LiveSide - News blog

This is pretty cool. Wouldn't personally be that useful for me. Might come in handy if I'm on a computer at a library or a friend's house and they don't have an the IM application.

I agree with Phunky, this is a very nice addition to the Yahoo apps.

So, what's better about having that on a webpage that's integrated into mail?  I don't think that's the type of integration I'm looking for.  I'd be interested to see if that's usable.

The calendar bar as seen on the bottom was something I noticed the other day, that looks pretty sweet.

phynky, we already have webmessenger.msn.com...

Calendar bar is indeed cool.

Personally, I think it'd be nice to have an online archive of IMs. So you can do the actual IM'ing from WL Mess or Next-Gen Web Messenger or whatever, but it would all be stored centrally, searchable and all. And when you go to a contact in WL Mail-- uh, I mean WL Hotmail -- you should be able to see your email and IM history with that person.

Anyway, this is exactly the kind of innovative new features WL needs...

@Krampster

Another reason would be for work firewalls. Many companies (mine included) block the online IM addresses. However, the integrated googletalk in gmail works, as they don't block access to personal email accounts.

I agree the cool factor is pretty strong on this, and that it might not be all that usable. For both Gmail and Yahoo to do it though, something has to be working.

For example, I hate MSN webmessenger opening 1 chat window per conversation, and having them flash. Having one browser window open for email is more discreet though.

Although webmessenger integrated with mail would be good. I think a calendar update is still by far the biggest thing needed.

And it should be able to be shared with google calendar/ical etc.

At the moment it looks like they just hacked the old one and threw it into live mail, doesn't even match the design...

@Zaarin: afaik at the moment they have only hacked the old (MSN Hotmail) calendar and thrown in into WLH lol