Your mail is here, come and get it!

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