Microsoft Pushes Windows Live Hotmail For Public

After Google, its Microsoft’s chance to provide more space to its e-mail customers. Microsoft Pushes Windows Live Hotmail from its Beta status for public use. Though it was in news since the ending of year 2005 with the name “Windows Live mail”, but after going through its beta status, Microsoft has changed the name to “Windows Live Hotmail”. According to Microsoft, this product is a significant upgrade to MSN hotmail. It gives flexible access via the web on a mobile phone or with an e-mail client. Microsoft’s main aim was to bring all its services like Live.com, Live Search, Windows Live messenger, Windows Live space and Windows Live hotmail to a single mega service.




Presently Windows Live Hotmail is in two versions, the classical version to run smoothly on a slow speed internet pc and the Full version for high speed internet users. Full version offers the feature of viewing messages in the preview pan like we do in Outlook 2003 & 2007.



Features

A fresh new look, more space (2GB), some added features and accessing all the microsoft services in a single click. You can search the web as well as your mail from your hotmail account. Using Contact Importer you can directly import your contacts from outlook mail client to your hotmail client. This tool is a free download from the hotmail web site. You don’t need to add all the contacts manually. Simply run this exe to upload all your contacts from outlook to your hotmail account.




Security


Microsoft does the home work to finding out whether the mail in your mailbox is from a secure source or is a phishing attempt by some bad guy. You can mark your mail safe if it is form a known sender. The red and yahoo bar present at the top of your mail warns you about these attempts by making the un-secured mail to appear in red color and the safe one in yellow. Microsoft in collaboration with Micro Trends, makes your mails virus free.



But still it lags with Google in terms of the space availability. Windows Live Hotmail offers 2 GB of space when compared to Gmail at 2.8 GB. Yahoo is a way long way back with 1GB of space. If you need more space in your Hotmail account, you can pay extra 20 bucks to get it. Yes, you can get extra 2GB of storage by paying $20 per year. Microsoft also announced its new product, “Microsoft Office Outlook Connector Beta” using which, all its live hotmail customers over the web can access their mails free using Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007. In future, Microsoft is also looking forward to introduce its Windows Live Mobile mail product.

So, What are you waiting for? Get your Windows Live hotmail Now .



To Read more about this just click the links below:


Windows Live Hotmail to debut Monday


It Lives! Microsoft launches Windows Live Hotmail


Microsoft to introduce Windows Live writer


Windows Live Hotmail Briefing

Microsoft & Yahoo!

A Surprising Rumors Or A Big Deal On Internet



Though this information was declared as a rumors by Yahoo, but talks of Acquisition by Microsoft, boosted up Yahoo's stock price for a day. This Rumors helped Yahoo to improve its stakes last Friday when Yahoo's shares surged $2.80 or 9.9 percent to $30.98, while shares Microsoft fell 41 percent to $30.56 (Courtesy: Physorg.com )





It was recently sited in Wall Street journals and in many local news papers in India as well that Microsoft and yahoo would go for a tie to overcome the dominance of the largest search engines of this planet “Google”. But sources clearly displays that a combined Yahoo-Microsoft, sill cannot defeat Google. According to Physorg.com in march, Google had 48 percent shares of the whole US search market, where as Yahoo and Microsoft together cannot be more than 38.5 percent. Google have also proven to be the best search engine on internet. According to one of the US sources COM Score Media Metrix , Google has 43.7 percent of visitors when compared to Yahoo and MSN at 28.8 and 12.8 percent respectively.





But still Microsoft due to its windows updates, manages to get more visitors to its website than Google. Late in 2005 when both Microsoft and Yahoo were trying to by the stakes of AOL, Google paid $1 Billion to purchase 5 percent stakes of AOL to make its position more secure. Recently, a week back, Yahoo declared that it would buy 80 percent of advertising Exchange Right Media for $680 Million as a result gaining full control in that company.


Google is growing un-stoppable in the areas of providing internet services and advertising markets. With its successful products like Adsense and Adwords, Google is generating a lot of profit. Even the products like photo management, Blogging service, video and instant messaging are also doing good. The major difference in Microsoft’s and Google’s strategy is whenever Microsoft releases a product in beta testing, this product will be available only to selected users. This runs counter to the strategy of Google, which pushes out services to users in rapid fire fashion even if they remain in beta for years. The best example of this is the Microsoft's Hotmail upgrade (Launched globally on Monday) was in beta. Part of what Microsoft has to do is launch the things which were there in background.



