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SOFTWARE INDUSTRY NEWS |
Microsoft provides a peek into the up-and-coming revamped Hotmail |
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Microsoft Corp. has provided a preview into its new Windows Live Hotmail free webmail service, billing it as the next generation of personal email.  Marked improvements to the free email service, which Microsoft bought in 1997 from entrepreneurs Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith for an estimated $400 million, include smart tools that help people manage their cluttered inboxes, save time with the most common tasks, share larger attachments and view and edit Microsoft Office files in the cloud via the Hotmail inbox using just a browser.  Clean, sortedHotmail, in its new upcoming avatar, will have a virtual broom that allows users to “sweep” unwanted email out of their choked inboxes. cut through inbox clutter with single-click intelligent filters, view just social network alerts, or just mail from the groups users belong to. Time saving Users, Microsoft said, will also save time while doing the most frequent tasks with their email, specially with things that normally require them to leave their inboxes and go to other websites. Hotmail will also have rich previews of photos and videos from sites such as Flickr and YouTube and will provide real time status updates for tracked packages, all inside their emails. Users will also be able to accept invitations and connect with people on social or professional networking sites such as LinkedIn, straight from the inbox. It will also provide a “conversation view” of email, and advanced automated searches, further aided by an auto complete feature. Safe, secure Hotmail will also get Microsoft's SmartScreen smap and malware cloud-based filtering heuristics technology that is presently part of Microsoft Exchange Service Forefront and Internet Explorer to help protect against spam and malicious code. Users will also be able to flag “trusted senders” - mailing lists or service emails from banks and other service providers that are most commonly impersonated in typical phishing scams. It will also provide single-use codes, an option to ask Hotmail for an SMS of a one- time temporary password that provides enhanced security when using public computers at cybercafes, airports and the like, which can potentially harbour infections from key logging malware that compromise accounts. Other updates and upgrades Other updates or upgrades include optimizations for a rich browsers and touch, aimed at access over the latest phones, including a mobile calender service that helps manage invitations and engagements while aggregating multiple calenders and sharing it with people who matter, either through the phone's web browser or through its ActiveSync feature. Hotmail will also support push email on the mobile phone though Exchange ActiveSync, which is typically part of its Windows Mobile platform. A unified contact list simplifies contact management from social networking services and other competing email services, while integrating IM (instant messaging) in the inbox, even for social networking sites such as Facebook. It will also offer its standard “unlimited storage” and themes to personalize the inbox. Hotmail is said to have around 360 million active accounts worldwide. Users are said to be sharing in excess of 1.5 billion photos and 350 million Ms Office documents through Hotmail each month. According to Owen Sagness, Vice President, Consumer and Online, Microsoft Canada Inc., the upgraded latest version comes after spending “a lot of time listening to customer feedback and thoughtfully designing solutions to meet their needs" and the consequent focus on increased personal productivity. |
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