Windows Live

Windows 8 will offer people the option of logging in with a Windows Live ID, giving them the ability to access the same files and settings across multiple PCs.

Describing the new integration in the latest Building Windows 8 blog post, Katie Frigon, group program manager of Microsoft's You-Centered Experience team, pointed to the obstacles people face today when using more than one computer. Each PC may have its own unique Windows settings and customizations and store different files and documents, creating a challenge when switching from one computer to another.

To remove that challenge, logging in to Windows … Read more

Windows 8 will let users more easily and seemlessly bridge the gap between online and offline by directly tapping into Microsoft's Windows Live service.

In an Inside Windows Live blog posted yesterday, Chris Jones, vice president for Windows Live engineering, shared some of the features and benefits of the new Windows Live integration in Microsoft's upcoming OS.

Right off the bat, Windows 8 prompts you to log in with your Windows Live ID. If you allow it to do so, Windows Live can then automatically store your Windows profile, settings, and other key files in the cloud. This gives you the ability to synchronize those settings with any Windows 8 PC in which you're logged in, ensuring that you retain the same preferences from one PC to another. Microsoft is also promising the same synchronization between PCs and mobile devices running Windows Phone 7.

Windows 8 will also integrate more smoothly with SkyDrive, Microsoft's online storage site. Documents, photos, and other files that you create locally can be saved to SkyDrive, accessed from any PC, and even shared with other people that you designate. Microsoft will reportedly still limit SkyDrive users to 25 gigabytes of space for most files but offer unlimited storage for photos or Office documents.… Read more

Windows 8 will come with Windows Live SkyDrive built in, giving people quicker, easier access to their online files.

Tweaking its SkyDrive Web site this week, Microsoft has unveiled a couple of demos to try to show just how Windows 8 and SkyDrive will play together.

Access to SkyDrive will be directly integrated into the new operating system, requiring you to sign up for a Windows Live account if you don't already have one. From there, you'll be able to upload and download your files directly between SkyDrive and Windows. Access to SkyDrive should be even faster and … Read more

Several of Microsoft's online services suffered an outage last night but are reportedly all back up at this point.

The company's Office 365, Hotmail, SkyDrive, and various Windows Live services were down throughout the world for a period of around three hours. Microsoft acknowledged the outage late yesterday in its Inside Windows Live blog and on its Office 365 Twitter feed and said that it was working to resolve the issue.

After a couple of hours of investigation, the company pinned the cause on a DNS (Domain Name System) issue and said that it was starting to see … Read more

Microsoft tweaked its Office Web Apps earlier this week with a few enhancements designed to make Excel and PowerPoint a bit more user friendly.

Excel aficionados can now insert, delete, and rename individual worksheets in a workbook, just like you can in the desktop version. To do this, open your Excel file in the online editor. Then simply right-click on a tab for an existing worksheet. You'll see the three familiar options to Insert, Delete, or Rename. Inserting adds a new worksheet in front of your current selection. Deleting asking for your confirmation to permanently get rid of the … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Just one year after it initially previewed its new Internet Explorer 9 browser, Microsoft formally launched the software today at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSW), bringing in representatives from launch partners from The Huffington Post, Foursquare, Groupon, and Pandora to demonstrate an experience that looks less like the Web as we know it and more like the app ecosystem of a smartphone or tablet.

"We're used to the Web getting better because of everything other than the PC," Internet Explorer's Dean Hachamovitch said of how the most innovative kinds of Web development have, … Read more

Microsoft knows you're making throwaway e-mail accounts, and wants to make that process easier.

Today, Hotmail is getting a new feature aimed at "e-mail enthusiasts," which lets anyone create multiple e-mail accounts that can be read, replied to, and managed from their everyday e-mail inbox. These additional e-mail addresses can be had in the same manner as signing up for new accounts, but they require no extra log-ins or upkeep.

The idea is to give users a safe way to provide third parties with an e-mail address, without giving up the address they've provided to family … Read more

Windows Live Messenger is seeing its integration with Facebook chat grow rapidly.

Microsoft announced yesterday in a blog post that close to 18 million people have "connected" Facebook chat to Messenger since August, when it became possible to do so. And those folks have now accumulated more than 2.8 billion minutes of Facebook chat. All told, there have been 440 million chat sessions between Messenger and Facebook in less than six months, Microsoft said.

Microsoft, which owns a small slice of Facebook, became the first instant-messaging provider to allow its users to chat with friends on Facebook … Read more

Hotmail is rolling out a new platform this morning called Active Views that lets users surf through certain Web sites from inside of e-mail messages.

But it's not just any message where this functionality is enabled. Instead, Microsoft has partnered with specific companies as part of the launch to give users a way to do common tasks like searching and account management. Some of the first ones on that list are Orbitz and Monster.com, with Netflix and LinkedIn soon to follow.

When a Hotmail user gets an e-mail from one of these companies, they'll be able to … Read more