We are happy to announce that Hotmail customers in the US, Canada, and Brazil can now add other e-mail accounts to Hotmail!* No need to sign into multiple services to check all your messages on the web. Instead, you can see any POP-enabled e-mail account (including Yahoo! Mail (Plus), AOL Mail, and Gmail) right from your Hotmail account. You can put all of your messages together in your inbox or each e-mail account in its own folder, your choice.

You can set this up in Hotmail in three simple steps:

(1) Click Add an e-mail account on the left-hand side of the Hotmail inbox.

(2) Type the e-mail address and password for your other account, and click Next.

(3) Choose where you want the messages to go, and click Save.

Note: In order for this to work, make sure POP has been turned on in the POP-enabled e-mail service you want to add (this could involve signing in to the service and changing your settings there).

We hope this feature will help you simplify your digital life!

Windows Live Hotmail Team

* This feature was launched earlier this year in the UK, France, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Germany, and was greeted with some very positive feedback. Today, customers in the US, Canada, and Brazil will see the feature for the first time. More countries will come later this year.

With new web-based instant messaging (IM) now available from Windows Live Hotmail worldwide, we are preparing to retire MSN Web Messenger. The old MSN Web Messenger experience will end on June 30, 2009.

With Hotmail’s new web-based IM, you can chat from your Hotmail inbox or contact list, instead of going to MSN Web Messenger (http://webmessenger.msn.com/). Go directly to the Windows Live People page (also known as “your contact list”) at http://people.live.com and sign into Messenger (orange arrow in the picture below) to continue instant messaging on the web with your Messenger friends.

Instant messaging from Hotmail makes it easier to communicate and share in new ways in comparison to MSN Web Messenger. For example, our integration with the suite of other Windows Live services allows you to see when your Messenger friends are online while reading an e-mail and immediately start a chat to clarify something in your friend’s e-mail message.

Give it a try! We hope that you’ll enjoy Hotmail’s web-based IM, the new version of Messenger on the web.

Your Windows Live Hotmail Team

Do you ever find yourself scrambling to get the address for your child’s sporting event? Or needing to find a friend’s number so you can check when you’re meeting for lunch? You can now use text messaging on your mobile phone to see your upcoming events on Windows Live Calendar. You can also search your Windows Live contact list or add new contacts—all from your mobile phone. No mobile browser or data plan needed—if you can send and receive text messages on your mobile phone then you should check out SMS for Windows Live.

To get started, just register your mobile number with Windows Live. (Don’t worry; this part is easy—there are detailed instructions at this end of this blog post). You’ll then send a text message (SMS) with a “command” to a shortcode:

• If you’re in the US and your mobile operator is AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, or Nextel, your shortcode is MyLive or 695483.
• If you’re in the UK and your mobile operator is Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, O2, or Virgin, your shortcode is 88804.

Standard SMS messaging costs apply in both the US and UK. So your mobile operator will charge your normal rate for each text message you send and receive. There’s no additional charge from Microsoft.

How to use the new SMS services

After you’ve registered your phone number, and started the service, you’re ready to start sending commands. Below are all of the things you can do with SMS for Windows Live, along with the commands you’ll need to know.

Check your calendar
To see your Windows Live Calendar events for today or tomorrow: Send a text message with the command today or tomorrow. Windows Live sends you a text message that lists the date, time, and subject of each event. To get more details about an event, reply with the event number.

Search your contacts
If you aren’t syncing your Windows Live contacts (or if you don’t have a Windows Mobile phone and can’t sync), you can use SMS commands to search your contacts and see contact details. To search your Windows Live contacts: Send a text message with the command srch followed by the name of the person you’re looking for.

Check out all the cool stuff you can do with text messaging for Windows Live.