To Read more just click on one of the links below


See What Microsoft CEO Ballmer Coy had to say Yahoo Acquisition

Microsoft yahoo Deal : Not if, but when, analysts say

With Yahoo deal off, what next for Microsoft ?

Talk of Acquisition by Microsoft boosts Yahoo’s stock price

No Signs of Microsoft-Yahoo Deal

Microsoft-Yahoo Deal may hurt Google ad sales

Yahoo! Mail Beta

This was introduced in mid 2005, but it’s still getting popular day by day. It’s a whole new way of mailing experience over internet. Let’s see few of the new features in Yahoo Mail beta due to which it has become more popular. There is lot of similarities in this new version of Yahoo Mail with Microsoft outlook.

New features in Yahoo Mail beta:

First thing is its new look. Now it is possible to work as you use to on Microsoft Outlook. Message can be viewed in the reading pane, just by clicking on it. In the earlier version, you had to click on the message to open it, which in turn opens a new window. But that is not the case here.

Drag and drop option is introduced, messages can be directly moved into the folders which ever you would like. This can be done just by dragging and dropping the message, same like in Microsoft Outlook.



Now, it is possible to Cc and Bcc a message to different recipients. Earlier only To field use to be there, in this version, Yahoo has introduced Cc and Bcc fields also.



This client is more secure than the earlier one. Every attachment is scanned for Virus before downloading it to the local pc by Norton Antivirus. Once the Virus scan is completed, a pop up window appears, allowing you to download the attachment. One more security feature is the Spam filter, by switching the spam filter to on, Yahoo automatically re-directs the Spam messages to Spam folder instead of inbox Folder.



Adding contacts is just a few clicks away. Now it is easier to create a new contact in your account. Yahoo Mail Beta version organizes contacts in a well structured manner, as a result users will find it easier to create and view the contacts in their accounts.






The Calendar and Event manager together creates a whole new experience of remembering things for the user. You can set the events so that you don’t forget important meetings with your clients.




All together, yahoo mail Beta creates a whole new experience of viewing mails on a third party mail client. That’s the reason why Yahoo is mostly admired all over the globe. For the latest development in Yahoo, visit my upcoming post.

Code Of Conduct For Bloggers

Its been in news from quite some time now after BBC interview Jimmy. This was really needed, thanks to Jimmy Wales and Tim O Reilly who proposed the code of conduct for Bloggers. Today the Blogosphere is expanding with a more faster rate than ever. According to the sources gathered by Headlines Today, the number of blogs have increased from 8 Million in 2005 to 70 Million in 2007.

Blogoshpere being the vast area, infact very vast area, there should be some kind of laws governing the Bloggers. By seeing this initiative by Tim and Jimmy, many top players are comming forward to take part in creating this central governing body for Blogosphere.


Jimmy Wales is the founder of the free encyclopedia available on net "Wikipedia "
Read about Wikipedia . In his interview to BBC radio, Jim raised a question for all the Bloggers around the globe, which is "Do we allow people to use our blogs as places to embark on threatening behavior and really abusive personal insults?"


Tim O Reilly is a Internet Publisher and a founder of OReilly Media Inc. According to Tim, this Draft for Bloggers code of conduct has already been prepared which will soon be hosted on its official site.bloggingcode.org
Read more about what Tim has to say about this on his official web site
here.

The guidelines of this Code will be

1) Delete Thretening material from the posts.
2) Delete the Blog if it is abusive
3) Action against bloggers if they attack others.
4) Blogger is responsible for the comments made on his blog.
5) Anonymous comments should not be encouraged



But I don't think that the last point made above is relavent. Bloggers should encourage anonymous contents. Because the person who makes a negative comment on your blog will not like his identity to be disclosed in front of you.

Even after encouraging anonymous comments, we can be on save side by keeping moderate comments. Which can be hosted on your blog only when the respective author approves it.


