Today, the Windows Live team made an announcement through the Inside Windows Live blog: they have launched an update to Hotmail, which includes Facebook Chat integration, nested folders, additional Active View partners and much more.
A few months prior to this, the Windows Live team launched a Windows Live Hotmail with an efficient face-lift, including features like Sweep and one-click filters, ActiveViews, the possibility of sharing many large photos in a single email and last but not least a feature that lets you view and edit Office documents directly from Hotmail.
Small updates were also added, such as push email, calendar and contacts through Exchange ActiveSync, simplified reply, source view of a message by right-clicking and also the more visible “Sign out” for Messenger on the web.
Now, besides all of this, Hotmail has brand new features that make it easier to use, more comfortable and more attractive.
The Windows Live team thought of a way of making it easier for all users who are waiting for a delivery, so they added a feature that lights up a package tracking number in Hotmail, through ActiveViews, so that you can know the real time shipping status and avoid logging on to the shipper’s website.
For now, the US Postal Service is fully supported and this update will include FedEx and light versions for UPS and DHL, with links to the shipper’s website instead of having full shipping details in your email.
The next feature was inspired by the feedback that the Windows Live team received and it is something that all Hotmail users were waiting impatiently for: you can now chat with your Facebook friends in Hotmail!
A few weeks ago, this feature was released into the beta of the Messenger app for the PC and last week it was added into Messenger on the iPhone.
As of today, the 250 million Hotmail users that are also on Facebook, will be able to stay in touch will all of their friends from Hotmail.
At first this feature will be available in the United States, the UK, France, Germany, Russia and Brazil, and will be expanded over time to other countries.
In this digital era, email is the main way of sending pictures to your friends and family, and over 1.5 billion photos are shared every month on Hotmail only.
The problem with this is the limited size of the attachments and the far too long time it takes to normally attach a file or a photo.
This is why, over the summer, Hotmail became the first to allow sending up to 10GB of photos per email, as a new album on SkyDrive.
This option is currently available only in the US, but today’s release makes the first step toward spreading it worldwide.
The time problem is also solved by an increase of the total attachment size limit per email to 25MB.
All Windows Live customers like watching videos on YouTube and Hulu and as of this summer, they can do it from any email containing a link to content on these sites.
Today’s release gives the same option for Dailymotion and Justin.tv too.
Finally, everybody likes organized and easy to access emails so the new Hotmail allows you to create folders inside of other folders for an easier management of your email.
These new Hotmail updates will make life easier, and much more fun than before.
So that everything goes smoothly, the Windows Live team will start upgrading a small percentage of Hotmail accounts and the entire process should take several weeks.
Find us on Google+
No user comments yet.
Be the first to express your opinion!
