Context menu (right mouse button) and keyboard shortcuts

In the recent update, the context menu has been extended with more features. You may show the menu by right-clicking on a message in your e-mail inbox. Now you can also reply, reply to all and forward messages directly using the context menu. The new context menu tasks get added to the existing actions Mark as unread, Delete, Junk e-mail, Move and Show source.

Another possibility for working with Hotmail efficiently are the keyboard shortcuts. From Outlook, you may know the Ctrl+N shortcut to compose a new message, and Ctrl+Enter to send it—they work in Hotmail as well! Furthermore, many shortcuts from other providers with as well, to help you if you’re familiar with Yahoo!, for example. Soon, I’ll publish a complete list of Hotmail keyboard shortcuts.

Individual e-mails

I’m sure you know how to design your e-mails with Hotmail. For example, you can pick your favorite font, or sign your messages with your personal signature.

Now, you can also define a default font for your e-mail messages. This way, you don’t have to set your favorite font over and over again for each new message you compose. Instead, you define a preference for any future e-mails that you send with Hotmail. Just like you’d do it in Outlook.

More new features

The Windows Live team has also enhanced how the Back button in your browser works. Also, e-mail drafts now store their attachments too.

If you have deleted a message in error and can’t find it in your Deleted items folder anymore, there is now a link to restore some of your older e-mail, at the bottom of your Deleted items folder.

Finally, you may have noticed Hotmail’s increased speed? The Windows Live team has added features based on HTML5. More details about this speed boost soon.

Windows Live Hotmail gets a new feature: Now you can access other e-mail accounts from Hotmail. For example, you can send and receive Gmails within Hotmail’s interface.

In the Inside Windows Live blog, Group Program Manager Dick Craddock mentions that this was possible in the Microsoft Outlook application since long, just not on the Web. “Over 30 million people have already registered an email address from another service when signing up for a Windows Live ID to use Xbox, Zune, SkyDrive, or Messenger,” Dick says.

Sending and receiving mails from a different account is one of Hotmail’s specialities — just like Spam filters, multimedia messages, and the “Sweep” feature, allowing you to delete or reorganize large amounts of e-mail.

To start using this feature, just sign in at Hotmail with your Windows Live ID. You will be able to use Hotmail with your own e-mail address easily!

Private users, kids and students as well as smaller companies and freelances can choose from four Office 2010 product variants: Office Home & Student 2010, Office Professional Academic 2010, Office Home & Business 2010, and Office Professional 2010. Furthermore, Microsoft offers the new Office Starter 2010, exclusively shipped pre-installed on computers, replacing the Works program suite. Office 2010 is available as Full Packaged Product including disk, as well as Product Key Card. This latter variant comes without disk; you have to download the software from the Web.

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010 contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. You can install it three times per household, but you may not use it with your business. Its Product Key Card costs 109 Euro, the disk package 139 Euro. The Mcirosoft Office Academic Professional 2010 variant is only available as Product Package for 109 Euro, for people in research and education exclusively. The package contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access.

The Microsoft Office Home and Business variant 2010 contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook and costs 249 Euro as Product Key Card, 379 Euro as Product Package. Microsoft Office Professional 2010 contains Publisher and Access on top and costs 499 Euro and 699 Euro respectively.

I do not want to be forced to choose sending all my mail through Outlook just for the sake of getting rid of Hotmail’s advertisement footer in every single mail I send. This thought is the main reason for the Windows Live team to remove the advertisement bar entirely. Now it is up to you to send mail via Hotmail or a rich client — your recipients won’t notice the difference anymore.

Therewhile, LiveSino.net has published a new screenshot of the Windows Live Mail Wave 4 main window, having the Ribbon incorporated along with more changes.

From the general look-and-feel, Windows Live Mail resembles Outlook 2010 much:

• The ribbon looks similar to the one in Outlook.
• The Calendar pane is on the right side, auto-linked to Windows Live Calendar.
• A new Conversation view is added, making possible to display and treat connected e-mails in a unity.

What do you think about Windows Live Mail Wave 4, from what we see until now?

TNEF encoding (Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format) was invented by Microsoft and cannot be decoded properly by all mail programs.  When that happens, the recipient’s mail program only displays a “winmail.dat”.  Here is how to change this Outlook behavior:

1. Open Microsoft Outlook.
2. Outlook 2007 or lower: Click Tools, Options, E-mail format.
3. Outlook 2010: Click File, Options, E-mail.
4. Instead of Rich text or Text only, select HTML as message format.
5. Outlook 2007 or lower: Click Internet format.
6. Outlook 2010: Scroll down.
7. Select Convert to HTML format in the drop down.

