LiveSide - News blog : Storage

A note about Hotmail, SkyDrive and Photos storage space

damaster — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 06:00:00 GMT

In our previous posts covering the upcoming features in Hotmail and SkyDrive, we seemed to have missed some hints at possible Hotmail and SkyDrive integration. People have been asking for this for a long time, and now it finally seems possible in Wave 3. In the latest Windows Live documentations, it mentioned several details about the storage spaces that are available throughout Windows Live services:

Hotmail's minimum storage space will be 25GB and this will be ever-increasing as required at the end of each month, making it basically unlimited storage (subject to abuse control)
The ability to download e-mail attachments from Hotmail into SkyDrive - allowing these attachments to be shared with others or just kept private in your online folders
SkyDrive's storage space will also be 25GB, as reported previously, in addition to Hotmail's storage space
SkyDrive will allow uploading of up to 1000 new files stored per month - note that this only applies to newly uploaded files during that particular month, so total storage can well exceed 1000 files (it is unsure whether this also applies to Photos and those Hotmail e-mail attachments downloaded into SkyDrive)
Photos will utilize SkyDrive’s ~~5GB~~ 25GB of storage space for storage of full resolution photos. ~~(However this may be subject to change - at least we certainly hope so. Perhaps someone forgot to update it in the documentations?)~~ Update: From one of the demonstration videos by Brian Hall, it was shown that Photos does have the 25GB of storage shared with SkyDrive, not the previously reported 5GB. Looks like it was a typo in the documentations after all. Thanks to CKurt for pointing it out in the comments!

For many users, these storage spaces should be well enough for us to share files and photos with our family, friends, or colleagues. ~~Although we do hope that Photos can take advantage of the entire 25GB in SkyDrive instead of the reported 5GB.~~ What are your thoughts on this?

Windows Live Hotmail Wave 3: What’s New

Chris — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:41:00 GMT

Thanks to some great work by tophtucker and then BV2312, we managed to catch the new Windows Live Hotmail promotion site as soon as it popped up today. What we love about this site is that it has gone public with some of the changes for Windows Live Hotmail that are coming up in the Wave 3 beta. Here's the summary:

Speed: The coming soon page says that for broadband users, the new Hotmail will be up to 70% faster on sign in (50% for non-broadband users). That's a pretty big claim, and one which should provide for some interesting testing once the beta is open to the public.

Ever-increasing storage: Microsoft have carefully avoided using the phrase "unlimited storage", as Yahoo has done, but in a sense this is what is being offered. The figures we last heard for this were the the existing 5GB free accounts would be getting growth of 250MB per month, but this is pre-beta and could have changed and so our usual disclaimer applies. Obviously the PR definitely looks better leaving the figures out, but a free inbox of 8GB by the end of year 1 gives us a warm feeling. (For comparison, Gmail is currently on 7GB and still growing.)

New UI: Along with the new Wave 3 UI, in particular the new header and themes available shown below, the new promotion site suggests that the classic and full versions of Hotmail will be combined together. This potentially means that full functionality could be available across all browsers. Also worth mentioning here are improvements around deadling with spam.

In terms of Hotmail integrating with other Windows Live services, there's also some details on that:

WebIM built-in: This feature doesn't really need much explaining and should be a popular addition. From what we've heard it'll support most of the basic needs such as presence, notifications and chat via the WebMessenger dogfood. Yes its been a while since we've spoken about that!

Integrated Calendar: No surprise if you're on the new Windows Live Calendar beta to hear there will be integration between the two services.

Easier to send group emails: Thanks to the new Windows Live Groups service (go ABCH!) it'll be easier to email all those contacts in one go

And of course there is stuff not on the PR site that we've heard about, including the long-rumoured POP support for other mail clients and using Skydrive for storing photos sent via Photo Mail.

Unfortunately if you're now excited about giving the new Hotmail a try, we haven't seen any links to sign up for a public beta. As soon as we do though, we'll let you know. Keep those tips coming, either in the comments or via email.

Hints on a Windows Live SkyDrive update?

damaster — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:35:00 GMT

Today while trying to retrieve my documents stored on Windows Live SkyDrive, I came across a pop-up window asking me to fill out a little survey on how to help Microsoft to "improve SkyDrive" in the future. Half-way through the survey, I came across the following questions:

Seems like Microsoft is thinking of a new way to generate revenues from SkyDrive by offering users a paid subscription service with security features like data encryption, password protection, unlimited storage (or extra storage to 50GB depending on what they decide on), and automatic data backup from your PC to the cloud for a possible $50 per year (prices subject to change, of course).

