Microsoft launches Windows Live Calendar into public beta

By Chris on November 7, 2007 8:29 AM

19 comments

Today sees the start of the public beta for perhaps the most long-awaited Windows Live service – Windows Live Calendar. Two years ago on November 1st 2005 Bill Gates first announced Windows Live, so it’s fitting that the launch of the public beta for Calendar marks the end of Wave 2. While it is only a calendar service, it’s a sign of progress and a useful marker to gauge just how far Windows Live has come.

As was the case with the first Mail (now Hotmail) betas, the start of Calendar beta sees it only having the most basic features. This includes:

Create multiple calendars
Receive reminders through Windows Live Alerts
Share your calendar, via html, ical or xml
Importing of ical

Kip has already posted a first look at Calendar beta which looks at all of these in more depth, so give it a read, dive right in and let us know what you think.

http://calendar.live.com/

Posted in Featured, News | Tags: Beta, Calendar, Windows Live

Comments

AndyD

Yay! It works with non-hotmail/WLHM accounts!
Korban

It’s cool, but it’s not good work with Russian font (cyrilica)…
dave

What don’t you like about the Russian support?
WyzyrdMyrrlyn

Halle–LUJAH!
CalumJR

Looks good. I was never really bothered about Calendars (both online and literal), however, because of the hype you and others have made about it, I will definately try it out and make a really good calencar now lol.

I have a very important question though:

You say the Windows Live Calendar beta marks the end of Wave 2… so what is happening to Windows Live Favourites?? That still hasn’t been updated to Wave 2 and neither has Live Search Q’n'A and Live Search Expo (although I expect the search ones to come with time).

I am more concerned about Favourites! I think this is a brilliant service, yet I would love to see it updated to Wave 2 and maybe some new features.

Can somebody answer my question please?
pikablu0530

@calum-r-:

I agree Favorites needs to be updated. Seems like Microsoft forgot about it completely, with the new Wave 2 Orb menu doesn’t even mention Favorites. Even Windows Live Home hasn’t got it linked anywhere. Personally I think Favorites is a really great service, and Microsoft should continue updating it.

Also, I thought SkyDrive was meant to be released as final as well as part of the launch?
JoeM

Subscribing it to the Vista Cal. fails with a 404 error.
joeale

What ele’s is come after windows live calendar.Any have any info what ele’s is come soon.
Drazick

Still no B-Day alerts…
Why is it so hard?
Chris

Unfortunately if we knew anything on Favourites we would have posted it by now. We’ll ask around though.
tophtucker

I agree that Favorites & QnA deserve more attention. (just throwing my 2 cents out there…)

Favorites could evolve into a really great Digg-like service, maybe tying in to MSN, with top favorited stories showing up on MSN.com or something.

But then, it’s not just about that collaborative aspect. It’s also a sync tool. I sort of feel like the functionality should just be built right into IE8, though tying together browser and Live ID may violate Microsoft’s non-bundling obligations. Too bad, that’d be fantastic….
vipwoody

at last? :P
vipwoody

Windows Live Hotmail should also integrate the chat-in-browser feature. When everything is done, then we can talk about competition between Hotmail, Gmal, and Yahoo.
Meikle

Not one to use calendar’s much, just use it for birthdays really but importing from Vista’s calendar was easy.
Wish there was no advert though seeing as I paid for hotmail plus.
bf1977

The Calendar was very pretty and well fast.
I liked very.
The staff of Windows Live is of congratulations!
UwN

Hmm, It’s looks good!
Still no support to sync the calendar from MS Outlook. I hoped there was an option to sync but there is only an import/export function.

Does anybody knows when Microsoft will support/add this function?
foaf

I’d just like to echo the WL Favorites comments above. And also don’t forget live.com, the personalized version which now seems to have no correlation to live.com the non-personalized version.
Chris

UwN we heard synch is on the cards, so hopefully that and mobile support will come soon. The existing outlook connector synchs with MSN Calendar if you are a Plus user, it’ll be interesting to see if they make that free.
UwN

@Chris,
Thanks for your answer! I hope so that Microsoft add this to the free version of Live.com. But, I doubt that this will take a long time… I hold my fingers crossed!

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