Now look at the real link target.

What does this tell us?  Watch out!  Microsoft never sends out mails containing download links to patches, security or other updates.  If you receive such a mail, declare it as Junk and delete it unseen—or, in my case, just empty the Junk mail folder.

You can connect multiple computers to a personal folder, but each one must have a unique computer name. Only you can synchronize files in your personal synchronized folder.

You can connect to someone else’s shared folder, if the owner gave you permission. Just sign in using your Windows Live ID.

1. If Sync isn’t already running, on the Start menu, click Programs or All Programs, click Windows Live, click Windows Live Sync, and then sign in using your Windows Live ID.
2. In the notification area on the taskbar, click the Sync icon .
3. Click Sync website.
4. Under Personal folders or under Shared folders, click the name of the folder that you want to connect with the computer you’re using.
5. Click Add a computer.
6. In the list of available computers, click the name of the computer.
7. Select the folder on the computer where you want Sync to synchronize the files, and then click Sync folder here.– or –To create a new folder, select a location, click Create new folder, type a name for the folder, and then click Create and sync.
8. Choose the synchronization setting that you want, and then click Finish.

Notes

• Your computer must be online for files to synchronize. You can’t view files or the contents of a folder on the Sync website.
• If you created a folder for synchronizing, and you delete a file with a .p2p extension from the folder, the placeholder, as well as the actual file, is deleted from every computer that shares the folder.
• Synchronizing Microsoft Office Outlook .pst files between computers is not recommended because these files constantly change. This can result in frequent sync errors and files that aren’t updated.
• Keep in mind that Sync can’t merge data between database files. If you use a Microsoft Access, SQL, or ACT! database, you can synchronize database files to another computer so that they can be edited and viewed on multiple computers, but a database itself can’t be opened or modified on two computers at the same time.

Source: http://windowsliveblog.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!720E46AE746458F7!5810.entry

“Questo messaggio contiene un allegato con un tipo di file considerato pericoloso. Il file è stato disattivato.”

Questo è ciò che leggo nel pannello di anteprima di Windows Live Mail, ogni (!) volta che ricevo una ricevuta di ritorno da un destinatario che usa Microsoft Outlook. Quale allegato viene bloccato? I file sembrano “ATT000XX.txt”!

Perché vengono bloccati dei semplici file di testo (*.txt)?!

“This message contains an attachment whose file type is considered dangerous. The file has been deactivated.”

This is what I read in the Windows Live Mail preview pane, each (!) time when I receive a read receipt from a recipient who is using Microsoft Outlook. What attachment is blocked? Files like “ATT000XX.txt”!

Why are text-only files (*.txt) blocked?!

• Windows Live Mail può importare correttamente le impostazioni degli account e-mail di Outlook Express che erano state trasferite da un Windows XP ad un nuovo Vista o Windows 7 usando il Windows Easy Transfer.
• Abbiamo parlato di un problema che alcuni utenti avevano avviando Windows Live Mail. In alcuni casi, dopo aver chiuso Windows Live Mail, il programma sembrava chiudersi, ma il processo di wlmail.exe continuava a rimanere aperto in background. Questo processo impediva un nuovo avviamento del programma, se si tentava di riaprirlo.
• Abbiamo risolto un problema che capitava con i sistemi Vista e Windows 7, dove Windows Live Mail non si connetteva in modo corretto ai server POP e-mail usando il secure socket layers (SSL). Questo problema è stato riscontrato da alcuni utenti Yahoo! Mail, ma con questo nuovo aggiornamento è tutto risolto.

Hai installato la nuova versione di Live Mail, ma il “tuo” bug non è stato ancora corretto? Riporta il tuo problema al team di Windows Live Mail e sarai sicuro di ottenere una risposta.

mynetx: Angus, ich freue mich, mit dir über Windows Live zu reden! Erzähl mir doch ein wenig über dich. Wie wirkt sich Windows Live auf dein tägliches Leben aus?

Angus Logan: Wo soll ich anfangen… Ich bin Australier, lebe aber in den USA. Ich bin meistens in Seattle, doch ich reise auch viel. An den meisten Tagen arbeite ich mit den Entwicklern und Programm-Managern, oder unterhalte mich mit Kunden, damit wir auf jeden Fall die richtige Plattform schaffen, mit der Websites sich an Windows Live-Nutzer anschließen können.

mynetx: Als Technischer Produktleiter ermöglichst du es Websites, sich an die 500 Millionen Menschen anzuschließen, die Windows Live nutzen, sagst du. Ist das eine befriedigende Arbeit, noch dazu spannend?

