Tweet

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:

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.