hotmail

Microsoft is pouncing on the recent bad press about Google in an attempt to win over more customers.

Frank Shaw, corporate VP for Microsoft's Corporate Communications group, boasted in a blog today that Microsoft offers people a safer choice than Google, which has been buffeted by worries over its new privacy policies. The company also plans a bigger ad campaign to exploit what it sees as Google's recent missteps.

Google's woes follow its move to alter its privacy policies to share user information across different products and services. The company has even been forced to justify its decision to Congress, … Read more

Microsoft is carving out a new niche for itself on the Amazon Kindle Fire.

A free mobile app for the company's Hotmail service is now available in the Kindle store for all Fire tablet owners.

Microsoft already offers an app for Google Android devices, which is up for grabs in the Android Market. But some tweaks were needed to make the software compatible with the Fire since Amazon uses its own customized version of Android.

The Hotmail app for the Fire boasts at least one advantage over the tablet's native e-mail app, according to a Microsoft blog. The … Read more

You're one of the 2.1 billion people actively using the Internet.

Looking at the state of the online world throughout 2011, traffic site Pingdom found that the number of Internet users has jumped from a mere 360 million at the end of 2000 and now accounts for 30 percent of the planet's population.

Sweeping across the continents, Asia holds 922 million Internet users, Europe has 476 million, and North America is in third place with 271 million. Drilling down to individual countries, China is on top with 485 million people using the Internet, more than 36 percent … Read more

Nexus Prime sightings, Google Wallet Hacked, in a good way, and HTC security flaws. All that and more on this week's episode of Android Atlas Weekly for October 5th, 2011.

NEWS

iPhone 4S vs. the competition http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-20115636-233/iphone-4s-vs-the-competition/?tag=cnetRiver

Samsung Releases Teaser Shot of Nexus Prime http://www.pcworld.com/article/241162/samsung_releases_teaser_shot_of_nexus_prime.html

Might this be the Nexus Prime? http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_7-20115325-251/might-this-be-the-nexus-prime/?tag=cnetRiver

Samsung to show off Nexus … Read more

Sprint has signed a $20 billion dollar deal for 30.5 million new iPhones, and Adobe releases Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 with accelerated 3D graphics support, and check out CNET.com's live coverage of Apple's announcement of the next iPhone(s).

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft is aiming to make its Hotmail e-mail service better than ever--and confronting what it admits is a subpar perception of the brand--with a series of new features designed to help users easily clean up their inboxes.

At an event here Monday afternoon, Windows Live corporate vice president Chris Jones explained that Microsoft has long been aware that the Hotmail brand was damaged by a series of issues that affected users' experiences, including storage, spam, performance, and an inability to work properly on most mobile devices.

But those issues peaked in 2006, Jones argued, and since then, Microsoft has … Read more

When Web e-mail goes down, it seems to happen at the most inopportune times. We've all become so dependent on Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and other Web e-mail services, that even a minute of down time can make us anxious. Is it really down, though? Here's how to check:

Gmail Google provides a comprehensive service status page that not only shows the status of Gmail, but other Google Apps services as well. To check Gmail's status, go to https://www.google.com/appsstatus.

Hotmail The Windows Live service status page shows the status of Hotmail, as well … 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

Hotmail is banning passwords such as "password", "123456", "ilovecats", and "gogiants", in an attempt to make it harder for spammers to hijack users' e-mail accounts.

People who sign up for the Web e-mail service will be prevented from using a password typically used by millions of others, Microsoft said in a blog post on Thursday.

"This new feature will be rolling out soon, and will prevent you from choosing a very common password when you sign up for an account or when you change your password," wrote Dick Craddock, group … Read more