The file viewer Google docs viewer is able to display numerous new document types in your browser, among them Adobe Photoshop- and Illustrator files.

You are confronted with the Google docs viewer when you use Gmail – when opening e-mail attachments that the browser cannot display on its own. With the update, the web application can now display twelve new file types, including Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (.xls and .xlsx) as well as PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 presentations (.pptx).

Apple Pages files can be rendered in your browser as well. Other new supported file formats are Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Postscript and true type fonts. The list is completed with Autocad files (.dxf) and Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg).

The rendering is quite faithful. However, some browsers cannot directly copy selected texts to your clipboard. With Google Chrome and Firefox, this works using the Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut. The viewer itself is limited to correct rendering; you cannot edit the files.

Google docs viewer is available outside of Gmail as well, at docs.google.com/viewer. To view files with it, they must be available on the web (callable with http or https).

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.

Today we’ve started releasing the first set of updates to our web services, and these will continue to roll out globally over the next 24 hours – including a new version of Windows Live Home, Spaces, Events, and SkyDrive, as well as completely new web services such as Windows Live Groups, Photos, and Profile.

Here’s a summary about the team’s thoughts.

New header for Windows Live

Our goal is to keep this consistent, so you can always find your way around easily. It includes links to all of your Windows Live services, links to great news, stories, videos, and content with MSN, a place to quickly search the web using Live Search, and the sign-in area, in the top-right corner, where you can quickly access your Windows Live account information.

New Windows Live Home

The new home page is the place to start your web browsing. It provides a simple dashboard for all of your communication and sharing activities. At the top, you can see your e-mail, local weather, any private messages that people have left for you, people you might want to add to your network, and upcoming appointments or birthdays. You can customize this area with rich themes – some of which are dynamic and change depending on the time of the day or the weather.

Windows Live Photos

The first thing you’ll notice when you start sharing a photo album is the new storage limit – 25 GB! With the way digital cameras have been growing in megapixels, we wanted to make sure you had tons of room to save and share plenty of high-resolution photos.

Windows Live Profile

The most prominent feature of the new profile is the “What’s new” list, which shows all of your own recent activities on Windows Live — this is the same information that people in your network will see about you in the “What’s new” list on the home page. […]

You can also add web activities from outside of Windows Live. This includes things like publishing updates on Twitter, adding photos to Flickr, or writing reviews on Yelp. And as you may suspect, we have many more partner updates and additions to come!

Windows Live Groups

Like individual people, groups on Windows Live have their own “What’s new” list that lets everyone know what’s been happening lately with the group.

Windows Live Spaces

• Removal of the banner ad that used to be at the top – we found that our users dislike having ads on their personal blogs and that this advertising didn’t perform particularly well for advertisers either.
• New default themes, fonts, colors, and other design elements that are now more readable and appealing, and consistent with similar changes elsewhere on Windows Live.

Windows Live Events

The new interface is based on feedback from customers like you, along with design changes that we’ve made across all of Windows Live. We’ve also added new themes and made it easier to share photos with anyone invited to your event. So after the party, all your guests can easily upload their pictures and share them with the entire party.

Windows Live SkyDrive

Beyond the storage increases, SkyDrive also has:

• An updated and enhanced design, including rich photo sharing.
• An improved file upload experience, so it’s easier for you to move files from your PC to SkyDrive.
• Flexible controls on who can access your files on SkyDrive – so you can change the permissions on a folder to private, when you want to store files just for yourself, share it with some of your contacts, or make it public, for files you want to share with the entire world.

Read the complete story at Windows Live Wire.

Microsoft has announced details on the future, the new, Windows Live, and I am bringing them to you like I promised.

Over the coming weeks, the next generation of Windows Live will become available at www.windowslive.com. The new Windows Live experience is enhanced by Microsoft partners with feeds from third-party sites that help you stay up to date on what’s new with friends and family, and see information from other online services such as Flickr, Pandora, Photobucket, Twitter,WordPress and Yelp. Refer downwards to get some details on this.

The Windows Live Web services and applications for the PC are now called Windows Live Essentials. Also Windows Live for mobile will get a revamp.

