Some great new Hotmail features out there today. You can learn more about it at the official blog. I like the last bulletpoint.

Why the sudden resurgence of posts lately? Mostly because I’ve been using the latest beta of Windows Live Writer, and I’ve found it really helps blogging easy. I had tried it out when it first came out, but there were some things that bugged me – like how it made pictures really blurry. Things have improved since then, and there’s also a lot more plugins now on Gallery that make Writer even better.

If you haven’t tried it yet, give it a shot.

Windows Live Folders Beta is live. Some of my friends worked on it. 500 megabytes of storage for you for free. Here’s the project’s blog.

Sign up today and start storing your user generated content (ugc) for your community so that you can have a conversation while you’re preparing your podcast on P2P, Ruby on Rails, iPhone, search engine optimization, and Web 3.0.

Ok, that last line was just to stuff a bunch of buzzwords together. Maybe you can find 500 megs of buzzwords to upload or something.

Last week I noticed that the (let’s call it) Foo process at Microsoft was really inefficient and seemingly out of date. That it had dramatic room for improvement.

I sat down, went through the Foo process, documented everything I thought was wrong with it, stuffed it into a PowerPoint deck, and then sent it off to Lisa Brummel, the Senior Vice President of Human Resources.

I got back a well written e-mail a few hours later, clearly written by Lisa herself. It provided some context of how we got into that state, some of the challenges that will occur in changing the Foo process, and a commitment to have the Foo-related team examine the situation to streamline it.

Though Microsoft is a 70,000+ company, it’s good to know that I can still have access to our execs.

On a completely random note, I think the photo from the corporate website (linked above) would’ve been better had it included Lisa’s famous shorts.

7 years ago, a few things happened on June 19th, 2000. Let’s take a look at a few:

1. Microsoft Corp. today announced that the development of the Microsoft® Windows® Millennium Edition (Windows Me) consumer operating system is complete and the product has been released to manufacturing. Windows Me is the latest version of the Microsoft operating system designed specifically for the home user. It improves the home computing experience by delivering enhancements in the areas of PC health, digital media, home networking and the online experience.

Well, WinME wasn’t exactly a giant hit – but it did introduce a great feature: System Restore.

2. Microsoft Corp. today announced it acquired Chicago-based Bungie Software Products Corp., a leading independent developer of action oriented computer and video games. As a result of this acquisition, Microsoft gains exclusive publishing and distribution rights to select Bungie-developed titles, including the highly anticipated sci-fi action epic “Halo.”

Wow, actually I had never known that Bungie was originally Chicago based.In retrospect, that was a pretty good acquisition. I hear that Halo thing is pretty popular.

3. MSFT closed at ~$36.8438.

Stock options can be a great form of compensation – but they can also be a terrible form of compensation since it’s up to the market. In retrospect, it appears I should’ve taken the option to cash out in 2003. For better or for worse, the expiration of my initial grant today closes out this chapter of my life.

4. Dennis T Cheung joins Microsoft, has the picture on the right taken for his badge, and helps ship Microsoft Entourage 2001, Microsoft Entourage X, MSN Explorer for Mac, Microsoft Entourage 2004, Microsoft PowerPoint 2004, Microsoft Entourage 2004 with Lots of Exchange Goodness, MSN Search Toolbar 2.6, Windows Desktop Search 2.6, Windows Live Toolbar 3.0, and Windows Live Hotmail.

It’s been a fun and interesting 7 years. I’ve been given a lot of opportunities for which I have been thankful, and I’ve learned a lot as well. I’ve worked on a lot of cool products, worked and met a lot of interesting people. Let’s see what happens next…

Your mail is here, come and get it!: It’s Here and the Fun Has Only Just Begun
We did it!  Windows Live Hotmail is officially launching worldwide!  This means as early as Monday morning (we’re rolling this out gradually), you can sign up for a new Windows Live Hotmail account and get instant access to our new, world-class email service built from the ground up.

Hurray Windows Live Hotmail has launched! The post linked to above has lots of fun pics, and amazingly I managed to miss every single photo shoot we had due to conflicting meetings. That’s just as fair because I only had a small role in this release having been on the team for just a few months.

Check it out… let me know what you think!

The other day I had some downtime, so I decided to customize the Quick Access Toolbar in Outlook 2007 to improve my efficiency:

Sweet! Now I can flag an email as low importance, flag as high importance, check names in the To/CC fields, switch between plain text and HTML, left justify, center justify, show the BCC field, change the font name/size/color/highlight, and even delete the mail.

How convenient!

Even better, I found out that these customizations are stored on your hard drive as .QAT files! You can find them here:

C:\Users\[your user account]\local settings\Microsoft\Office

Sweet! I went and customized Word, PowerPoint, and Excel as well, copied their QAT files to a FolderShared folder, and then copied the customizations to all my machines.

I feel more productive already.

Have you heard the news?

Your mail is here, come and get it!: We Heard You Loud and Clear

As we prepare to launch the final version of our new web mail service, we recognize the importance of ensuring that our 260+ million existing customers come over to the new service smoothly and without confusion. By adopting the name “Windows Live Hotmail”, we believe we’re bringing together the best of both worlds – new and old. We’re able to offer the great new technology that Windows Live has to offer while also bringing the emotional connection many existing and loyal users have with Hotmail.

Hotmail is now Windows Live Hotmail – after a brief detour of being Windows Live Mail. Kind of like AT&T Wireless->Cingular->AT&T – but with billions of dollars of ad spend involved.

Why do I mention this? Well… since Decemberish, I’ve been working on Windows Live Hotmail, instead of Windows Live Toolbar. This is the first time I’ve worked on an entirely web-based product, and it’s a natural transition looking at where I’ve been so far.

In the M9 release of Windows Live Mail, I worked with Steve Kafka on Import and Export. Here’s what he had to say:

Kafka’s Space: WL Mail – import and export your contacts
But what probably has people more excited is that we added more ways to import contacts and the ability to export your contacts. Check out the options page where you can now import contacts in a number of different CSV file formats (including Yahoo! Mail and Gmail). You’ll also see an option to export your contacts to a CSV file so you can add your WL Mail contacts to Outlook, your phone, or whatever you want. After all, they’re your contacts.

And here’s an obligatory screenshot of what the Import UI looks like:

Give it a try and let me know what you think!