Angus Logan: Mit einigen der weltgrößten Websites zusammenzuarbeiten, um sie mit bis zu 500 Millionen Menschen zu verbinden, ist ziemlich cool. Eine Killerfunktion und – bam! –, 500 Millionen freuen sich ein wenig mehr, das Internet zu benutzen.

mynetx: Viele Leute kennen dich, doch ich denke, das war vor einiger Zeit noch nicht so. Seit wann bist du im Windows Live-Geschäft? Erzähl mir doch ein wenig über deine Vergangenheit.

Angus Logan: In Australien hab ich für einige Microsoft-Partner und ein junges Unternehmen gearbeitet. Ich war ein Microsoft-MVP für Content Management Server, und das hat mir irgendwie eine Arbeitsstelle im technischen Vertrieb bei Microsoft Australien verschafft. Nachdem ich das einige Jahre getan hatte, entschied ich mich, meinen Blick auf Websites weg von der CMS-Infrastruktur, hin zu sozialen Plattformen zu wenden – das war vor ungefähr 2 Jahren.

mynetx: Denkst du, dass das Windows Live-Team, einschließlich dir selbst, sich um die Fragen der Nutzer kümmert? Warum?

Angus Logan: Mir ist noch nicht ein einziges Team bei Microsoft begegnet, das nicht ständig sein Augenmerk auf Kunden richtet (in diesem Fall, auf die 500 Millionen Menschen, die Windows Live nutzen). Wir müssen immer mit den Endbenutzern reden, denn wenn du jeden Tag innerhalb einer Softwarefirma an einem Produkt arbeitest – du hast dann einfach einen bestimmten Blickwinkel. Wir müssen unsere Gedanken immer testen, und Ideen sammeln, um Killerprodukte für „normale Leute“ zu schaffen (nicht nur für Technikbegeisterte).

mynetx: Wo siehst du Windows Live innerhalb der nächsten fünf Jahre?

Angus Logan: Es wird immer einfacher für mehr Menschen, zu kommunizieren, sich mitzuteilen und ihr Leben zu synchronisieren.

mynetx: Läuft Messenger bei dir permanent? Hast du eine Art Routine mit Messenger und den anderen Elementen, die Windows Live ausmachen?

Angus Logan: Das alles ist solch ein Teil meines Lebens, dass ich keine Routine habe – es ist einfach da. Ich nutze Messenger zum Arbeiten, ich nutze ihn zum Spielen, ich nutze ihn, um Leute zu finden mit denen ich mich zum Mittagessen verabrede, ich wache auf und schaue nach, ob ich nachts irgendwelche Nachrichten erhalten habe, ich lese die persönlichen Statusnachrichten meiner Freunde, und während ich mit Leuten chatte, … halte ich nach anderen Leuten Ausschau, mit denen ich chatten könnte.

mynetx: Wie groß ist der Markt für Web-Messenger – und welche Rolle spielt dabei das Messenger Web Toolkit?

Angus Logan: Das Web Toolkit bietet einen Weg, mit dem Messenger-Nutzer sich auf anderen Websites mit ihren Freunden verbinden können. Die Markt-Gelegenheit ist so groß! Jeder, der Sofortnachrichten nutzt, ist ein potenzieller Nutzer für Web-Messenger. Ich denke, dass Web-Messenger zusätzlich zu einem „normalen“ Messenger-Client genutzt werden müssen, sonst ist das Erlebnis nicht gut genug (z.B. Benachrichtigungen unten rechts).

mynetx: Wenn du deine Fantasie benutzt: wie denkst du, sieht Messenger in den nächsten fünf Jahren aus? Welche neuen Funktionen könne er anbieten?

Angus Logan: Er ist in den letzten 10 Jahren so weit gekommen, wenn ich versuche mir vorzustellen, was in den nächsten 10 Jahren passiert, bekomme ich Kopfschmerzen. Alles was ich weiß ist, dass du dich damit immer noch mit den Menschen in Verbindung setzen kannst, die dir wichtig sind.

mynetx: Wenn man diese Ideen mit den aktuellen Funktionen von Messenger vergleicht, welche könnten in der nächsten Version, Wave 4, eingefügt werden?

