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Microsoft still struggling with Hotmail issues

Microsoft said Tuesday afternoon that it has reduced the number of people unable to access their Windows Live accounts, but said that some people are still not able to log in.

Since early in the day, a significant number of users of Hotmail and other Windows Live services have been unable to access their information.

"We have made significant progress in decreasing the number of customers currently affected since initial reports, but the issue has not yet been completely resolved," Windows Live product manager Samantha McManus said in a statement. "Microsoft is working quickly and aggressively to … Read more

Outage leaves many Hotmail users cold

Microsoft's Windows Live services experienced a significant outage Tuesday, leaving many users unable to get to their Hotmail inboxes. A company representative said all Windows Live services are affected, though not all users are reporting problems.

Microsoft said it is still trying to determine the cause of the problems.

"We are aware that some customers may be experiencing difficulty accessing their Windows Live accounts," the software maker said in a statement to CNET News.com. "We're actively investigating the cause and are working to take the appropriate steps to remedy the situation as rapidly as … Read more

Microsoft's Hotmail founder goes for the (wrong) Office jugular with Live Documents

Sabeer Bhatia, one of the co-founders of Hotmail (bought by Microsoft for $400 million ten years ago), is on a mission to lobotomize Microsoft's $20 billion Office business. He has an uphill climb.

Bhatia is behind Live Documents, a web-based competitor to Microsoft Word, which purports to offer enterprises an upgrade path beyond the $400/seat offer from Microsoft. The question is, "Don't we already have Google Docs for this?"

Designed to help consumers avoid expensive upgrades and to foster collaboration on a secure internet platform, Live Documents matches features found in Office 2007, the most recent version. It will be given away to individuals with 100MB of free data storage space per user. Companies will pay for the system, either hosted remotely or on an internal server, at a discount to Microsoft?s licensed technology. Aricent, an Indian software services group with 6,700 employees, is the first client.… Read more

Microsoft unwraps Windows Live desktop suite

Microsoft's Windows Live services are living up to its name by going live, losing the "beta" label, and becoming available as a free, Windows suite of six Web-connected applications.

The suite includes Windows Live Mail, which integrates with Hotmail and supports POP and IMAP. Among the other complete desktop services are Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Writer for composing blog posts. Windows Live Photo Gallery manages picture albums that can be uploaded to Microsoft Spaces, MSN Soapbox, or Yahoo's Flickr.

Also final are Windows Live Spaces for blogging, the Windows Live Events invitation service, as … Read more

Fuser solves the multi-account e-mail juggle

A few weeks ago I got to play around with Orgoo, a multi-client e-mail and IM service that's still in private beta. Right around the same time, another e-mail aggregation service, called Fuser, opened up its doors to everyone. Fuser, like Orgoo, lets you pull in a number of Webmail accounts from popular services, and view them in the same in-box, with handy color coding and several ways to separate which in-box you're looking at. Unlike its competitors however, Orgoo forgoes the instant messaging angle in place of integrating social networks, almost like what Flock offered when it … Read more

Orgoo mashes up your mail and IM in a good way

Orgoo is a new service for aggregating all sorts of communication platforms together, in one solution. The easiest way to describe it is a mix between a Web mail client and an IM app. You might say, "well my Gmail and Yahoo Mail already have IM built in." To that I'd say you're right, but Orgoo's take is a little bit like Meebo--take all your existing services and integrate them together in one place.

To start out, just plug in any accounts you want to access. Orgoo will handle five of the major IM clients, along with a handful of Web mail providers including Gmail, .Mac, and Yahoo and Microsoft's premium Hotmail services. You can also drop in any old e-mail account that can be accessed via POP or IMAP. The service can save your passwords and login information, so every time you log in to Orgoo, it will pull in each and every account. I found it really helpful with Gmail, since I could be logged into several accounts at once--which usually requires juggling two different kinds of browsers.

Orgoo's interface is a mishmash of the classical mail inbox. Besides your e-mail reader, which takes on an appearance much like that of Yahoo Mail, you've also got an entire buddy list that resides on the right side of the screen. Orgoo employs drag-and-drop to organize your messages and IMchat logs, and you've got a list of folders which can contain several levels of user created nesting; meaning you can store a message within a folder within a folder within a folder, to your heart's content. You can also organize your IMs into tabs on the top, or pop them out (virtual-desktop style) if it's easier for you to manage.… Read more

Microsoft getting snotty with Apple's Safari

Apple is trying to make its Safari browser relevant to the Windows platform. According to early reports, however, Microsoft disagrees, leaving Hotmail users (who still uses Hotmail????) stranded:

Recent changes to Microsoft's Hotmail service appears to have left Safari-using Mac users out of luck. Currently, logging into Hotmail with a Safari browser causes an infinite redirect loop (or stops when Safari has said "enough redirects!").

Microsoft is big on interoperability, Apple. Try entering into a(nother) patent agreement with the company. That seems to do the trick.

Hotmail users get a storage bump

Microsoft on Monday made a series of updates to its Windows Live Hotmail service, chief among those being an increase in the size of its inboxes. Standard users now get 5GB of storage, while paid MSN Premium and Hotmail Plus accounts now get 10GB of storage.

The move follows Yahoo's decision to offer its mail customers unlimited storage. Google's Gmail currently touts 2.89GB worth of free storage for its accounts. Apple also recently upped its .Mac storage limit to 10GB, split between mail and file storage.

In addition, Microsoft said Windows Live Hotmail is also adding the … Read more

Azooca: a new video mail provider

Azooca is a new video mail service that launched earlier this month. It joins the ranks of other video mail services like Springdoo, EyeJot, and Gabmail to let users send and receive video messages. Azooca steps it up a notch by giving its users a full-fledged e-mail in-box, along with 250MB to store attachments and incoming video messages.

Recording videos is managed entirely within the e-mail composition window, and users get three simple controls to record, play, and stop the recording. Users can also preview their video messages before sending, or save them as a draft. Video clips are limited … Read more

Windows Live Hotmail

Category: Communications

Windows Live Hotmail is the latest iteration of Microsoft's free Web-based e-mail service. The new multipane interface lets you drag and drop messages into folders, or right-click messages for a menu of options. There's also a "Today" tab of news that loads when you sign in. Windows Live Hotmail even lets you choose a color theme in case you feel like customizing it to match your tastes.

Microsoft has also rolled out some useful features like instant spell-check, a built-in audio player, an RSS feed reader, and previews for Office documents and PDFs.

Windows … Read more