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Windows Live Hotmail Wave 4 to get Exchange ActiveSync support, Full-session SSL, and more!

Apr 30, 2010 3:22 pm by damaster | 51 comments

Just yesterday we showed you what’s new in the upcoming Messenger Wave 4. Today we were able to dig up the latest Hotmail Wave 4 press release information, and just like yesterday’s post, these are direct quotes from Microsoft which we think might most interest you (those marked with are new ones we haven’t mentioned before, other ones we have conveniently linked you to our previous coverage):

Exchange ActiveSync Hotmail supports push email on the web, PC and now on mobile phones. Using Exchange ActiveSync, available on nearly 300 million phones, with the new Hotmail you can not only seamlessly synchronize email between your phone and the web, but also synchronize your calendar and contacts. This is a significant improvement over IMAP alternatives that support sync’ing of email only (not calendar and contacts).
Full-session SSL In addition to providing SSL encryption at login for all accounts, the new Hotmail will soon support the option to maintain SSL encryption between you and our servers during your entire Hotmail session.
Trusted senders With the new Hotmail, we help you to visually identify trusted senders in your inbox, particularly banks and the like, which are commonly used for phishing scams. We put safety logos next to those senders who we recognize as legitimate, not those who are malicious pretenders.
Time traveling filters Through the new Hotmail, we’re fine-tuning our innovative ability to retroactively remove spam in real-time as we discern the signatures of a new spam effort.
Hotmail highlights Immediately see if you have new email from friends, social network updates, shipments, appointments and birthday reminders — all in a single glance when you log in.
One-click filters With a single click, conveniently filter your entire inbox to show only those messages that are from contacts or from social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn, etc. No setup required.
Quick views Quickly see all email-containing photos across your entire account, including those stored in your inbox, folders and POP-aggregated email accounts, with one click. Or see all your documents. Or videos. Or shipping updates. Or messages you’ve flagged. The new Hotmail gives you complete freedom to choose what you want to see with the convenience of a single click.
Conversation view We know how having a “conversation” with someone — or several people — via email over an extended period can leave pieces of that conversation haphazardly spread throughout the inbox in individual snippets. The new Hotmail brings all those snippets together so you can view the entire conversation in one place. (Note: Conversation view is an option that you can turn on or off because not everyone prefers to view their email in conversation view. This is flexibility that Gmail does not offer — Gmail has conversation threading permanently on — no way to turn it off, which many people told us they prefer.)
Sweep Finally a tool that makes it super easy to get rid of the junk mail cluttering up your inbox — the No. 1 e-mail annoyance — at least according to the thousands of people we’ve asked. Sweep is a short menu of simple actions that lets you “sweep” the mail you don’t want out of your inbox into either folders or oblivion, leaving your inbox clean. If you sweep out some e-mails, we’ll even auto-sweep them in the future if you’d like. Just leave the box checked when we offer to do that for you. Zero clicks and that mail gets permanently swept.
Active Views Thanks to our new partner platform, the new Hotmail saves you the inconvenience of having to hop from your inbox to different websites by integrating the content and functionality of other websites directly into the email you receive. For example, if your friend sends you a link to a YouTube video or Flickr photo album, you can now view the video or photo slide show right within the email message itself. Or if you receive a shipping update from Amazon.com with a package tracking code, Hotmail displays the real-time shipping status, so you don’t have to look it up on the shipper’s website. Hotmail is also partnering with companies such as Amazon.com and eBay to provide an interactive experience in email, letting you take actions right from the email you’re reading — getting more done with email than ever before. (LiveSide edit: Office Web Apps integration is also considered an Active View in Hotmail)
Single contact list The new Hotmail brings all your online contacts into one convenient place — even those from services like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. Send an email to anyone, and if you want to you can manage your contacts by creating categories such as Friends or Co-workers to easily organize your address book.
Reply with edits to an attachment Normally, if a friend emailed you a document — like a resume — and asked you to make a few edits, you’d have to spend time downloading, saving, opening, resaving and re-attaching the document. And of course, you would need to make sure your PC had Office installed. The new Hotmail makes this much easier by letting you edit your friend’s document and reply back — all without leaving Hotmail.
Rich mobile browse — mail, contacts, and calendar Many consumers who use mobile phones as their primary way to access email and the internet — and even those who do most of their email on the PC — demand a robust email experience from just about anywhere. With the new Hotmail, the mobile experience is optimized for rich browsers and touch, so that your experience feels seamless on the latest phones. The inbox supports filters, previews and quick views of your email, offline email viewing mode, conversation threading, the ability to flag messages, message header details on/off, and more. The rich content feature enables you to view HTML emails and insert or download attachments. Rich composition allows saved drafts and auto-complete for address input. And rich management lets you set an away message, manage junk mail filters and block lists, manage nested folders, and set email forwarding rules. A light version of mobile browse will continue to be available for feature phone browsers (phones that aren’t smartphones).

