Marking mail as junk

The Junk filters in Hotmail are very good, as they filter most unsolicited e-mail I receive. However, some e-mail gets delivered to my inbox nevertheless, and when I try to mark it as junk, it just—fails.

See yourself:

Wrong character encoding

Also, Hotmail fails to display some non-English mail correctly, and I don’t know why. Here you see an example, sent from Microsoft Outlook:

The question is: why doesn’t Hotmail display a “Character encoding:” dropdown, as usual?

Fonts in the Rich text editor

Being able to edit the body of my messages in a WYSIWYG editor is great—but why so few fonts? Having few fonts is something I could live with; what I do not like at all though, is that there is no option for “Segoe UI”. Come on, Windows Live Wave 3 introduced Segoe UI as successor of Tahoma, why can’t I use it for my mails as well?

Calendar language

Multi-language support in Windows Live is well implemented. But not in Windows Live Calendar. On opening Hotmail with a browser whose language is set to English, displays Hotmail in English. I open “People”: English. I open “Windows Live Home”: … English.

Then I hit “Calendar”, and what do I see? German. Cool.

Your problems

You are using Windows Live Hotmail as well, and there is something that annoys you in it?
Let me know.

The easy way: BVEncoder

Here is how it works:

1. Download and install BVEncoder.
2. Start the program.
3. Click the “Browse…” button, and select your source file.
4. Now, choose your target format. Some of the formats offer additional options appearing then.
5. Then, browse for the target file and be sure to enter the proper file type extension.
6. Finally, click the button “Click here to start re-encoding the file”.
7. Now, wait until the window “Conversion is still in progress” window disappears. You’re done!

That was easy, hmm?

Free download: BVEncoder by Bram Vandeperre (BVSoft)

Tell me what you think of this tool.

Free Download: Messenger Plus! Live 4.80.356 (4.80 MB)

For those of you interested, here are the most important parts of the changelog:

• This version is entirely compatible with the final version of Windows Live Messenger 2009 (build 1202). Yes, that includes chat logging, emotion sounds, skins, scripts and so on .
• The new UIB encoded version of the windows’ styles and definitions is completely supported by Messenger Plus!.
• Compatibility with all previous beta versions of Windows Live Messenger 9/14/2009 has been removed (more than a year of betas for this one!).
• Messenger Plus! now displays many of its windows using the specific color selected for each contact. Display pictures are also displayed in contact related popup notifications (can be turned off in the preferences).
• The Contact Information window now displays an animation for animated display pictures.
• When chatting in a group in Messenger 2009, whenever possible, Messenger Plus! creates a single chat log file associated to the group.
• Windows 7 is now properly reported by (!VER). Messenger Plus! is currently reported to work on this OS.
• A couple of things have been improved internally to ensure the reliability of the sound modules in Messenger Plus! (especially when using emotion sounds).

Thoughts on Messenger Plus! Live 5.0

• What are features you would like to see in Messenger?
• What have you been missing all the time, even with Messenger Plus?

Be creative and tell your ideas. Whatever you have in mind – post a comment and let us know.

Free Download: Messenger Plus! Live 4.79.353 Beta (4.7 MB)
This download is no longer available.
Be sure to have read the Change log as well.

Your favorite add-on is back…

…with all its functions!

This version is entirely compatible with the final version of Windows Live Messenger 2009 (build 1202). Yes, that includes chat logging, emotion sounds, skins, scripts and so on .

Maybe you heard some rumors about UIB, the new binary resource format in Messenger. Well, Patchou has created a full-transparent en-/decoder for that, so just don’t worry.

Messenger Plus! will decode the files automatically when extracting the resources and will re-encode them automatically when added in a skin. For everybody else, this means Messenger Plus! will still rock in 2009!

Please note that this Build 353 of Messenger Plus! is still a beta. Expect the final Messenger Plus! 4.80 around (!) end of January 2009.