complete by November of this year.
Two new features are being announced:

first, within a few weeks the Outlook Connector for MSN beta will be made available free to all Windows Live Hotmail users. This means free access to Hotmail accounts will be available from Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007. I asked Paul Major what that means for Hotmail Plus, the paid premium service that was necessary previously to utilitize the Connector. He said that Hotmail Plus is not going away, and that there are plans for added premium services in the works.
next, and as we reported at LiveSide, a new beta to be known as Windows Live Mail will be made available "in the coming weeks" and will be the successor to both Outlook Express and Windows Mail in Vista as Microsoft's free desktop email client. Major said that anyone using the Windows Live Mail desktop beta will be familiar with "Windows Live Mail", but how much this new beta will be different from current builds of WLMd remains to be seen. Major said that in the future Windows Live Mail will be the only supported free email client, and all development work going forward will only be on Windows Live Mail.

(So, what was Windows Live Mail is now Windows Live Hotmail, and Windows Live Mail desktop is now Windows Live Mail, and Outlook Express and Windows Mail (in Vista) are being phased out. Wonder if there's a Live Maps Collections for the name changes??)

In addition, Windows Live Hotmail continues to improve the mobile experience. Using Windows Live Hotmail for mobile (http://mobile.live.com) WL Hotmail is accessible on a web enabled phone or pda, and Windows Live for Windows Mobile, shipping with Windows Mobile 6 will provide an even better Windows Live Hotmail online and offline experience.

Windows Live Hotmail Plus mailboxes go to 4GB

Chris — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 04:54:00 GMT

Along with recent news of Windows Live Hotmail being updated to M10 and talk of it being released in the coming weeks,the latest news is that Hotmail Plus users will now notice the storage meter showing 4GB. As usual the Mail team is rolling this out in stages, however you can at least feel slightly superior to your Gmail friends now. Just don't mention it to anybody with a Yahoo! Mail beta account though.

Further information on the rollout is available on the Hotmail Support blog and there are some more Windows Live Hotmail Plus features if you are interested. Here's a shot in the dark - anybody heard what will be happening to MSN Premium?

Windows Live Mail Plus to offer 4GB storage

Chris — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 00:06:00 GMT

As more Windows Live services launch out of beta in the next few months, one of the unanswered questions still remains around premium subscribers. Some good news for Hotmail Plus users comes in the form of Windows Live Mail Plus, which is currently only marketed in Holland.

Features:

4GB inboxes from Spring 2007 *New*
Attachments upto 20MB
No advertisements (across several Windows Live services, including Mail, Mail desktop and Spaces)
Microsoft Outlook access
No disabling of your account due to inactivity
Yearly cost remains at €19.99, expected £14.99 and $19.99 when launched in other regions

While the addition of 4GB storage may seem like overkill for email, Gmail is currently on ~2.8GB, it makes more sense if you can share it between services. While Live Drive is not yet released, this would seem like an appropriate place for it to integrate with Windows Live.