To register your mobile phone and start using SMS for Windows Live

To use SMS for Windows Live, you need to register your phone and start the service. Don’t worry, it’s simple. Here’s how you do it:

1. On a computer go to the Window Live Mobile website and sign in with your Windows Live ID.
2. In the text box under Set up SMS, enter your mobile phone number and click Next.
3. Check your phone info, if everything looks good, click Next. If any of the info isn’t correct, click change it and make your corrections.
4. We’ll send a text message with a four-digit PIN code to your mobile phone. Enter the PIN code and click Next.
5. Your mobile phone number is registered with your Windows Live account. Now you need to start the service. To start using the new SMS for Windows Live services, under Personal Message, Calendar and Contacts, click Start. You’re all set to go!
   If you haven’t tried the other Windows Live SMS services (they’re not new, but maybe they’re new to you) now is a great time to do so. Under Hotmail, Messenger and other alerts, click Start and check out how you can use text messaging with Hotmail, Messenger and alerts.
6. After you start the service you’ll get another text message with some additional info that our lawyers want us to tell you about.

Tip: Save the text message sender as a contact in your mobile phone, so you’ll have it handy when you need it.

Enjoy the new SMS for Windows Live services!

It’s almost moving time! We’ve been busy getting Windows Live Calendar ready so that we can move all MSN Calendar customers over to the new and improved service on Windows Live.

Over the coming months, we’ll be moving all data from existing MSN Calendar customers over to Windows Live Calendar. The move will be gradual, that is, not everyone will see their calendars change on the same day.

If you’re just trying Windows Live Calendar for the first time, you may notice that while MSN Calendar already gave you easy scheduling of appointments, reminders, and calendar sharing, Windows Live Calendar gives you even more:

• Multiple calendars that can be individually colored and shared
• An easy way to subscribe to public (iCal) online calendars
• Drag-and-drop rescheduling of events
• Holiday calendars based on your location
• A birthday calendar that pulls dates from your Windows Live contact list
• A to-do list to help keep you organized (we’ll move all of your MSN Calendar’s tasks and notes into your new Windows Live to-do list)

Here’s what you need to know for the move:

• If you only access your MSN Calendar through the web, we’ll move all your stuff for you. You won’t have to do anything.
• If you use Microsoft Office Outlook to view your calendar, make sure you’re using the newest version of Outlook Connector. This will allow Outlook to connect directly to your Windows Live Calendar. To find out which version of Outlook Connector you’re using, open Outlook, click Outlook Connector and then select About Outlook Connector. If the version number is 12.0.6414.1000 or greater, you’re good to go. If not, you’ll need to download and install the latest version.
• If you’ve published publically or shared any of your MSN Calendars, you’ll need to publish or share them again in Windows Live Calendar.

That’s it—we’ll do the rest.

Note: Windows Live Calendar doesn’t currently support displaying attachments or sending reminders to a secondary e-mail address.

See you on Windows Live Calendar!

My last post talked about how to create a calendar badge. Assuming you’ve now created a cool new badge, you probably want to customize it so that it matches your website.

You need to know a little basic HTML. Follow these steps to give your badge a new look:

1. First you need to decide what to show in your badge. The badge displays both the calendar grid and the event list by default.  To show just the grid, add the query parameter “l=m” to the iframe tag.  To show just the event list, add “l=a” instead.

2. Next you can choose the width of your badge. There are two choices:  141 pixels or 194 pixels. To make it 141 pixels, add the query parameter “w=n”; to go wider at 194 pixels, change it to “w=w”.

3. You can also choose the height of the event list. There are four different heights to choose from:

a. For a short event list (shows one event): Add “h=s”

b. For medium (3 events): Add “h=m”

c. For medium-tall (5 events): Add “h=mt”

d. For tall (7 events): Add “h=t”

The number of events shown is approximate.  The size of the badge’s calendar grid is not affected by the height of the event list.

4. Now it’s time to give your badge some color. There are six colors in the badge that you can change:

Generate the HTML color IDs for your six colors and then pass them in a query parameter, making sure to leave out the “#” that is normally part of the color code. It should look like this:

c=<backgroundColorId>|<borderColorId>|<textColorId>|<alternateTextColorId>|<linkColorId>|<selectionColorId>

Note: We only accept the three or six-digit numeric color codes, not the color names.

Finally, the iframe itself has dimensions and borders that can only be controlled by your page’s code.  You’ll need to set the iframe’s size so that your badge will fit. Also, give it a frame border of 0 and set scrolling to “no”. You can do this with straight HTML or a combination of HTML and CSS.