These are certainly very solid updates to Hotmail which we’ve been hearing many users had been requesting in the past. Forget IMAP, it seems like Windows Live Hotmail, Contacts and Calendar can now all be synced with your mobile devices. There are really exciting updates coming to Hotmail!

Stay tuned at http://www.hotmailpreview.com for more information!

This entry was posted in News and tagged Hotmail, Wave 4, Windows Live. Bookmark the permalink.

http://gilad.me Gilad Steinberger
Wow thats great!!!
http://about.me/mackenzieprice mackenziepricee
Wow. More amazing news. Live Wave 4 will be great!
Also these Windows Live Preview websites are really nice. Lovely colours and design.
jkth
Solid? Those are absolutely awesome features! Calendar sync is long overdue and Active Views sounds fantastic.
brostbeef
I have to be honest, I thought Hotmail was really growing stagnant (dead) when it came to the feature sets offered by others such as GMail. However, with these announcements, Microsoft has fully renewed my trust and interest into their e-mail service.
WOW!
Everything I’ve been waiting for is here!!! ActiveSync, Full SSL, Time Traveling Filters, Conversation View, Single Contact List, and Reply with edits to an attachment! Everything I knew I wanted, plus a bit more.
I really hope someone from the Hotmail development team reads this…
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. You did an amazing job. I finally look forward to seeing a Hotmail release go into production. You guys ROCK!
Name
ActiveSync…finally…time to ditch every other mail solution….thanks a million MS time to come back to hotmail!!!!
Well done team
Flo
ActiveSync Support will be awesome. Thanks Microsoft you’re doing a great job on wave 4 !!!
Curt
These are all great updates and I am really looking forward to seeing Wave 4.
Is there a trick to getting a username/password for the preview sites or is it just for presskit members? All the links displayed here go to the Windows Live Reviewer Guide that requires a username and password.
- jkth
  Curt,
  Its just for those on the early preview.
JohnCz
Fantastic feature set. A few questions do come to mind…
1. Will there be a Active View for a Live Video Message? In otherwords, can you playback the message without being redirected to SkyDrive from within your mail message? please, yes
2. If you click on “Flagged” in Quick Views…isn’t that a One-click Filter? Photos and Documents make some sense because I image the information displayed will be quite different from a mail message header. Unless “Flagged” messages have an option for user defined tags that you can further filter on while in the “Flagged” Quick View.
http://twitter.com/Insomniac86 Aaron Harvey
Seriously, Seriously, Seriously awesome. This will be by far the best email service in the world. ActiveSync and Calendar support HELL YEAH!
Peter
please tell me that Task sync (to-do) is also part of it.
- jkth
  Good question. I’m hoping for that too.
- Capli
  That’s a big thing for me too. I hope, i’ll be finally available.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Stefano-Bellisario/1294808304 Stefano Bellisario
    Also I’m hoping for that too!!!!!!!!
http://www.facebook.com/tony.taurisano Tony Taurisano
Cool new features. Cant wait!!
http://twitter.com/surilamin surilamin
Kudos to the hotmail team, back in the game! The only thing still on my wish list is a name change, probably never going to happen though, although it was in consideration at one point, oh well. Pleasently pleased to hear about the changes, cannot wait until Wave 4!
jntowers
since when does hotmail support push email on mobile phones? (quote from first point) and what phones?
- guest
  yes, ActiveSync supports push.
jntowers
stupid me, nevermind, ignore my comment… i read it too fast
jtmat
Nice…
I wonder where this leaves places like sherweb.com? Or I guess the question should be, does all of this also come with those who use their own domain.
If so, I’d guess places like sherweb might want to offer additional services or offerings (maybe an increase in SharePoint).
This is a great step… wave 4 is turning out to be worth the wait.
Can’t wait to see what they are doing with sync… if they are moving this far forward, sync should be what everyone wants, and then some.
http://www.facebook.com/poloboy03 William Hutchinson III
I really want to see how activesync works with calendar functions for windows mobile. Seeing my appointments in real-time will be great insted of getting text messages of events!
http://www.about.me/liamdaly Liam
about time! I forward all my emails to gmail because of exchange on my iPhone. As soon as hotmail gets it I will be dropping gmail
http://www.facebook.com/people/Stefano-Bellisario/1294808304 Stefano Bellisario
I can’t wait!!!
It will be possibile sync aldo task and note??? It really would be the top!
Marwan
A dream is coming true :)
Revolutions
how do you log in to http://www.hotmailpreview.com? It says VIP login… I’d love to have access :D
and this looks awesome. I expected that hotmail wouldn’t be able to catch up to gmail in terms of features but… this looks awesome.
http://twitter.com/davidhoush David Housh
A million times over, awesome! I cannot wait to get my hands on the new features that are coming to Hotmail.
Activesync will be extremely nice.
Revolutions
Also, around when would this be released?
http://cid-280a1538334a1cb9.profile.live.com/ Seika
Really dream come true. No longer have to worry about when would the Windows Live for mobile device ever finished calendar sync, and if it would be available to more minor mobile platforms that already supported AS.
