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Starting late September, there has been a flurry of activity from email providers, each trying to outdo the other in providing synchronised email and chat platforms. Stepping in sync with the core needs of youths, many of the major players have started offering integrated, easy-to-navigate, community platforms very similar to social networking sites on a common social dashboard.
While a group of friends can view films through their Instant Messenger (IM) on Windows Live at the same time, they can join their friends on a game of Farmville on Yahoo! Messenger. All the three major players — Microsoft, Google and Yahoo — are increasingly tapping the cloud technology to cut down on spam, save up on storage space and step up the speed of service. Here are just a few of the many features being offered:
Windows Live Hotmail
As one of the world's first free web-based email services, Hotmail was instrumental in building the market into what it is now. It was perhaps the first free email ID that a lot of us started using, and according to research company ComScore, is still the largest web email service with 364 million users.
What started out as MSN Hotmail has evolved with the times into Windows Live Hotmail, with several new features. Today, Hotmail offers ever-growing email storage, the ability to send/receive email from multiple accounts and integration with key MSN services like contacts, calendar, Windows Live Messenger and SkyDrive (free online storage).
But perhaps the most exciting feature that Windows Live has introduced recently is the video sharing link offered on its new Windows Live Messenger. When a link is pasted onto a web video, Messenger recognises it and offers a 'view together' option through which an entire group of friends can watch the video. The service currently supports videos from YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, Break.com, and Wat.tv. This requires Windows 7 or Windows Vista with Service Pack 2,
Throwing open the online platform further, Windows Live Messenger can display social updates from around 80 online partners (including Facebook and MySpace) on their messaging platform. Since this may result in a lot of bulk mail clogging the mail boxes, there is also the option to prioritise messages and group them under different categories. Multi-tasking is also being allowed to a certain extent on the Windows Live Messenger platform, which means that if you want to comment on a friend's Facebook message or send them a quick message, you can do it from Messenger. If you have capable hardwarem, there is also the facility for high definition video chat facility enabled in Messenger.
Coming to the email facility, the cloud-based storage technology (SkyDrive) helps users compose mails up to 10GB. This is particularly useful if photos or videos are being shared. Once photos get uploaded on SkyDrive, it acts almost like a personal hard-drive on the cloud. SkyDrive gives users 25GB of free storage space, which is especially useful to share multimedia files. Once the photos are sent, it appears in the email in the form of a slide show.
With a lot of emails being accessed on mobile phones now, Hotmail is also offering emails via SMS. There is a one-time sync with the mobile phone. This service is being offered free of charge right now.
Microsoft claims to have reduced spam from around 38% in 2004 to single-digit levels in 2010. The user has to decide whether a mail is spam or not and then mark it so. Once it is marked, all previous mails from the same address are analysed.
Yahoo! Mail Beta
Yahoo! has rejigged its basic architecture after 10 years, and launched Yahoo! Mail Beta recently which is almost twice as fast as the older version. You can also store and save anything you want, since mailbox size is unlimited. The uniqueness of the updated version lies in some new automatic features. Particularly interesting is the new Yahoo Messenger which can track users.
For instance, if you are using the email service on a PC, your messages pop up there. But if you log out and start using your mobile phone, the message will get automatically transferred there.
The Beta version has a lot of features designed according to user behaviour. For instance, your unread mails are automatically arranged in order of priority (based on the reciprocal communication you have has with the sender). And if you receive a mail with a Flickr or Picasa link attached to it, you can watch the clips or photographs as an automatic slideshow without even clicking on the link.
Multi-tasking is allowed to a great extend on the Yahoo! Messenger which means that you can Tweet, post Facebook messages and even update the Yahoo Messenger all at the same time. Around 40% of the Yahoo Mail users use the gaming facility. Once a user is on a game, the status message immediately shows that. Friends can immediately join in the game if they wish to, The next series of iPhone and Android apps will allow users to take advantage of the features currently available on the Yahoo! Messenger desktop experience.
Regarding spam, more than 130 billion spam messages are blocked every month. Beta uses Yahoo!'s global cloud computing infrastructure for its anti-spam efforts.
The only shortcoming of these features is that users may not be able to customize their settings according to their needs. Most of the functions included are automatically carried out.
GMail
ComScore lists Gmail as having 191 million users, behind Yahoo! Mail's 280 million and Hotmail's 364 million. Although the numbers are lower, Gmail still offers the most features among the top three.
Google Buzz, the built in social networking tool, integrates various websites like Picasa, Flickr, Twitter, Blogger, YouTube, Google Reader and several others. Through Buzz, you can share links and have conversations publicly or with a group of known friends. Thanks to Gmail Labs, users can constantly try out new experimental features like built in games, custom keyboard shortcuts, canned responses, HD video chat options, mouse gestures, creating a Google document from an email message and even the option to undo a sent message (within a certain window of time).
Gmail is also enabling users to see preview of photos in their emails and gadgets to integrate seamlessly with Google Docs and Calendar. Similarly, previews of documents, spreadsheets and presentations can be seen directly in the email when you receive any link to a Google Doc. You can see all office documents on your email now.
Their new documents editor now supports editing on your mobile browser, according to the Google blog. Since Google Apps data is stored in the cloud, multiple users can access and contribute to projects simultaneously.
For example, instead of collaborating on a document by sending back and forth revision after revision as attachments, documents are stored in the cloud with Google Apps. Co-workers can access the web-based document simultaneously in their browsers, and even make changes that other authorised users can see in real-time.