Let’s put this all together in an example. We’ll create a tall, wide badge with both the calendar grid and event list. We’ll make the background white and the borders and main text black. We’ll give it gray alternate text, lavender links, and a bluish day selection highlight. Substitute in your own user code and calendar name (see this post for how to get those), and your badge’s iframe tag will look like this:

<iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="194" height="692" src="http://calendar.live.com/calendar/badgeif.aspx?pid=p&user=<userCode>&cal=<calendarName>&h=t&w=w&l=ma&c=ffffff|000000|000000|cccccc|9999ff|ddeeff" />

That’s all there is to it. Happy customizing!

-Evan

We’re happy to announce that Windows Live Hotmail is integrating instant messaging capabilities within its web interface. With this functionality, you can get your email and IM all in one place!  This feature lets you IM your Windows Live Messenger contacts from within your Hotmail inbox or People page without having to switch over to the Messenger client.

The feature arrives today in Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and the US, and joins countries that rolled out web messenger last month (France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and the UK). Not in your geography yet? We will be rolling web-based messenger to more locations in the coming months.

Send an instant message from anywhere – With this new feature, you’ll now have instant messaging capabilities when you use a public or otherwise shared computer, without having to download a client program.  Already logged in to Messenger elsewhere?  Not a problem  -- you have the option to sign-in (or sign-out) from Hotmail through the “Messenger” drop down menu even if you are signed into the client elsewhere.

Start a chat easily and immediately – See something interesting in an email?  Or confused about a friend’s response?  Start a chat instantly with your friend.  Inside an email, simply click on the presence indicator next to the sender’s name to start a chat.  A window will pop up displaying your chat conversation and allowing you to instant message while viewing your email.

All your contacts in one place – You can chat with any of the Windows Live Messenger contacts in your People page (click “People” in the Windows Live header). Or, from the “Messenger” drop down in the top right corner, you can click “view Messenger contacts”. Once you’re on your contact list, click on a person’s picture and select “Send an Instant Message”.

We hope you’re as excited as we are about the new integrated instant messaging feature within Hotmail. Try it out soon and let us know your thoughts!

Your Windows Live Hotmail Team

Do you have a calendar you’d like to share with the world?  With Windows Live Calendar, you can create a calendar badge to post on your blog or website. That way, anyone can see your calendar from any browser.

Here’s what a calendar badge looks like:

You can move forward and backward in time by clicking either a date or the month arrows.  The event list shows events starting from the highlighted day. It will show as many as will fit within the badge’s height. (My next blog post will show you how to adjust the size of your badge.)

Here’s how you create a badge:

1. Click on the calendar that you’d like to share — you can find your list of calendars on the left side of the page.

2. This brings up the calendar settings page. Click Edit sharing, and then Share this calendar.

3. Check the box for Make your Calendar public, and then click Get your calendar links.

4. Click Preview in a web browser—the pop up shows a URL like this:

http://cid-235e8e235b98a7295.calendar.live.com/calendar/My+calendar/index.html.  This can be a little tricky, but I’ve tried to make it simple for you. For the calendar badge URL, the two important parts are your user code (cid-235e8e235b98a7295) and your calendar’s published name (My+calendar).  You will use these values in the final step.

5. Some calendar publishing URLs may not be in the format shown in step 4. If the URL doesn’t start with “http://cid-”, click the Profile link at the top of the page. When the profile page has loaded, the URL will look something like this: “http:// cid-235e8e235b98a7295.profile.live.com/?...” Your user code is there in the URL.

6. Build the HTML snippet for the badge using the user code and calendar published name. Take the following HTML code and replace [user-code] with your user code and [calendar-name] with your calendar’s published name. You can then re-use this HTML snippet anywhere you want to show a badge for that calendar.

<iframe src=http://calendar.live.com/calendar/badgeif.aspx?user=[user-code]&cal=[calendar-name]></iframe>

One wrinkle for you savvy bloggers and web designers is that the badge won’t obey your page’s CSS. But fear not, the badge can still be customized so that it works well in any web page. I’ll leave the details of how to customize your badge for the next post.

