'Net Features : outlook

Microsoft Launches Grown Up Email Service

Michael Garrity — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 22:30:00 GMT

The Outlook email service is a big part of what makes Microsoft’s Office suite of such a success. For many businesses, it’s an essential tool that helps them keep track of more than just email correspondence, but also in-house communications, scheduling, task management, and more.

Apparently the world’s best known software company is looking to build upon the Outlook name with the release of a brand new free email service launched earlier this week, Outlook.com.

Upon first glance, this may seem like a curious decision, as the company already has the widely used Hotmail platform. More so when you compare the features of the two services, which seem basically identical on paper.

However, once you see Outlook.com, you’ll see that they are, in fact, very different products. While Hotmail is littered with gaudy display ads, Outlook.com is are more prudent and professional about the way it presents advertising. Best of all, it doesn’t show any targeted ads inside personal email correspondence with individual people (this doesn’t include newsletters, etc.), which is great for those users who are a little unnerved by the idea of Web-based email programs scanning their messages for advertising purposes.

The service will offer quick and easy access to social networks Twitter and Facebook, allowing users to retweet, Like, or post comments on the content of an email. It also links to the social profiles of the people that users are corresponding with, so their status updates will appear on the right side of the screen (in place of personalized ads). Eventually, it will also feature integration with the Microsoft-acquired Skype video chat service, just not yet.

With its clean, minimal interface, Outlook.com seems to be Microsoft’s attempt to provide a more grown up alternative to Hotmail, which has about as much credibility with Web professionals as a dirty sock.

Outlook.com is already open to the public in a preview period, and users can either create an account or sign in with an existing Hotmail address (which you can “upgrade” to an Outlook.com account). The company is offering nearly unlimited storage, and new accounts will be given access to 7GB of Microsoft SkyDrive cloud storage.

Study Reveals Email Viewing Habits

Allison Howen — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 16:30:00 GMT

A new study shows that most people are still reading their emails through Outlook.

According to the study from Litmus, a company that tests and tracks email campaigns, mobile email usage is rising, while Web and desktop email is declining.

From July 2010 to July 2011, the use of mobile devices to read emails rose from 7 to 15 percent, while reading email on desktops declined from 55 to 53 percent, and the use of Webmail declined from 38 to 32 percent.

The study also shows that Outlook is the most popular avenue that people use to read their emails at 37 percent, followed by Hotmail with 11 percent, Yahoo Mail and the iPhone at 10 percent and Apple Mail at 8 percent.

AOL is last on the list for email opens, underneath Gmail, “Others” and the iPad, at only 1 percent.

However, while Gmail adaption rises, the use of other email services is dropping. Over the last year, the use of Yahoo mail dropped from 44 to 31 percent, and Hotmail dropped from 39 to 33 percent, yet the use of Gmail rose from 15 to 30 percent.

Additional statistics show that browser preference may have something to do with which email provider Internet users choose. Thirty percent of Google Chrome users also use Gmail, while 13 percent of Chrome users choose Hotmail, and 5 percent choose Yahoo.

Check out the graph below for more email viewing statistics:

Google Apps Plugin for MS Outlook & Exchange

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:59:00 GMT

Google Apps users will now be able to sync-up their Microsoft Outlook with their premier or education editions.

According to the official announcement:

Many business users prefer Gmail's interface and features to products they've used in the past. But sometimes there are people who just love Outlook. For them, we've developed Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. It enables Outlook users to connect to Google Apps for business email, contacts and calendar. And they can always use Gmail's web interface to access their information when they're not on their work computer.

Google Apps users will be able to sync not only email, but calendar and contacts as well. A simple, two-click data migration tool allows employees to easily copy existing data from Exchange or Outlook into Google Apps.

Xobni Gets Social With Email

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 05 May 2008 15:01:00 GMT

It's amazing how much time I spend going through Outlook searching for emails - and it looks like I'm not alone.

By 2009, workers are expected to spend 41% of their time managing email. Receiving thousands of emails each week and organizing them efficiently is a task better suited to a machine than it is a person. With the average human brain capable of maintaining only 150 friendships, and with enterprises expected to spend more than $17 billion on email software in the next four years, that's why I was pleased as could be when I came across Xobni, a very "social" plug-in for Outlook which helps users find email conversations, contacts and attachments in a much more fluid, natural and efficient manner.

Installation of the plug-in was quick (although it did take a while to index all of the email in my Outlook). Xobni's features however (powerful email search, threaded conversations, email analytics, quick attachment discovery and phone number extraction) made me a believer.