Is it possible that this will be offered along with the Wave 3 launch? Is the extra features worth the price? This is considering that Microsoft is already offering 28.63GB for free to every Windows Live ID users and you can sign up for as many IDs as you want, and the fact that Live Mesh is already allowing automatic backup to the cloud for free. Additionally, Microsoft is already offering 50GB of Photo Backup through it's OneCare service for $50/year, will this addition by SkyDrive directly compete with OneCare, or replacing it? I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Update: Just remembered that we hinted sometime last year about a possible SkyDrive desktop syncronisation, mentioning three new SkyDrive-related domains at Skydrivesync.com, Syncskydrive.com, and Messengerskydrive.com, all of which are currently redirecting to SkyDrive as well. Could this be related to the automatic back up feature?

Live Mesh Tech Preview gets funky Silverlight-esque logo

Chris — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 03:45:43 GMT

We just can't get enough of Ray Ozzie's latest project Live Mesh, so much so that when we saw what could be the current logo on the dogfood mobile login page, we just had to share. It reminds us of the Silverlight logo thanks to the use of that dazzling blue.

Unfortunately for those who are waiting for an invite to the Technology Preview, we heard there was a queue of softies waiting to get on the internal dogfood program when it was announced at Mix 08, so it could be a while yet.

(Note you can’t login to the mobile site if you can’t login to the main site.)

Foldershare admits problems - promises improvements soon

Chris — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 04:38:00 GMT

In recent weeks those using FolderShare have had much to complain about. The service has been down more than its been up, and a quick look at FolderShare newsgroup shows that for a service such as this, 99.9% uptime is the minimum that is demanded. Relief may be at hand however, as Microsoft finally starts to make progress with Windows Live FolderShare beta.

Mohammed, one of the FolderShare team members that frequents the newsgroups, has been open about where they are now:

"We’re hard at work on improvements to the service, including some great new UI enhancements you can expect to see in the coming months that we think you’re going to love.

In the meantime, however, we’ve been facing some challenges as we begin to transition the platform behind the service from the original code FolderShare ran on when we first acquired it to a more robust offering. And unfortunately many of you have been feeling some of these pains first hand.

Specifically, some recent hardware failures caused a chain of events that have caused connection issues for many over the last week or so. We are working hard to address these problems and expect things to be functioning properly again in the coming days. And longer term, you can rest assured that we are also making significant investments in our architecture and platform to fix these issues for the long term and to prepare the service for the future."

Reading between the lines suggests that a true Windows Live FolderShare beta is on the horizon, finally updating the FolderShare website and client that have been running from before the acquisition. How FolderShare eventually ties in with the other Windows Live services we'll just have to wait and see.

So why has it taken so long for Microsoft to get this far? Mohammed alluded to it in part. As FolderShare was an acquisition, it didn't arrive in a pre-packaged box that said "plug 'n' play" compatible on the side; it was service built on (L)AMP. As such it will have been rewritten to run on the Windows-powered servers that form the massive Windows Live datacenters.

There's also the fact that Windows Live services are used by a lot of people, so turning FolderShare into a scalable solution is no small feat. While the downtime in the last month may be above the threshold of acceptability, imagine the outcry if a few million people jumped on it and the service wasn't ready!

New Skydrive domains hint at desktop synchronisation

Chris — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 03:59:00 GMT

The weekly domain name posts from ResourceShelf have become a useful source of information for Microsoft and Google bloggers. This week is no exception, with Windows Live Skydrive having almost 20 domains registered or transferred to Microsoft servers in the last 7 days. If Microsoft hadn't already told us that SkyDrive v1 is launching soon, then this would be a bit of a giveaway. However 2 gems that caught my eye were:

Skydrivesync.com
Syncskydrive.com

That's right, synching Skydrive with your deskop is in the masterplans somewhere, and you thought Microsoft brought FolderShare just to splash some cash. Dare we even hope this makes it into beta during 2008?