Angus Logan: Guter Versuch . Du weißt, ich kann nicht über die Zukunft sprechen.

mynetx: Bist du zufrieden mit den Windows Live-Diensten, die dir zur Verfügung stehen? Warum?

Angus Logan: Obwohl ich mehr als zufrieden bin, denke ich, es gibt immer Bereiche, in denen wir weiterhin wachsen und innovativ sein können.

mynetx: Welches ist deine Lieblingsfunktion in Messenger?

Angus Logan: Dass ich Emoticons eigene Videos von mir zuweisen kann (dynamische Anzeigebilder). Das ist soooo genial (und macht Spaß!).

mynetx: Live Mesh – was war dein erster Eindruck davon? Siehst du darin Wege, wie man diesen Cloud-Dienst mit Messenger und den anderen Essentials verbinden kann?

Angus Logan: Live Mesh hat mich schon immer beeindruckt, und noch mehr hat es die zugrunde liegende Plattform, das Live Framework, das den Erfindungsreichtum von Entwicklern regelrecht beflügelt hat.

mynetx: Ist das Einstellen von Windows Live Events der erste Schritt in Richtung des Mottos von Wave 4, „Einfacher! Verbundener!“?

Angus Logan: Ich arbeite nicht an Events, doch lies bitte auch: http://windowslivewire.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2F7EB29B42641D59!41244.entry.

mynetx: Wünschst du dir, dass Messenger eine Funktion hätte, die es in einem anderen Sofortnachrichten-Programm schon gibt?

Angus Logan: Ja, das wird sich jetzt etwas hochgeschraubt an, aber… in Office Communicator wird dein Status automatisch aktualisiert, abhängig von den Terminen in deinem Kalender, und er sagt deinen Kontakten, wie lange du noch beschäftigt bist. Das wäre so cool. Vielleicht sollte man es ein wenig mehr auf den Endbenutzer abstimmen, zum Beispiel, wenn du dir gerade eine TV-Serie auf Hulu ansiehst, könnten deine Kontakte darüber informiert werden, dass du in 15 Minuten wieder verfügbar bist (wenn die Folge zuende ist).

mynetx: Ich bin mir sicher, du hast von dem Aprilscherz gehört, den ich dieses Jahr machte, als ich über „mehr Chat-Netzwerke für Windows Live“ sprach. Wie viel von dieser Vision könnte sich bewahrheiten, laut deiner persönlichen Meinung?

Angus Logan: Ich möchte über die Zukunft nicht spekulieren.

mynetx: Was denkst du persönlich: werden separate Chat-Netzwerke weiterhin mit eigenständigen Protokollen existieren, oder ist es wahrscheinlich, dass diese ebenfalls standardisiert und verknüpft werden, wie bei so vielen anderen Dingen im Computer?

Angus Logan: Lass uns das von einem anderen Blickpunkt betrachten – des Erlebnisses für den Benutzer. Wenn wir mal die 3 größten Sofortnachrichten-Netzwerke herausgreifen, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, AIM. Sicher, diese 3 nutzen verschiedene Protokolle, doch weißt du was – das interessiert den Endbenutzer überhaupt nicht. Die Leute interessiert nur: „Cool, ich kann von Windows Live Messenger aus mit meinem Freund chatten, der Yahoo! Messenger nutzt“. Also, ja, ich denke, es wird immer unterschiedliche Netzwerke geben. Werden die Protokolle zusammengeführt (zum Beispiel XMPP)? Ich bin mir nicht sicher.

mynetx: Als Messenger-Nutzer hast du bestimmt einen guten Tipp, von dem noch nicht jeder weiß, oder?

Angus Logan: Mein bester Tipp ist, ein IM-Control aufsetzen und dann eine TinyUrl einrichten, zum Beispiel: http://tinyurl.com/talktoangus (das ist nur ein Beispiel) – dann kannst du jemand, ja einfach sagen tinyurl.com/talktoangus.

mynetx: Und schließlich, arbeitest du gerade an irgendeinem Projekt, das mit Windows Live zu tun hat?

Angus Logan: Ich arbeite immer an Projekten in Verbindung mit der Windows Live-Plattform, und unterhalte mich mit vielen Kunden über das, was sie haben möchten, was funktionieren könnte und was nicht.

mynetx: Vielen Dank für deine Zeit, und dass du uns an deiner Meinung teilhaben lässt!

Angus Logan: Gern geschehen!

