Outlook Live is the new name for an updated set of services under the [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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.