Outlook.com

Windows Live Hotmail logo

Windows Live Hotmail logo

Windows Live Hotmail logo
Hotmail Inbox Hotmail Inbox Windows Live Hotmail inbox
Developer(s)	Microsoft
Stable release	Wave 2 (Build 12.1.0068.1031) / August 13 2007
Available in	Multilingual (35)
Type	E-mail, Webmail
License	Proprietary
Website	http://hotmail.live.com

Hotmail (officially Windows Live Hotmail) is a free webmail service by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Live range of services.

The current version was announced on November 1, 2005 as an update to Microsoft's existing MSN Hotmail service. After a period of beta testing, it was officially released to new and existing users in The Netherlands on November 9, 2006 as a pilot market. The world wide release was on May 7, 2007, and roll-out to all existing users was completed in October 2007.

It features 5 GB of storage, patented security measures, Ajax technology, and integration with Windows Live Messenger, Spaces, Calendar and Contacts. It has over 380 million users worldwide and is available in 35 different languages.

Features

Like other major webmail services, Hotmail uses Ajax programming techniques and supports the most popular internet browsers (Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox). Some of its features include keyboard controls giving the ability to navigate around the page without using the mouse, advanced message search including structured query syntax such as "from:ebay", message filters, folder-based organization of messages, auto-completion of contact addresses when composing, contact grouping, importing and exporting of contacts as CSV files, rich text formatting, rich text signatures, spam filtering and virus scanning, support for multiple addresses, and different language versions. POP3 access, although not directly available through Hotmail, can be accessed via Windows Live Mail, and Microsoft Outlook with Outlook Connector.

Users can choose from two different versions of Hotmail. The "Classic" version keeps the interface and layout based on MSN Hotmail, while still benefitting from the speed of Ajax technology. The "Full" version employs a more advanced user interface styled on that of Microsoft Outlook, with a reading pane and drag-and-drop capability. All other features are available in both versions.

Hotmail also includes some capabilities not commonly found in other webmail services:

• Audio player

An integrated audio player which plays voicemails or MP3 audio clips after scanning the file for viruses.

• Color schemes

Hotmail offers a choice of color schemes. Users can choose from the default Windows Live "Blue Vapor" theme, or blue, red, black, silver, pink, green, purple or orange variants.

• Integration

Hotmail integrates with other Windows Live services. Users can see if their Windows Live Messenger contacts are online and start instant messaging conversations from Hotmail. Integration with Windows Live Spaces and Windows Live Contacts provides the ability to have contact information kept automatically up-to-date, as well as provide notification of updated Spaces. Windows Live Calendar will also be accessible through the Hotmail interface upon completion; MSN Calendar is currently available.

• Reading pane

The redesign of Hotmail was centered around an Outlook-style appearance, with a reading pane to view the inbox and messages at the same time, drag-and-drop functionality, keyboard selects for using the Ctrl or Shift keys to select messages and right-click context menus. As with Outlook, the reading pane can be displayed at the side of messages, below them, or not at all.

• Security

Security features built into Hotmail include Trend Micro virus scanning, SenderID, SMTP Authentication, phishing heuristic detection, Bonded Sender, mailing list detection, and forwarding detection. Potentially unsafe mail is caught by Hotmail and it does not open the message or allow access to an attachment until the user requests that it do so; this is intended to reduce the success of phishing attempts. A "safety bar" is positioned above each message as a notification to the user as to whether the sender is known and if the mail content is potentially dangerous.

• Spell checker

As with Office programs like Microsoft Word, Hotmail includes the ability to check the spelling the words as they are typed. Misspelled words are underlined in red and a right-click displays a list of suggestions.

Additional information

Languages

Hotmail is available in Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (also Brazilian Portuguese), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Ukrainian. Bi-directional language support is available for Arabic, Hebrew and Hindi message content.

Registration

Upon registration, new users can choose from a Hotmail domain address (e.g. @hotmail.com, @hotmail.co.uk) or a localized Windows Live domain (e.g. @live.com, @live.co.uk).

Development history

File:HotmailLogoEvolution.png

Evolution of the Hotmail brand

The original Hotmail service was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith , and was one of the first webmail services on the Internet. It was commercially launched on July 4, 1996, American Independence Day, symbolizing "freedom" from ISP-based e-mail and the ability to access your inbox from anywhere in the world. The name "Hotmail" was chosen out of many possibilities ending in "-mail" as it included the letters HTML - the coding used behind all web pages (to emphasize this, the original spelling was "HoTMaiL").

Hotmail was initially backed by venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. By December 1997, it reported more than 8.5 million subscribers. It was sold later that month to Microsoft for a reported $400 million, and it joined the MSN group of services. Hotmail quickly gained in popularity as it was localized for different markets around the globe and became the world's largest webmail service, and reported more than 30 million active members by February 1999.

On October 24 1999, Microsoft neglected to pay their annual $35 'hotmail.com' domain registration fee to Network Solutions. The oversight made Hotmail useless two months later, on Christmas morning, December 25. A Linux consultant, Michael Chaney, paid it as a "Christmas present" to Microsoft.

Hotmail originally ran on a mixture of FreeBSD and Solaris operating systems. Microsoft initially tried to move the FreeBSD portion of the architecture to a Windows NT 4.0 based system, but this failed. Later a project was started to move the system to Windows 2000. In June 2001 Microsoft claimed this had been completed; a few days later they retracted this and admitted that in fact some functions of the Hotmail system were still reliant on FreeBSD.