Windows Live Folders renamed to Skydrive - Gets update too

Chris — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 23:05:00 GMT

Today sees the somewhat expected renaming of Windows Live Folders to its final name, Windows Live Skydrive. There is also a significant update to the service, extending the basic functionality that was criticised somewhat at the start of the initial beta. New features include:

Drag and drop file upload, making it easy to upload multiple files. Previously you were limited to manually selecting 5 files at a time, which made uploading a time consuming process.
Navigational controls to move quickly beween files
A "recently viewed" section showing other users' Skydrive folders you have browsed
Thumbnails view, already announced by the Skydrive team a few weeks ago.
The new Windows Live Wave 2 UI
The ability to embed files in a blog post or web page, allowing users to download them from your Skydrive.

The update is now out, check it out at http://skydrive.live.com/ and let us know what you think. Apologies if you can't access it yet, you can view the changes over at my public folder. Good news for those in the UK and Indian, you can now user the service :)

Scott goes through the new features in more detail in a separate post.

PS: There is a new team blog.

Windows Live Folders not final name for cloud storage service - Windows Live Skydrive instead?

Chris — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 04:38:00 GMT

Some things just seem to keep reappearing like a bad penny, and for Windows Live its undoubtedly the naming strategy. Since the Folders beta was expanded earlier this week, the login page has referenced the service as Windows Live Skydrive. As we've talked about previously, Skydrive was the codename for the cloud storage service while it was in initial development. We managed to get the following official comment:

“Windows Live Folders has always been a placeholder name only and will not be the final name of the service when it ultimately launches. We are not able to publicly confirm any name beyond Windows Live Folders at this time; however, Windows Live Folders is in beta, and in addition to gathering input and making changes to the service, Microsoft will update the name as well.”

So will Skydrive be the final name or not? It definitely ranks along the new "cool" names of Popfly and Silverlight, however it seem an unusual step to use a codename for a final product name. Even more so when you consider the current Senior Vice President for Windows and Windows Live allegedly dislikes codenames, but lets not start Long Zheng bashing him again.

To wrap it all off, yes the domain http://skydrive.live.com/ has now started working.

Windows Live OneCare 2.0 beta almost here

Chris — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 20:00:00 GMT

In an email sent to Windows Live OneCare testers, Microsoft confirmed the imminent start of the OneCare 2.0 beta program. Designated as a "pre-premiere", OneCare 2.0 will not be available as a public beta initially.

New features we should be seeing include:

Multi PC management - designate a hub PC and then add additional PCs to your OneCare circle using a common Windows Live ID. You can then see the status of the other PCs within the group.
Printer Sharing - share your printer with all the PCs in your OneCare circle
OneCare Online Photo Backup - paid storage is available online for photo backups (we're hearing 10GB but that could change by the end of the beta)
Securing wireless networks - if your router is supported OneCare 2.0 will allow you to secure your wireless network
x64 support

The ability to backup online is a feature we've been talking about for a while, as a potentially key part of storage in the cloud. Windows Live Folders is currently set at 500MB, but if 10GB is what is being offered for OneCare Photo backups, a significant increase for the final version seems more than likely.

If you haven't signed up for the beta already, here's the link.

New storage service - Windows Live Folders

Chris — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 06:07:00 GMT

While news on the "Live Drive" front has been rather non-existant of late, there are some signs that may be about to change. A new service, Windows Live Folders beta, was recently listed on the Windows Live Feedback site, though it was only a matter of days before it was removed. While it doesn't take a genius to work out this is likely to be a storage service, the question is what will it be? A revamped FolderShare, the "Live Drive" cloud storage service everybody has been waiting for, or a combination of both?...(read more)

Windows Live Mail Plus to offer 4GB storage

Chris — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 00:06:00 GMT

As more Windows Live services launch out of beta in the next few months, one of the unanswered questions still remains around premium subscribers. Some good news for Hotmail Plus users comes in the form of Windows Live Mail Plus, which is currently only marketed in Holland.

Features:

4GB inboxes from Spring 2007 *New*
Attachments upto 20MB
No advertisements (across several Windows Live services, including Mail, Mail desktop and Spaces)
Microsoft Outlook access
No disabling of your account due to inactivity
Yearly cost remains at €19.99, expected £14.99 and $19.99 when launched in other regions

While the addition of 4GB storage may seem like overkill for email, Gmail is currently on ~2.8GB, it makes more sense if you can share it between services. While Live Drive is not yet released, this would seem like an appropriate place for it to integrate with Windows Live.