Tag: microsoft

Hotmail accounts all switching to Outlook.com by this summer

Feb. 19 Email Clients, Email Marketing Comments Off

Microsoft has noted on the official Outlook Blog that all current Hotmail accounts that have not switched to Outlook.com yet will be upgraded by this summer.

In the past six months since its introduction, Outlook.com has grown to an impressive amount of 60 million people actively using the webmail client.

 

outlook_com_email_client

 

The blog post further notes that the Outlook.com team had a certain vision for the new client:

  • Delivering a beautiful, fresh and intuitive experience on modern browsers and devices
  • Keeping people connected to their friends and co-workers across the networks they really use
  • Providing a smart and powerful inbox to handle today’s email needs, including SkyDrive for sharing virtually anything in a single email
  • Putting people in control by prioritizing their privacy

The team has been happy to see people connect their accounts to social networks like Facebook and Twitter, as well as receiving feedback on getting fewer ads and see them replaced with updates from the aforementioned social networks.

 

Another interesting bit is about the typical Outlook.com inbox contents: about 80% of that inbox consists of newsletters and commercial email, quite a large portion! To keep inboxes manageable, the Sweep function (cleaning up old(er) messages automatically) is noted to be well used and well received by users.

If you haven’t upgraded your Hotmail account to Outlook.com yet, you now know it will happen automatically by this summer. The old Hotmail served us well all those years, right?

old_hotmail

Read the full post with more details on the Outlook Blog here.

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Microsoft bashing Gmail with Scroogled website

Feb. 08 Email Clients 1 comment

It has been a bit quiet on the webmail-front lately, but Microsoft is heating up the battle with Scroogled, a new website dedicated to bashing Google’s Gmail.

The website looks like this:

microsoft_scroogled_gmail_google_website

As you can see, it’s making fun of the colorful Google logo, and bashes Gmail for looking for keywords in emails to provide targeted ads.

The Scroogled website is offering a petition to have Google stop going through emails for keywords, as well as promoting Outlook.com as a better webmail service.

Scroogled videos

On the website there are also two videos available to tell how bad Google is, including a part of Eric Schmidt, Google Chairman, quoted saying the following:

“We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are, with your permission; we know where you’ve been, with your permission; we can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”

Here’s the first video:

The second video shows a man and a woman discussing email, where the woman notes that Google goes through his email, and he admits being Scroogled:

The website was down for a short while yesterday actually, only giving a web server error to visitors:

scroogled_down

 

Remember my previous post about the webmail wars? The Gmail Man was part of that story, but Microsoft seems to be taking it up a notch with Scroogled this time, really focusing on that privacy issue: apparently they feel it’s a very big deal. Privacy is important of course, but the way Gmail works is just the way Google search works: with keywords. Will Microsoft be bashing Google Search next because they display ads based on your search queries and promote Bing?

As one Twitter user puts it, he’s not impressed:

 

I wonder what the actual purpose is behind the ‘Have you been Scroogled?’ website – besides of course having people switch over to Outlook.com. Bashing competitors in advertising is nothing new, and especially in the US they’re a fan, however this campaign might come across as childish and lame and work against Microsoft’s intentions. Time will tell.

 

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Skype for Windows updates with Outlook integration

Jan. 14 Email Clients Comments Off

Skype has updated its Windows version to include Outlook integration. The update (version 6.1) also contains a visual update to the toolbar.

Regarding the Outlook integration, the blogpost containing the description of the new features notes that people tend to spend quite some time on email, and do a lot of switching between Skype and Outlook if they use both programs. The Outlook integration includes the following features:

 

Skype contact information in Outlook

skype_outlook_integration

Contacts that are both in Skype and in Outlook now have their contact information added in Outlook.

 

Calling from Outlook

skype_outlook_integration_2

Also, when a Skype contact’s number(s) is/are known, they show up in Outlook and you can call them from there – it saves switching back to Skype from Outlook.

 

Skype contacts are also available in Outlook to call (audio), chat (im) or do a video call

skype_outlook_integration_3

 

The download can be found here, and the blog post announcing the new Skype 6.1 for Windows can be found here.

 

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Microsoft rebrands Hotmail service to Outlook.com

Aug. 01 Email Clients 1 comment

If you’ve logged into your Hotmail account in the past few hours, chances are you’ve been greeted with a message from the Outlook Team noting that the service has been renamed to Outlook.com:

hotmail_outlook_com_email_service

As an existing Hotmail user you have the option to get an Outlook.com email address, while the original Hotmail address email will still be delivered in your inbox. Read more

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Outlook 15 email client preview

Mar. 22 Email Clients 1 comment

The new Outlook 15 email client, which will be part of the Office 15 suite by Microsoft, will have some nice new features especially heavy on social networking. A preview has been posted by Winsupersite.com.

For email marketers there’s also some not so good news, but that will follow at the end of the article.

First up, Outlook 15 will have native integration with Hotmail. Next to that, social network integration includes Facebook and LinkedIn. Like the Windows Mobile 7 OS, the Contacts part is now called People, making it consistent across Microsoft’s line of software products.

A few screenshots:

Social integration – info being called up:

More:

Outlook 15 will also include a weather bar in the Calendar:

One nice feature is the inline replies part. When replying, normally a new window would pop up. Now replies will be composed in the preview pane, just like the Outlook Web app:

A new feature called Peeks allows the lookup of information on objects without leaving your current working window (below calendar):

The not so good news for email marketers is the fact that Outlook 15 will still use Word as the email editor and render engine. This means that we’ll still have to code like it’s 1999 as is the case with Outlook 2007 and 2010.

This summer a public beta is expected of the Office 15 suite, and full release of the software is expected late this year. This will fall in line with the Windows 8 release.

More info here and here.

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