Later development saw the service tied with Microsoft's web authentication scheme, Passport (now Windows Live ID), and integration with Microsoft's instant messaging and social networking programs, MSN Messenger and MSN Spaces (now Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Spaces, respectively). A security issue appeared in Hotmail during this period that permitted anybody to log into any Hotmail account using the password 'eh'; it was at the time called "the most widespread security incident in the history of the Web."

In March 2002, Microsoft again failed to register one of their domain names. Hotmail.co.uk was returned to the open market in October 2002, where it was quickly purchased by an individual who tried to contact Microsoft to arrange for a transfer back to the company. It took another two weeks before Microsoft's headquarters in the United States regained control of the domain, which was again purchased by a good samaritan.

After a period of technological stagnation, the webmail industry received a significant boost in 2004 when the Google search engine announced its own mail service, Gmail. Featuring vastly increased storage space, speed and interface flexibility, this new competitor spurred a wave of innovation in webmail. The main industry heavyweights – Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail – introduced upgraded versions of their e-mail services with greater speed, security and advanced features.

Microsoft's new e-mail system was announced on November 1st, 2005 under the codename "Kahuna", and a beta version was released to a few thousand testers. Other webmail enthusiasts also wanting to try the beta version could request an invitation granting access. The new service was built from scratch and emphasised three main concepts of being "faster, simpler and safer". New versions of the beta service were rolled out over the development period, and by the end of 2006 the number of beta testers had reached the millions.

The Hotmail brand was planned to be phased-out when Microsoft announced that the new mail system would be called Windows Live Mail, however the developers soon backtracked after beta-testers were confused with the name change and preferred the already well-known Hotmail name, and decided on Windows Live Hotmail. Development of the beta was finished in April 2007, Windows Live Hotmail was released to new registrations in May 2007, and the 260 million MSN Hotmail accounts worldwide now have access to the new system.

The Hotmail development and operations teams are based in Mountain View, California.

MSN Hotmail

The old MSN Hotmail inbox

Hotmail was part of the MSN brand of services before the new version was released with the Windows Live branding. Currently, the old MSN Hotmail interface is only accessible by users who signed up for Hotmail accounts before the Windows Live Hotmail release date and have not chosen to update to the new Live.

Awards

Windows Live Hotmail was awarded PC Magazine's Editor's Choice Award in February 2007 and again in March 2007 with a rating of 4 out of 5 stars.

Criticisms

Microsoft's spam filter is known to discard legitimate emails without warning the receiving user. These emails are acknowledged as having been successfully delivered to the sending user, however they will not appear on the receiver's inbox or junk mail-folder. Mainly affecting small websites registrations procedures, this issue has prompted some sites to ban Microsoft emails altogether.

Hotmail is often criticized for giving paying only subscribers of the Hotmail Plus service access to WebDAV functionality, allowing e-mails to be downloaded locally via a desktop application such as Microsoft Outlook. Hotmail was originally available with WebDAV to all, but. in 2004. the service was revoked from free users. However, today, it is possible to access a Hotmail account outside of an internet browser, though only on the Microsoft Windows platform, by using Windows Live Mail for free. One may access also e-mail messages and contacts in any Hotmail account using Microsoft Office Outlook Connector for free, though access of calendar, tasks and notes requires a premium subscription. Mozilla Thunderbird can be used to access Hotmail accounts (as well as other web-based e-mail) in combination with the WebMail extension.

Like all the major webmail services, Hotmail is often used by spammers for illicit purposes such as junk or chain mailing and unwanted marketing, due to its wide availability, its popularity, and its ease of registration of new accounts. Most often, spammers use Hotmail accounts as fake "remove me" addresses. With virtually no exceptions, these addresses are used for the express purpose of verifying the recipient's address, thus opening the door for more spam. However, Hotmail does not tolerate this practice. It considers spam and spam-related activities to be a serious violation of Microsoft's Terms of Use, and accounts engaging in these activities are terminated without warning. Hotmail also provides users with the ability to report and block addresses associated with junk mail.

Another common complaint Hotmail users have is towards the advertisement automatically added to the signature of every e-mail sent from a Hotmail account. The subscription-based Hotmail Plus offering removes this advertisement, as does using the free Windows Live Mail application to send messages.

Windows Live Hotmail does not fully support Safari; there are basic functionality issues for Safari users, such as the "Reply" button not adding the address of the sender to the reply email. As of 15 October 2007 this appears to have been fixed, though for many Safari users, Hotmail now moves at very slow speed, making it almost unusable. It is also not possible to automatically create a hyperlink by typing in only the URL when using Safari or Firefox on a Mac. Mac OS X users attempting to access Hotmail are commonly sent into an endless login "loop" where hotmail will not open if users do not log out at the end of each visit.

There is no setting in Windows Live Hotmail to set plain text as a default though it is possible to format individual messages to be sent as plain text. The default in MSN Hotmail was plain text with an option to change to HTML, but in Windows Live Hotmail, the only option is HTML.

Windows Live Hotmail also has a fixed-filter setting for their redesigned inbox. Messages are first displayed with the most recent at the top. Although it is possible to re-sort upon opening, the sort settings are not saved and with each subsequent sign-in the sort must be redone again.

Since the introduction of the new inbox some basic functionality that was present in the old MSN Hotmail was removed, you can't specify the number of mails displayed per page and there is no option to show full headers in E-Mail messages.

Trivia

One Microsoft job posting dated August 4, 2007 claims that Hotmail "handles roughly 2 billion emails daily". Another job posting dated October 17, 2007 claims that Hotmail uses, in production, "Solaris/Linux servers".

See also

• Comparison of webmail providers

External links

• Hotmail
• Official development blog
• Hotmail Plus