With the new priority inbox, messages can be prioritized to help you focus on only on the most important messages. If you need to chat with someone in another language, you can use the translator to do the job for you. Even right-to-left written languages like Arabic can be transliterated.
While a group of friends can view films through their Instant Messenger (IM) on Windows Live at the same time, they can join their friends on a game of Farmville on Yahoo! Messenger. All the three major players — Microsoft, Google and Yahoo — are increasingly tapping the cloud technology to cut down on spam, save up on storage space and step up the speed of service. Here are just a few of the many features being offered:
Windows Live Hotmail
As one of the world's first free web-based email services, Hotmail was instrumental in building the market into what it is now. It was perhaps the first free email ID that a lot of us started using, and according to research company ComScore, is still the largest web email service with 364 million users.
What started out as MSN Hotmail has evolved with the times into Windows Live Hotmail, with several new features. Today, Hotmail offers ever-growing email storage, the ability to send/receive email from multiple accounts and integration with key MSN services like contacts, calendar, Windows Live Messenger and SkyDrive (free online storage).
But perhaps the most exciting feature that Windows Live has introduced recently is the video sharing link offered on its new Windows Live Messenger. When a link is pasted onto a web video, Messenger recognises it and offers a 'view together' option through which an entire group of friends can watch the video. The service currently supports videos from YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, Break.com, and Wat.tv. This requires Windows 7 or Windows Vista with Service Pack 2,
Throwing open the online platform further, Windows Live Messenger can display social updates from around 80 online partners (including Facebook and MySpace) on their messaging platform. Since this may result in a lot of bulk mail clogging the mail boxes, there is also the option to prioritise messages and group them under different categories. Multi-tasking is also being allowed to a certain extent on the Windows Live Messenger platform, which means that if you want to comment on a friend's Facebook message or send them a quick message, you can do it from Messenger. If you have capable hardwarem, there is also the facility for high definition video chat facility enabled in Messenger.
Coming to the email facility, the cloud-based storage technology (SkyDrive) helps users compose mails up to 10GB. This is particularly useful if photos or videos are being shared. Once photos get uploaded on SkyDrive, it acts almost like a personal hard-drive on the cloud. SkyDrive gives users 25GB of free storage space, which is especially useful to share multimedia files. Once the photos are sent, it appears in the email in the form of a slide show.
With a lot of emails being accessed on mobile phones now, Hotmail is also offering emails via SMS. There is a one-time sync with the mobile phone. This service is being offered free of charge right now.
Microsoft claims to have reduced spam from around 38% in 2004 to single-digit levels in 2010. The user has to decide whether a mail is spam or not and then mark it so. Once it is marked, all previous mails from the same address are analysed.
Yahoo! Mail Beta
Yahoo! has rejigged its basic architecture after 10 years, and launched Yahoo! Mail Beta recently which is almost twice as fast as the older version. You can also store and save anything you want, since mailbox size is unlimited. The uniqueness of the updated version lies in some new automatic features. Particularly interesting is the new Yahoo Messenger which can track users.
For instance, if you are using the email service on a PC, your messages pop up there. But if you log out and start using your mobile phone, the message will get automatically transferred there.
The Beta version has a lot of features designed according to user behaviour. For instance, your unread mails are automatically arranged in order of priority (based on the reciprocal communication you have has with the sender). And if you receive a mail with a Flickr or Picasa link attached to it, you can watch the clips or photographs as an automatic slideshow without even clicking on the link.
Multi-tasking is allowed to a great extend on the Yahoo! Messenger which means that you can Tweet, post Facebook messages and even update the Yahoo Messenger all at the same time. Around 40% of the Yahoo Mail users use the gaming facility. Once a user is on a game, the status message immediately shows that. Friends can immediately join in the game if they wish to, The next series of iPhone and Android apps will allow users to take advantage of the features currently available on the Yahoo! Messenger desktop experience.
Regarding spam, more than 130 billion spam messages are blocked every month. Beta uses Yahoo!'s global cloud computing infrastructure for its anti-spam efforts.
The only shortcoming of these features is that users may not be able to customize their settings according to their needs. Most of the functions included are automatically carried out.
GMail
ComScore lists Gmail as having 191 million users, behind Yahoo! Mail's 280 million and Hotmail's 364 million. Although the numbers are lower, Gmail still offers the most features among the top three.
Google Buzz, the built in social networking tool, integrates various websites like Picasa, Flickr, Twitter, Blogger, YouTube, Google Reader and several others. Through Buzz, you can share links and have conversations publicly or with a group of known friends. Thanks to Gmail Labs, users can constantly try out new experimental features like built in games, custom keyboard shortcuts, canned responses, HD video chat options, mouse gestures, creating a Google document from an email message and even the option to undo a sent message (within a certain window of time).
Gmail is also enabling users to see preview of photos in their emails and gadgets to integrate seamlessly with Google Docs and Calendar. Similarly, previews of documents, spreadsheets and presentations can be seen directly in the email when you receive any link to a Google Doc. You can see all office documents on your email now.
Their new documents editor now supports editing on your mobile browser, according to the Google blog. Since Google Apps data is stored in the cloud, multiple users can access and contribute to projects simultaneously.
For example, instead of collaborating on a document by sending back and forth revision after revision as attachments, documents are stored in the cloud with Google Apps. Co-workers can access the web-based document simultaneously in their browsers, and even make changes that other authorised users can see in real-time.
With the new priority inbox, messages can be prioritized to help you focus on only on the most important messages. If you need to chat with someone in another language, you can use the translator to do the job for you. Even right-to-left written languages like Arabic can be transliterated.
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