If the Code of conduct is formed, we can soon se a governing body named, "Blogger Engineering Task Force"

Microsoft's Office 2007

Microsoft has Launched “ Office 2007 ” formerly known as office 12. The development of which is in news from mid 2005. This post features this new version of office from Microsoft. Office 2007 is a whole new software which was released in the beginning of this year.


The Ribbon of standard menus is designed to quickly access all the menu options for formatting a document. The text alignment is 2 ways, top bottom and left right. Lets see the features of each program in depth. Every application has a zooming scale in the right side corner of the application window. See the Ribbon below:



The menu is more advanced. Now, you can save the documents in the format which is compatible with earlier versions of office. Se the menu of word 2007 below:



Word



Word has become more advanced. In earlier versions, you would select the property to check whether it suits your document. But in word 2007 you can just bring the mouse pointer to that property and automatically the text will change to that property. Same is the case with the picture format. Some new format’s which has more graphical view has been introduced in this new version of office. By marking a document as final, you can make it as read only in a single click.


Power Point


Power point has become more user friendly. The major tool introduced is presenter view. This tool is used to work on power point using two monitors. In which you can do rough work (generally navigation work) in your screen while the second screen displays the presentation to the audience. You can also record your narration with just a single click



Excel


Excel has become lighter; Microsoft has put more significance to graphical user interface. Now the formulae are just a single click away. Your sheet can be more secure with the range protection password, in which you can select particular range of cells and apply permissions to different user on it. Security is at granular level.



Outlook


Outlook 2007 is intelligent enough to configure your internet mail address. Just enter your name, email address and the password. Outlook will search for the respective POP3 and SMTP server over web.

Outlook 2007 supports the mailbox hosted on Microsoft Exchange 2003. One very useful and important feature in outlook 2007 which was also available with office 2003 is the availability of RSS feeds. You can configure the RSS for your favorite bog and news websites so that you can be updated whenever that site is updated. The instance search feature provides the capability of desktop search, you just have to download this exe from Microsoft web.

You can select, the particular time at which your message should be delivered. There is a facility to insert business card in your mail. New thing is “To do bar”, in which you can track your daily tasks. Also it communicates with the share point server over web 3.0 and lists all the tasks in your account. You can also track the mail which is marked as follow-up. Overall, outlook is just same as outlook 2003 with slight modifications.

Now you can view the attachment of the mail in the same windows which you are using to view the mail. No need to open the attachmeent with a different program.



Office Publisher


With office publisher you can create, Advertisements, Award Certificates, Banners, Brochures, Business Cards, Envelops, Greeting Cards, Gift Certificates etc. You can design a whole website using office publisher.



Saving files

All the applications give you the flexibility to save the document in such a way that it has backward compatibility with previous versions of office but with some exceptions. In the save as option, you can save your document such that it can be opened with earlier versions of office.

Office 2007 has a new file format, which is based on XML. The result is the more secure and efficient office. The specialty of XML format is as follows:

1) The documents which are saved are 75% smaller than their actual size.
2) File recovery is at more granular level. Now you can recover the table from a file.
3) Document can be shared more securely with Document inspector
4) Different file extensions for easier identification (Default is .docx, .xlsx, .pptx etc…and the files which extension ends with m, contain macros.)


The Translation Issue


Translations are still a major concern for every software industry. I translated my name from English to Arabic and I got the following result.


If you know Arabic language, you would jump laughing in front of your system. This is translated from left to right but Arabic language is written from right to left.

To put it simple in front of you, it is like “nahK ilA tasariV riM”


My View about Office 2007

Overall I could say only one word, “WoW”. Enjoy the below slide which I have created in power point 2007.


Top Ten Benefits of Microsoft (Courtesy: Microsoft Corporation)

Desktop

Access 2007

Accounting Express 2007

Excel 2007

Groove 2007

Info Path 2007

OneNote 2007

Outlook 2007

Power Point 2007

Project 2007

Publisher 2007

Share Point Designer 2007

Visio 2007

Word 2007



Servers

Forms Server 2007

Groove Server 2007

Live Communication Server

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

Performance Point Server 2007

Project Server 2007

SharePoint Server 2007

SharePoint Server for Search 2007


Services

Live Meeting




Important Links

MSDN Blog


A Glimpse at New Office 2007 Features Via Word


Accessibility in Office 2007.