Happy sharing!

-Evan

We are aware that some of you may be experiencing difficulty accessing your Windows Live Hotmail accounts. We’re actively investigating the cause and are working to fix this as quickly as possible. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience and disruption this may be causing you.

The Windows Live Hotmail Team

Update:  Service has been restored for all users, and we’re taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again.  Thanks again for your patience, and we’ll make sure to keep you updated. 

In my last post, I talked about how to avoid e-mail overload by using to-do lists to save my messages from an inbox black hole.  But even with those ideas, I still found it difficult to sift through all the e-mail I received on a daily basis.  I knew there had to be a better way to manage my inbox and I thought that some of you may have struggled with this also. Here are some of the tips and tricks that have helped me cut my inbox clutter.

Set up automatic filters

It’s best to use filters sparingly.  When I first experimented with rules and filters, I got very excited and set up them up for just about everything.  I had folders for everyone and filtered the messages by sender.  I quickly found that checking too many folders is a nightmare.  My inbox became useless because it only had the e-mail messages that I didn’t really care about.  So, I refocused my filter efforts.

I removed all the filters for individuals and instead, filtered mailing list and auto-generated e-mail into their own folders.  This greatly reduced my inbox clutter and gave me the control I needed to read those bulk mails when I had time.

Set up reminders

Once I had a good set of folders and filters set up, my inbox was usable again.  But then I ran into a new problem—I didn’t check the new folders regularly, and I couldn’t seem to get into the habit of checking them.  The new folders were turning into smaller versions of my cluttered inbox. Another black hole.

I decided to set up a daily reminder for myself to check those folders.  I created a daily recurring event in Windows Live Calendar for each folder I needed to check, blocked out as much time as I’d need for that folder, and set a reminder for the event.  This turned out to be a great solution because in addition to receiving reminders to check my folders, the event allowed me to block out the time I needed to check them. Problem solved!

Here’s how to create a filter in Hotmail:

1. Go to Options and select More options.

2. Select Automatically sort e-mail into folders.

3. Click New Filter and then choose which message types you want to filter and where you want those messages to go. That’s all there is to it!

Here’s how to create an event in Windows Live Calendar:

1. Go to http://calendar.live.com/, or from Hotmail, click Calendar under Related places in the bottom left side of the screen.

Windows Live Calendar will ask you to select your time zone if this is your first time visiting the site.

2. Click New, and enter your event’s details in the pop-up.  To make it a recurring event or to customize the reminder, click Add more details.

3. Save it and you’re done!

More productivity posts are coming soon.

Enjoy,

Evan

It’s that time again! The Hotmail team has been hard at work since our last release in the fall, and we’ve got a bunch of new features coming out… and we’re rolling them out now! Your Hotmail account has seen a number of awesome changes in the past few months - we’ve introduced a great new look and we’ve made everything faster and easier to use. The new stuff we’ve added came from the feedback you sent in, and we hope you like what you see so far.

If you haven’t seen any changes yet, you will soon! Until then, here’s a quick preview of just a few things to expect: ¹

More room for messages. We’ve moved the banner ad from the top of the screen to the side so you can see more messages listed in your inbox.

Ever growing storage. Our storage grows with you – You start with 5 GB of storage, and it automatically increases as you need it. So you don’t have to worry about whether to keep a message or delete it. ²

Info at your fingertips. Making plans with friends and family is easy. When you’re writing a message, it’s just one click to add local maps, direction, movie times, and more. We’re trying this out in the US and the UK to get feedback for now, but more places are on the way.

A little more social. Open your Hotmail to the Today page to see what's new with the people you know, like the latest stuff they’ve posted on blogs, Twitter or Flikr.

A new way to get Hotmail on your phone. POP3 technology is available to Hotmail users in a bunch of countries for free now, so it’s easy to add Hotmail to the e-mail program on your phone. Check out this blog to find out more.

More style. Choose from more themes and edit your email signature in HTML.

Don’t forget to drop us a message to let us know what you think - we love getting feedback on how to make Hotmail even better. Or if you have any questions, mosey on over to the new Hotmail Online Solutions Center and get answers from our agents, fast.

