Hotmail Has Come A Long Way

I have been aware of Microsoft's overhaul of its email service, but I only today tried to log in and use it. (I am a comfortable, happy user of Gmail) And, gosh, it is so impressive. It is a cleaner experience than Gmail. Although I don't see me switching. I still have my hotmail address from the late 1990s before Microsoft bought it. And it still works fine.

Yahoo Mail, on the other hand, continues to be confounding. It still is so very loaded. It is like having at least three different televisions on in your living room, at least two of which were turned on by others. I logged in there as well this morning. After trying to delete 25 messages at a time for over 30 minutes I gave up. Can I please have the option to delete all 12,000 messages in my inbox at once? Please? Maybe the feature exists, but with three televisions on, it is hard to figure out. With Hotmail on the other hand I was able to delete all 180 messages in the inbox at once. Okay, that is a hint. Yahoo's spam filter is sub par.

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Outlook.com: Microsoft's New Attempt At Email

This move kind of surprised me. But it sure is a great move. It is a great attempt to bring the sexy back to the Microsoft brand name.

This quote below is from my first email in my Outlook.com inbox.

An experience with no compromises

Outlook.com is the first step in creating one complete experience for the next generation of communications. Email should be connected to your friends – whether they like to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, or a combination. Email should let you get more done, faster – with immediate access to your inbox and tools that can automatically categorize, move, or delete messages you don't want. Email should be deeply integrated with other services – for Outlook.com, you'll find that Office Web Apps, SkyDrive, and, soon, Skype come built right in. And we hope you have already noticed our fast, beautiful user experience.

Introducing Outlook.com - Modern Email for the Next Billion Mailboxes

Webmail was first introduced with HoTMaiL in 1996. Back then, it was novel to have a personal email address you could keep for life - one that was totally independent from your business or internet service provider. Eight years later, Google introduced Gmail, which included 1 GB of storage and inbox search. And while Gmail and other webmail services like Hotmail have added some features since then, not much has fundamentally changed in webmail over the last 8 years ..... email represents 20% of the time we spend on smartphones, and is used extensively on tablets as well as PCs ..... the first email service that is connected to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, and soon, Skype, to bring relevant context and communications to your email. .... 50% of the email in a typical inbox is newsletters and another 20% is social network updates.

It does look clean. But then I only have one email in the inbox, one from Microsoft itself. I am more likely to come for Skype and SkyDrive, also the Office apps. For now I think I will stick to my Gmail.

This puts Marissa Mayer under additional pressure. Yahoo also needs to reimagine its email.

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Head In The Cloud: Google Drive

Image via CrunchBase

If Disqus can do it, maybe Dropbox can do it. (Adding Disqus To My Blog Was The Easiest Thing) But cloud storage is quite a central experience and so is going to get a lot of attention from the Big G. Blog commenting is a sideshow by comparison.

Dropbox: 2 GB. Google Drive: 5 GB. Microsoft SkyDrive: 25 GB. Microsoft is the clear winner!

Google's Drive Adds to a Complicated Cloud

After roughly six years of rumors, Google has finally launched its own cloud storage and syncing service, called Google Drive. The service offers five gigabytes of online file storage for free and includes software that automatically synchronizes files between Windows and Apple computers, Android phones, and Google's cloud. ..... Users can pay $2.49 a month for an extra 25 gigabytes of storage, or pay more for larger blocks up to a maximum of 16 terabytes. ..... The five gigabytes of storage that Google now offers is more than the two gigabytes that's standard with a free Dropbox account, although Dropbox runs several promotions that make it relatively easy for a user to get five gigabytes or more for free. Dropbox offers 50 gigabytes of storage for $9.99 per month; a Google Drive user can get 100 gigabytes for half that price..... Microsoft yesterday upgraded the capacity of its cloud storage service, SkyDrive, which integrates closely with its Windows Phone software and the upcoming Windows 8. Users of that service receive 25 gigabytes of storage for free, and can pay for more....... Google Drive .. It is meant to be a place where you can work with data and documents, not just store them. More than 30 types of document can be viewed from the Google Drive site, including many video and image formats, and office documents can be edited there, too. Computer vision algorithms make it possible to search text in any images uploaded to Google Drive ...... build "the Internet's file system." ..... intense competition between Google, Microsoft, Apple, and smaller companies such as Dropbox.

Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

Just like the Loch Ness Monster, you may have heard the rumors about Google Drive. It turns out, one of the two actually does exist...... Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items. .... regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader. .... Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology..... Drive is also an open platform, so we’re working with many third-party developers so you can do things like send faxes, edit videos and create website mockups directly from Drive.

Just like there is room for more than one email service, there is room for more than one cloud storage system. I am not thinking 2 GB versus 5 GB versus 25 GB. I am thinking 2 plus 5 plus 25.

Edit videos in Drive? Wow.

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