News just announced. Windows Live Hotmail is out of beta. No great shock there -this has been in the offing for a long time- but there are some other interesting bits of associated news. Here's the pertinent stuff
- On the surface Windows Live Hotmail is simply an AJAX-enabled version of Hotmail that has been around for years. That doesn't sound like huge news but they are claiming that there are many changes under the covers that will enable them to add new fancy features in the future. So if I put two and two together correctly I'm guessing that we can expect a Silverlight interface one day.
- Access to Live Hotmail from Outlook. And not just normal POP accounts, there will be full synchronisation abilities. Software and Services working together - the Ozzie revolution is well underway.
- Synchronisation betwen Live Hotmail and your Outlook client will include all your contacts. So now you don't have to have seperate lists of contacts everywhere. Outlook, Hotmail, Messenger...they'll all use the same. Finally!!!
- Windows Live Mail is a free desktop email client to replace Outlook Express (which comes with Windows XP) and Windows Mail (comes with Vista). That will be announced more formally in the coming weeks. Synchronisation will work there too.
- @Live.com addresses aren't available yet
The gloves are off. Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Live Hotmail are about to do battle.
-Jamie
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