Thanks for using Windows Live Hotmail!

Sincerely,

The Hotmail team

¹ Some of these features are still making their way out. If you don't see one of these features yet inside your Hotmail account, you will over the coming weeks.

² We've designed Hotmail storage to grow with you, but at a reasonable pace. That means you should have plenty of storage unless you suddenly want to store the planet Jupiter on Hotmail, in which case we'll send you a nice e-mail asking you to please not try to store planets on Hotmail (although gradual storage of planets, moons, and asteroids is ok).

We’ve heard from many of you that you want to sync your Windows Live personal calendar with your Microsoft Office Outlook work calendar. Some of you have already downloaded the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector and can now view and edit your Windows Live Calendar in Outlook. But we’ve gotten a few questions, so we thought we’d post answers to your most frequent questions here.

Q. Can I use the Outlook Connector to access my Outlook calendar in Windows Live?

No; at this time, you can only use it to view and edit your calendars from Windows Live Calendar in Outlook. You won’t be able to see your Outlook calendar from within Windows Live.

Q. What is the Outlook Connector?

Outlook Connector is a free add-in that helps you access and manage your Windows Live e-mail, calendars, and contacts from within Outlook. It works with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2003. For more detailed info about the Outlook Connector, check out this recent post on the Outlook team blog.

Q. Where do I get the Outlook Connector?

To download a free version of the Outlook Connector, go to the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector website.

Q. How can I get help with the Outlook Connector?

If you need help getting started with the Outlook Connector visit the support page for using Hotmail in Outlook on the Office Online website.

Thank you for using Windows Live Calendar!

The Windows Live Calendar team

Do you or does your company host events?  Do you want your friends and customers to easily add your events to their calendars and receive automatic reminders? Do your friends or clients use Windows Live Calendar, or would you like them to start?  (Maybe if they had an online calendar with built-in reminders they’d finally remember to come to your events and parties !)

Today I’ll talk about one way you make your events easily available to Windows Live Calendar users from any Web page.  This allows visitors to your blog or web site to add your event to their Windows Live Calendar in one click.  Well, two really.

All it takes for this to work is a single link in your Web page.  Here’s what the URL looks like:

http://calendar.live.com/calendar/calendar.aspx?rru=addevent&dtstart=20090106T190000Z&dtend=20090106T200000Z&summary=title&location=location

When users click that link, they will go right to Windows Live Calendar with an “Add Event” dialog pre-filled with your data (see below).  All they have to do is click Save.  If they’d like, they can also customize reminders, write remarks in the Details, or make any other changes they’d like before saving it.  Nifty eh?

So, what is all this gobbledygook in the URL and how do you make it work for you?

Looking at the url we first see rru=addevent.  This is required and means the first thing to do after logging in is to bring up the “add new event” form. The additional parameters specify your data:

So all you need to do is complete the URL with your event’s information in these parameters, making sure it is URL-encoded properly  , and you’re ready to go!

Now go ye forth and – no, wait, there’s still one trick here.  What about those dates?  How do you format the date text?  Well, since this was primarily intended for automated use by businesses and developers the date parsing isn’t very forgiving.  It accepts dates in a format that you might normally only see buried in a .ics file, something called an ISO8601 date.  The format for this is:

YYYYMMDDTHHMMSSZ

YYYY is the 4 digit year, MM is the 2 digit month, DD is the 2 digit day.  T is literally the letter T (must be upper case).  HHMMSS are hour, minute, and second in 24-hour time.  The Z also has to be upper case and it means the entire string is a UTC time.  So yes, to use this API you have to first convert your start (and end) time into UTC before you can use this API.  You can also omit the Z and leave the time in local time, but this means the event is in “floating” time.  A “floating” event at 2pm will happen at 2pm in each and every time zone.  It is good if all the visitors are local or if you want an event to occur at midnight no matter where users are located, but not so good for coordinating worldwide events.

