Hotmail Turns into Outlook.com - Sign Up Now for Microsoft's New Email Service

Microsoft is working quite hard from last six months and have introduced many new Software and Hardware for Windows desktop and Windows Phone users including new Windows Phone 8, Windows 8 OS, MS Visual Studio 2012, SQL Server 2012 etc. etc. but now Microsoft has rebooted and revamped its old Hotmail E-mail Service with brand new identity and domain name called "Outlook". Yes Outlook.com is the new and most advanced e-mail service introduced from Microsoft with a fresh look. The first preview of Outlook E-mail Service is available now for general users who are using Hotmail.com and Live.com Microsoft Windows ID's, users can easily Sign-Up for new Outlook E-mail Service by just one click. The new Outlook E-mail Service provide users a fresh look with Metro Style like in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 OS with most advanced email experience and features. The new Outlook has changed everything from privacy to workflow and from advertisement placement to doc’s attachments which will help users to done things with less distraction.

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Microsoft Retiring Zune and Windows Live Branding in Windows 8

Windows users won't be able to see Zune and Windows Live service onwards from Windows 8. After releasing Windows 8 Consumer Preview Microsoft will no more supports both the Windows Live and Zune branding for applications and services. It means that the long names associated with Zune and Windows Live-based applications will not be accessible and will replaced with names that more accurately and more simply illustrate the Microsoft Service's.

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Facebook Chat Coming to Windows Live Web Messenger

Microsoft released a beta refresh for Windows Live Essentials which saw a new feature in Messenger allowing people to chat with their Facebook friends just like talking to their Messenger friends. However, this ability was not made available on the Web version of Messenger and people could only chat to their Messenger friends. But this looks set to change.

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On the Windows Live Phone service (which Microsoft has recently tweaked), that we wrote about last week, it can be seen that a refined header is being used with a few new options and it features Facebook Chat integration. When hovering over the Messenger link in the header a Facebook category appears on this site. The status of contacts is shown just like within Messenger, if a friend is available to chat to they have a green icon and an orange one for away; if you are also friends with them in Messenger then they can also be set to busy which is a red icon.

The chat box has also been tweaked to reflect the Facebook Chat addition as it is now possible to select which chat protocol is being used for the conversation. This feature also allows people to select SMS as a chat option. This feature has also leaked in upcoming Windows Live Messenger 2011 Screenshots.

One final feature that was spotted by Liveside is that when a user is signed in to Messenger on a PC it’s not possible to have a conversation via Web Messenger as Messenger windows will now force themselves to be used. However if a user is not signed in to Messenger then it is possible to chat to people in the browser. Before this refinement it was possible to chat to people via both Messenger and Web Messenger at the same time. (Signing into Messenger when conversations in Windows Live Phone were open sees them closed, however when navigating to a different Windows Live site the conversation reopens. Microsoft have yet to update the Web Messenger across most of the Windows Live sites.)

It has been rumoured that Microsoft will make available a release candidate of Windows Live Essentials 2011 soon and it’s likely that at a similar time they will also update the Windows Live sites.