Microsoft Exchange Labs renamed to “Outlook Live” (but what about SkyLine?)

Outlook Live is the new name for an updated set of services under the Live@Edu banner, offering free email services for students and now faculty and staff for educational institutions that sign up.  Aside from the name change, a number of new features have been added:

– Multibrowser support. Access e-mail over the Web using Windows Internet
     Explorer, Firefox or Safari.
  — Enhanced conversation view. Organize e-mail in a new way that cuts down
     on unnecessary inbox clutter by combining multiple e-mails into a
     single conversation.
  — Integrated instant messaging and presence. Access communications right
     at your fingertips in a single interface that marries e-mail and
     instant messaging from Windows Live Messenger or Microsoft Office
     Communicator.

Technet Edge has a video up with a demo of the new features with KC Lemson (who we’ve been following on RSS since forever, good to see her ship cool new stuff :).  Here’s the video:

And yesterday Neowin and Mary Jo Foley reported that a new set of mobile services code named SkyLine may also carry the Outlook Live brand:

outlooklivemob

For this to make sense (and no guarantee of that), Skyline might well be the mobile portion of a set of Live@Edu services, but for small businesses as well as education, all apparently under the Outlook Live banner.  We expect a number of announcements at the Mobile World Congress, so hopefully the headache this is giving me trying to figure this all out will go away by then.

Comments

  • JohnCz

    Great stuff. As an Office Live customer, I make use of Windows Live Mail with Outlook client. But its great to see the more advanced features available in Outlook Live. I wonder if Microsoft is thinking about creating some sort of upgrade path for Office Live/Windows Live Mail accounts.

    I’m still scratching my head over this Software+Services roadmap. Sofar, I’m seeing client software that basically mirrors what is available online. For S+S to work, I think they have to differentiate themselves, the PC client has to provide some out of the box “Wow” functionality that makes the case why you want a local processor. To Microsoft credit though, they do seem to be doing a pretty good job in hedging their bets.

  • http://www.grabaclue.com/perry Perry

    Those screenshots also appear to be from the upcoming WM 6.5…

  • http://www.liveside.net/members/Gerhard-Weiss/default.aspx Gerhard Weiss

    I wonder like JohnCz, where does Office Live and Windows Live Mail fit together.