Lastly, a couple of tips for best usage:

• Set the target of the link to be “_new” or “_top”.  Calendar uses the entire browser window to avoid layout issues and cross site scripting bugs.  So you should plan for that up front – this target will remind you that this link is going to break users out of your UI entirely.  And when the user is finished we leave her in the Calendar UI rather than returning her to your site, you may wish to target “_new” to maintain site continuity in the original window/tab.
• For the same reason, don’t try to load the link in just one part of your UI if you are using frames.  We’ll break out of the frame and take over your whole UI.

That’s it, you’re now ready to go!

-Evan

Over the past several months, Windows Live Calendar has been in beta. We’ve been experimenting with features, listening to your feedback, and polishing up the service. Now the calendar is ready for everyone and we’re excited to roll it out in more than 45 languages. Here are some of the new features you’ll see.

Expandable weeks let you see more events
Most people look at their calendars in the month view, but until now the grid could only display a limited number of events. Now, you can stay in the month view yet choose to see all of the events in a day by expanding one week at a time. Just select “Show More” in the top right of the calendar grid to always show all of your events or click the “# more…” link to expand just one week.

Collapsed View:


Expanded View:

Charms help you personalize your calendar

Charms are unique to Windows Live Calendar and allow you to add an icon to each of your events. It’s a fun way to visually display your events and allows you to see more events in the month view. One of our team members came up with the idea for charms during his off-hours, and we thought the idea was so much fun that we wanted everyone to have them. To add a charm to an event, just select “More details” and choose a charm to fit your event.

Tweaks and tricks to make you faster
We've made some changes across Windows Live Calendar to match the overall style of the Windows Live services, and we've added support for the Safari web browser. One of our favorite changes is the "split button." Now when you select the arrow next to the "New" button in the header menu, you can immediately create a new event, to-do, calendar or social event. And, speaking of social events, they use Windows Live Events and are a great way to plan parties and share discussions, photos and other stuff with people attending the same event.

We've also made some improvements to calendar sharing. Now, when you share a calendar with friends, family or the public, it's easier than ever. If you want to share your calendar with someone from your contact list, click Add people and then select their name from your contact list, just like you would in Hotmail. It’s a great way to coordinate your family calendar—give it a try! 

Meeting invitations are coming soon
In the next few weeks we’ll be adding the ability to send meeting invitations for an event. You’ll be able to invite others to events and users of many calendaring services and software solutions can accept them for automatic addition to their own calendars. These invitations are also a great way to organize quick dinners, dates, or any other event you can think of.

The move to Windows Live Calendar from the original (MSN) Calendar

In the next few months, for those people using the original (MSN) calendar, we will be moving you to the new Windows Live Calendar. Don't worry; we'll do most of the moving for you! We’ll move your current calendar appointments, meeting requests, tasks, and notes to your new Windows Live Calendar. You’ll be able to find your tasks and notes in the new to-do list. This FAQ has more information about the move and the actions that users may need to take to prepare.

Great features already in Windows Live Calendar

With all the news about our new features, we don’t want you to forget about the other cool stuff that we’ve released over the last year that is now out of beta, as well:

• Synchronization with the calendar in Windows Live Mail which is free software that allows you to manage your mail, calendar and contacts online or offline in an easy-to-use desktop client

• Synchronization with Microsoft Office Outlook via the Outlook Connector so that you can display and update all of your Windows Live Calendars in Outlook 2003 and 2007

• Calendar sharing with friends and family

• To-dos for task management

• Support for multiple calendar views

• Access to your calendar via the calendar “badge” from Windows Live Toolbar and Windows Live Groups (stay tuned for a blog post on how to use the badge yourself)

• “Add to Calendar API” for quick add of events and calendars from other web sites (stay tuned for a blog post on this next week)

• Birthday calendars that automatically create events and reminders for your contacts’ birthdays

• Holiday calendars that are automatically added to your calendar list depending on your country

• iCal (.ics) subscriptions and import for public calendars

• Creation of Event Space invitations (“Social Events”) from within Calendar

• Integration with Windows Live Events allows events created there to display automatically in Windows Live Calendar

• Integration with Windows Live Groups allows calendars created there to be displayed in your calendar list

We’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Please continue to send feedback about things you love about the new calendar or things you’d like to see improved. 

Thanks for using Windows Live Calendar!

The Windows Live Calendar team