Mit Angus reden

Du möchtest dich mit Angus unterhalten? Es gibt verschiedene Wege, ihn (auf Englisch) zu erreichen:

• Angus Logans Blog bei MSDN lesen
• Ihm auf Twitter folgen
• Mit Angus direkt vom Web chatten

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.

mynetx: Please tell me a bit about yourself. Is your life directly or indirectly involved with Windows Live?

Kip: I’ve been writing for LiveSide for almost 3 ½ years, since it started in Jan. 2006. Before that I was a beta tester for MSN and Microsoft products, was an original “MSN Butterfly”, and a 3 time MVP for MSN and Windows Live.

I use Windows Live products daily, mostly mail and messenger, and of course Windows Live Writer.

mynetx: Do you think the Windows Live team cares for their users’ demands? Why?

Kip: I think they are as responsive as you can be when your customer base is in the hundreds of millions of users. In some respects that many users makes it more difficult to make changes, as they affect so many people in so many different ways. I do think that Windows Live could do more to be a more agile team. Both the structure of Microsoft and the sheer numbers of users contribute to… make it very difficult to react quickly to market trends.

mynetx: Like a big vehicle is slow in turning around, unlike a small car?

Kip: yes exactly. Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President for Windows and Windows Live Engineering, is often said to “make the trains run on time”. Problem is, when everyone has cars and has already left, waiting for the next train, even if it is on schedule, might not matter.

mynetx: Though I think that Microsoft has had its big awakening sometime 2 years ago.

Suddenly Internet Explorer development was “restarted”, and the overall Corporate Identity was renewed, and I think this has also had consequences on Windows Live.

Kip: Yes. Ray Ozzie is working hard to change the culture, but Windows Live is still to slow to react sometimes. That being said, I use Windows Live products every day, and generally like them a lot.

mynetx: If Microsoft took over Facebook, would you be using it then?

Kip: I don’t see why not. I have no problem using Microsoft products.

mynetx: How do you think Yahoo!’s future would have been affected, if the Big Deal would have happened last summer?

Kip: If anything, Yahoo! had an even worse culture for quick reaction than did Microsoft. I think the combined market share would have shaken up the market a bit, but just getting the two companies to work together as one would have been a monumental task, and I think it would have caused a lot of problems.

The new CEO at Yahoo!, Carol Bartz, is working to change their culture too.

mynetx: Within the next five years, where could you picture Windows Live?

Kip: Windows Live is going to benefit from its relationship to Windows 7. But in 5 years I doubt that there will be so much emphasis on which platform you use: are you in the MSFT camp, the Apple camp, the Google camp, etc. Within 5 years the barriers to communicating with some one because you don’t have the same Messenger client should be gone.

mynetx: How?

Kip: Mobile will be much more prevalent; smartphones, data access on phones, etc. Just like now how ridiculous it would be if a Nokia phone couldn’t call an iPhone, it will be much easier to communicate between devices than it is now.

mynetx: Please provide two positive and negative comments about any outstanding Windows Live product.

Kip: Windows Live Mail is a great product, I think. I currently have 9 email accounts loaded, including non-Hotmail accounts and even a Gmail account. It loads them all quickly, presents them handsomely, and handles calendar, contacts, and newsgroups. I struggled before with trying to get Outlook to handle multiple Hotmail accounts (although the new Outlook Connector is better), but now I don’t worry about it.

As for a negative, while I understand the thinking behind Windows Live Essentials, I think tying the updates of all the Windows Live products together was a big mistake. In the last Messenger upgrade, in order to fix a small but somewhat important bug, users had to go through the whole Essentials installer “experience”. It sucked, and it’s stopping some Windows Live products from getting updates they need because of having to update everything at once.

mynetx: Do you run Windows Live Messenger 24/7? Do you have some kind of a routine with Messenger and the other parts of Windows Live?

Kip: Messenger is on when my computer is on, yes. I have the main messenger window open all the time, positioned as a right hand sidebar (where the Vista sidebar would be, which is the first thing I turn off when I set up a computer). Messenger auto loads when the computer is turned on.

mynetx: You don’t like Sidebar?

Kip: no

mynetx: Use your fantasy: how do you think Messenger will look like within the next five years? What new features could it present?

Kip: Well hopefully a much better interface for multiple conversations (tabs!). Also I would like to see the user interface around contacts improve: a better interface than a contact list that you have to scroll down to find someone, click on it, open a window to start a conversation, etc. And you should be able to start conversations with people not in your contact list, in some public areas… similar to what you can do in Twitter now, or even in the new Messenger web toolkit.