Would task synchronizing included in the Calendar too ?
Josh
There is only one real thing I want from hotmail – nested folders. It’s not a big thing, but with the volume of email I get the only way to manage it is numerous filters and nested folders
- jkth
  Yeah, I’d like that too. Or being able to put stuff in multiple folders (what GMail calls tagging).
Andrew
Great new features. Wish they would remove the ads in the email messages though.
- EntrepreNerd
  Indeed! I am so happy to see that hotmail is finally catching up to Gmail from 2 years ago. I am just happy to see Microsoft accept and embrace their role as follower instead of pretending like they can innovate.
  - Anonymouse Cowherd
    Yeah, just like the Gmail features that allows you to edit your contact list…. hey Google don’t allow you to do that!
    - EntrepreNerd
      What lists? What are you talking about? Do you mean “groups” of contact for mass mailing?
      - Anonymouse Cowherd
        Don’t tell me you don’t know what a contact list is.
        Do you use e-mail? Even Gmail has one. And Gmail doesn’t allow you to update your contact list via IMAP.
- http://macrosofter.wordpress.com/ quikboy
  You can either:
  a) Use the Windows Live Mail client which does not attach text ads
  b) Go to Options > More Options > i’m making a difference > select a charity and save. When you create a new message, you can either keep that text ad (where the proceeds go directly to that charity you chose) or you can completely erase it.
Billy
Great, but the ads in the sent-mails are very ugly!
Chris
Remove the ads.
btw I love the design of the preview sites, Hope they keep them and ditch the huigly baby blue and white sceme
Revolutions
Aah!! How do you log in to hotmailpreview.com? I really wanna check it out >.<
http://saami.mp Saami Matloob
well makez me want to use hotmail again.. but i just hate how much time it takes to load up .. and no keyboard shortcuts :’( ..
- Asrialys
  There have been keyboard shortcuts for a long time now…
  - http://saami.mp Saami Matloob
    i guess i stopped using it before that :|
anonymuous
Exchange, Conversation View, Active Views, Reply with Attachment edits are all killer features. They should put these definitely in Live Mail (Not just Live Hotmail) Wave 4. WELL DONE HOTMAIL TEAM!! It’s now really hot! The icon too! Lol.
Revolutions
Please please tell me they’re using that icon! So much better than the earlier one… so many negative associations with that icon (slow, annoying, buggy, lame).
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=551119507 Brent Vermilyea
Brilliant.
Kristan
The new version of Hotmail sounds like it will be a nice solution for the majority of users needs.
A few things I’m curious about though:
1. Will Microsoft be cleaning up some of the clutter associated with Windows Live Contacts? In its current form, it just feels so much more bloated compared to contact management systems from other e-mail service providers (Gmail, Yahoo, etc).
2. Will Windows Live Calendar on the web be seeing a major refresh as part of this so that it isn’t so slow, buggy, and convoluted?
3. Will tasks in Windows Live Calendar be integrated directly onto the calendar vs. simply being a separate list? It makes it a lot easier to keep track of upcoming tasks when you can see them directly as part of the calendar itself (like what Google Calendar offers today).
4. Will Microsoft ever remove the advertisement from outgoing sent mail messages via Hotmail’s web interface? It looks highly unprofessional, the only way around it currently is to use a desktop solution (e.g. Windows Live Mail with DeltaSync or another e-mail client using POP3).
5. There was a story reported earlier in the month of April regarding the ability to close/hide the ad seen in the inbox and other mail views, will this still be the case in the final release?
6. Will Hotmail users be able to forward their incoming mail automatically to other domains outside of Windows Live or Windows Live Custom Domains? Currently, free account holders are limited to forwarding to @hotmail.com, @msn.com, @live.com, and other Windows Live domains only.
7. Will Microsoft be re-implementing the vacation responder as part of the Wave 4 release?
8. Will the new Hotmail support the use of custom aliases (such as bobsmith+newsletters@hotmail.com), much like what is currently offered by Gmail and other providers?
zeb
Looks like Junk……if not broke do not fix. Hope for a way to toggle to simple not super mode.
Peter
What will happen to Outlook Hotmail Connector?
- Alex, England
  Nothing I imagine. It’s still needed for Desktop Mail access. Exchange ActiveSync is a mobile technology. Hopefully Outlook 2010 has it built in though.
Alex, England
This is all exciting news and will finally make Hotmail a serious competitor to Gmail but why STILL not subfolder support? I’ve got a lengthy folder structure on Gmail, that will not be adequately met by just using single level folders.
Labels would be nice too. It’s great to see conversations can be switched OFF because I hate that on Gmail, especially when it gets it completely wrong and you cannot do anything about it. Thankfully I use Outlook (with IMAP) and my phone most of the time to check Gmail, so rarely have to look at it’s ghastly interface.
If they added subfolder support I’d be very tempted to switch!
- Alex, England
  I wish Hotmail would stop going to msn.com when you logout too!