Windows Live Web services

• Windows Live Hotmail
  • Integration of “What’s New” feed
    After you send an e-mail to a friend, Windows Live displays a page confirming that the e-mail has been sent. If the friend is part of your Windows Live network, you will also see a concise update of the friend’s online activity, on both Windows Live and third-party services.
  • POP access
    You can access your Windows Live Hotmail inbox while offline using Windows Live Mail or Outlook with POP access. Anyone can use just about any e-mail application, whether it is from Microsoft or not.
  • POP aggregation
    This feature offers one place for your e-mail. With POP access in Windows Live Hotmail, any non-Hotmail e-mail account that is POP-enabled (such as Yahoo! Mail Plus, Gmail and AOL) can be imported into Hotmail for convenient, one-stop access. There are options to see all e-mail in one inbox or have each account filtered into a separate folder that users specify and label.
  • Instant Access
    Instant Access is a tool for quickly finding and embedding Web images, restaurant reviews, maps, directions, movie times and more into e-mail messages — without having to leave the compose e-mail page.
  • Instant messaging in Windows Live Hotmail
    The Windows Live Messenger instant messaging service can be used to send and receive instant messages from the Hotmail inbox.
• Windows Live Photos
  The home to your photos on the Web is at http://photos.live.com. You can create Web slide shows and share photos through Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Groups, Windows Live Events, Windows Live FrameIt and Windows Live Spaces. You can even see all your photos from Windows Live Photos on most Web-enabled cell phones. Windows Live Photos includes several tools and features such as these:
  • People tagging
    You can identify and tag people in your photos, and see other photos that they are tagged in.
  • Commenting
    You can add comments to photos and see comments friends make.
  • “What’s New” feed
    You can monitor the photos that people in your network post on Windows Live.
  • Shared albums
    You can create albums on Windows Live Groups and give friends permission to add photos, tag them, and collaborate to create a shared album that combines the best photos from all group members.

  

• Windows Live SkyDrive
  Conveniently access all your files with the increased ease and storage capacity from Windows Live SkyDrive, now offering 25GB of online storage and tighter integration with other Windows Live services.
  

  

• Windows Live Profile
  Broadcast key information about yourself from Windows Live and more than 50 partner sites to your Windows Live network. Anything that you do on Windows Live or on select third-party services is automatically reflected on your profile as well as throughout most other services in Windows Live — if you choose to share with your network. You are in control to broadcast your activities to the world, share only with some friends and family, or share with no one at all. The Profile page is also the place to invite your existing friends and contacts from your favorite third-party services, such as LinkedIn, to Windows Live so that they can see your latest updates. You can also choose to publish your activity on more than 50 sites into your Windows Live feed, to allow your network to see updates from all your online activities in a single place.
• Windows Live People
  The People page is for storage and management of your Windows Live contacts. It’s a central address book that contains your contacts from Windows Live Hotmail as well as all the people in your Windows Live network (Windows Live Spaces and Messenger contacts). With Windows Live People, you can invite your contacts from third-party services such as LinkedIn (and more services will be added over time), organize contacts into categories, and assign permissions that put you in control of what your contacts can see about you online. The People page is accessible everywhere in Windows Live through the header, so you can add, invite, follow or connect with your contacts wherever you are in Windows Live. You can also chat with your IM contacts directly from the page with Windows Live Messenger for the Web.
• Windows Live Spaces
  With the newest version, Microsoft has focused on improving the experience by making the fonts easier to read, removing advertisements and generally improving the user interface.
• Windows Live Sync
  Formerly known as Windows Live FolderShare, the new Windows Live Sync enables you to keep your files and folders synchronized across PCs and Macs. The new features include Windows Live ID integration for a unified sign-on experience and functional enhancements such as Recycle Bin integration for easy file recovery and Unicode support for working with files from an even broader range of formats.

Windows Live Essentials

• Windows Live Messenger
  There are some fresh images about the new Messenger. Look here:
  

  <a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=c1b27998-9f2a-4795-8f87-c034ca04a963" target="_new" title="Windows Live Messenger">Video: Windows Live Messenger</a>

Windows Live for mobile

• Windows Live Hotmail for mobile
  Some of the new features, scheduled for release in early 2009, follow:
  • Mail search
    Ability to search within your e-mail
  • Rich e-mail
    HTML rendering of e-mail, including embedded images and links
• Windows Live Messenger for mobile
  Web-, client- and SMS-based IM from your mobile device
• Windows Live Photos for mobile
  Web-based photo viewing, upload and sharing. Client-based photo upload.
• Windows Live Profile for mobile
  It offers Web-based access to view and update your information and connect with others.
• Windows Live People for mobile
  Integrated contacts in mobile phone address book for supported devices. Web-based hub to access contacts. SMS-based search for contact info.
• Contact search
  Search for contacts in your contact list using your phone’s Web browser.
• Get Contact Information
  Send SMS to a Windows Live SMS shortcode to look up a contact’s information (coming early 2009).
• Windows Live Spaces for mobile
  Web-based access to personal Web page and blogging
• Windows Live Calendar for mobile
  SMS-based access to today’s and tomorrow’s appointments
• Get calendar
  Send SMS with “today” or “tomorrow” to a Windows Live SMS shortcode and get your calendar for the day (coming early 2009).

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&#038;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:ed82b0bc-81a1-417e-8db6-cedad0d078b9&#038;showPlaylist=true&#038;from=msnvideo" target="_new" title="Windows Live">Video: Windows Live</a>

Images, Videos: LiveSide.net, Windows Live Wire