I expect that Messenger in general will get to be more phone-like, and phones will get to be more Messenger-like.

mynetx: Comparing these ideas with Messenger’s current features, which of these might be added in the next release, Wave 4?

Kip: I think we’ll see some improvements in Contacts. Somehow I doubt we’ll see tabs, although I could be wrong. Msgr users have been calling for tabs for years without success. Mostly I think you’ll see Messenger and the other Windows Live desktop apps continue to work toward sharing a common interface, and to share common parts.

mynetx: Why is the Windows Live team just ignoring the loud shout for tabs that tons of Messenger users shout since years?

Kip: I wish I knew, but I don’t.

mynetx: Are you satisfied with the Windows Live services that are provided to you?

Kip: Yes. I use multiple Live ID accounts (to separate the work I do on LiveSide from my personal stuff), and it is very easy to manage now. We use Custom Domains for our LiveSide accounts, and it’s great. I really like Windows Live Mail, and Live Writer. Of course I think there could be improvements, but overall I’m happy.

mynetx: What is your favorite feature in Messenger?

Kip: I will tell you about one feature I really miss, and that is the Live Maps activity. It was very useful to be able to share maps, to plan meetings etc. MSN China has recently re-released a version of it in China, so hopefully we’ll see it again.

mynetx: What was your first impression of Live Mesh? Could it be a new diverse method of file sharing among peers, or could it improve the current system at hand?

Kip: I use Live Mesh daily also. I think you will see Live Mesh integrated into Windows Live, and the plan is to introduce some of that in Wave 4. Could Live Mesh become a sort of torrent? I don’t know about that, I think that architecturally maybe it could, but I doubt that Microsoft would allow it to be used as a free form file share.

mynetx: Do you wish Messenger would have a feature that a third-party IM software already has? Besides tabs, that is.

Kip: I don’t use other clients much if at all, so I’m not one to comment.

mynetx: However, as Messenger user, I’m sure you’ve got a good tip that not everybody might know about yet.

Kip: Lol, to me Messenger is like the phone, I don’t think about it much, I just use it. I sure hope photo sharing is improved in Wave 4 though, I find the new way to share photos very cumbersome.

mynetx: And finally, are you working on any project related to Windows Live currently?

Kip: Well we are hoping to be able to integrate the Messenger toolkit into LiveSide. I am not a developer, but we have someone working on it for his site (also Community Server), and we will be working together to see if we can make it happen. Unfortunately Community Server is kind of complicated, and we want the experience for our readers to be a good one, so it’s going kind of slow at the moment.

mynetx: Who works at LiveSide?

Kip: LiveSide is run by myself, Chris Overd, and Harrison Hoffman. We get regular contributions from Sunshine (Cornelia Koopmans), and have a few other contributors as well.

mynetx: LiveSide is a very good news source when you want to be on top of the latest developments and Windows Live news. I want to thank you and the other contributors for the great amount of time, knowledge and research that you put into the site each day, regardless of vacations, making LiveSide what it is today—a must-read!

Is it the same fun for you people running the site as it is for us reading it?

Kip: Yes we have a lot of fun with it

mynetx: I hope the site will continue to do its best to inform us about anything interesting in the Windows Live world. Great that you took your time to discuss “Windows Live and You” with me!

Kip: Happy to do it!

How to use POP with Hotmail

I will show you the example of Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, but other mail clients are similar.

1. Click “Tools”, “Account Settings…”.
2. On the “E-mail” tab, click “New…”.
3. If you are prompted to “Choose E-mail Service”, select “Microsoft Exchange, POP3, IMAP, or HTTP”, and click “Next”.
4. Check the checkbox at “Manually configure server settings or additional server types”, and click “Next”.
5. Select “Internet e-mail” and click “Next”.
6. In the section “User Information”, enter your name and your Hotmail address.
7. In the section “Server Information”, select “POP3” as “Account Type”, enter “pop3.live.com” as “Incoming mail server” and “smtp.live.com” as “Outgoing mail server”.
8. “Logon Information” are your Hotmail address (including @hotmail.com or @live.com), along with your password.
9. Now click the button “More Settings…”, and switch to the “Outgoing Server” tab.
10. Check the checkbox “My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication”.
11. On the “Advanced” tab, at “Incoming server (POP3)”, check the checkbox “This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL)”.
12. At “Outgoing server (SMTP)”, open the select box “Use the following type of encrypted connection”, and choose “TLS”.
13. Now click “OK”, “Next” and “Finish”. You’re done!