Hotmail
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 Windows Live Hotmail inbox |
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| Developed by | Microsoft |
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| Initial release | July 4, 1996 |
| Latest release | 13.2.0260.1209 / 2008-12-9 |
| Available in | 35 languages |
| Type | Webmail |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | http://www.hotmail.com |
Windows Live Hotmail, formerly known as MSN Hotmail and commonly referred to simply as Hotmail, is a free web-based email service operated by Microsoft as part of its Windows Live group.
Hotmail was founded by Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia and launched in July of 1996. Hotmail was one of the first free webmail services and was funded by the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. It was subsequently acquired by Microsoft in 1997 for an estimated $400 million, and shortly after it was rebranded as "MSN Hotmail". The current version, "Windows Live Hotmail", was officially announced in 2005 and released worldwide in 2007.
Windows Live Hotmail features 5GB of storage that expands as necessary,[1] patented security measures,[2] Ajax technology, and integration with Windows Live Messenger, Spaces, Calendar, and Contacts. It has over 270 million users worldwide as of 2008. It is available in 35 different languages.[3]
The Hotmail development and operations teams are based in Mountain View, California.
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[edit] Features
Similar to other major webmail services, Hotmail uses Ajax programming techniques and supports the most popular internet browsers (Internet Explorer, Safari, and Mozilla Firefox). Some of its features include keyboard controls giving the ability to navigate around the page without using the mouse, advanced message search[4] including structured query syntax such as "from:ebay", message filters, folder-based organization of messages, auto-completion of contact addresses when composing, contact grouping, importing and exporting of contacts as CSV files, rich text formatting, rich text signatures, spam filtering and virus scanning, support for multiple addresses, and different language versions. POP3 access is now available for all Hotmail accounts.[5]
[edit] Unique capabilites
Hotmail also includes some capabilities not commonly found in other webmail services:
- Audio player
- An integrated audio player which plays voicemails or MP3 audio clips after scanning the file for viruses.
- Integration
- Hotmail integrates with other Windows Live services. Users can see if their Windows Live Messenger contacts are online and start instant messaging conversations from Hotmail. Integration with Windows Live People provides the ability to have contact information kept automatically up-to-date, as well as providing the What's New feed of users found on their Windows Live Profile. Windows Live Calendar will also be accessible through the Hotmail interface.
- Reading pane
- The redesign of Hotmail was centered around an Outlook-style appearance, with a reading pane to view the inbox and messages at the same time, drag-and-drop functionality, keyboard selects for using the Ctrl or Shift keys to select messages and right-click context menus. As with Outlook, the reading pane can be displayed at the side of messages, below them, or not at all.
- Security
- Security features built into Hotmail include Trend Micro virus scanning, SenderID, SMTP Authentication, phishing heuristic detection, Bonded Sender, mailing list detection, and forwarding detection.[2] Potentially unsafe mail is caught by Hotmail and it does not open the message or allow access to an attachment until the user requests that it do so; this is intended to reduce the success of phishing attempts. A "safety bar" is positioned above each message as a notification to the user as to whether the sender is known and if the mail content is potentially dangerous.
- Spell checker
- As with Office programs like Microsoft Word, Hotmail includes the ability to check the spelling of words as they are typed. Misspelled words are underlined in red and a right-click displays a list of suggestions.
- Themes
- Hotmail offers a choice of different themes. Users can choose from a range of different predefined Windows Live themes. The theme chosen will be used across all other Windows Live services.
[edit] Registration
Upon registration, new users can choose from a Hotmail domain address (e.g. @hotmail.com, @hotmail.co.uk, @hotmail.fr) or a localized Windows Live domain (e.g. @live.com, @live.co.uk, @live.fr).
The domain live.com attracted at least 921 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study.[6]
[edit] History
[edit] Launch of Hotmail
The original Hotmail service was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith, and was one of the first webmail services on the Internet. It was commercially launched on July 4, 1996, American Independence Day, symbolizing "freedom" from ISP-based e-mail[7] and the ability to access a user's inbox from anywhere in the world. The name "Hotmail" was chosen out of many possibilities ending in "-mail" as it included the letters HTML - the coding used behind all web pages (to emphasize this, the original spelling was "HoTMaiL"). Hotmail was initially backed by venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. By December 1997, it reported more than 8.5 million subscribers.[8]
[edit] MSN Hotmail
Hotmail was sold to Microsoft in December 1997 for a reported $400 million, and it joined the MSN group of services.[9] Hotmail quickly gained in popularity as it was localized for different markets around the globe and became the world's largest webmail service, and reported more than 30 million active members by February 1999.[10]
Hotmail originally ran on a mixture of FreeBSD and Solaris operating systems.[11] A project was started to move Hotmail to Windows 2000. In June 2001, Microsoft claimed this had been completed; a few days later they retracted and admitted that in fact some functions of the Hotmail system were still reliant on FreeBSD.[12]
Later development saw the service tied with Microsoft's web authentication scheme, Passport (now Windows Live ID), and integration with Microsoft's instant messaging and social networking programs, MSN Messenger and MSN Spaces (now Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Spaces, respectively). A security issue appeared in Hotmail during this period that permitted anybody to log into any Hotmail account using the password 'eh'; it was at the time called "the most widespread security incident in the history of the Web."[13]
In 2001, the Hotmail service was compromised again by computer hackers who discovered that anyone could log into their Hotmail account and then call messages from any other Hotmail account by crafting a URL with the second account's username and a valid message number. It was such an incredibly simple attack that by the time the patch was made, dozens of newspapers and hundreds of web sites published exact descriptions allowing tens-of-thousands of hackers to run rampant across Hotmail. The exploitable vulnerability exposed millions of accounts to tampering between August 7 and 31, 2001.[14][15]
After a period of technological stagnation, the webmail industry received a significant boost in 2004 when Google announced its own mail service, Gmail. Featuring increased storage space, speed and interface flexibility, this new competitor spurred a wave of innovation in webmail. The main industry heavyweights – Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail – introduced upgraded versions of their e-mail services with greater speed, security, and advanced features.
[edit] Windows Live Hotmail
Microsoft's new e-mail system was announced on November 1, 2005, under the codename "Kahuna", and a beta version was released to a few thousand testers. Other webmail enthusiasts also wanting to try the beta version could request an invitation granting access. The new service was built from scratch and emphasised three main concepts of being "faster, simpler, and safer". New versions of the beta service were rolled out over the development period, and by the end of 2006 the number of beta testers had reached the millions.[16]
The Hotmail brand was planned to be phased-out when Microsoft announced that the new mail system would be called Windows Live Mail, but the developers soon backtracked after beta-testers were confused with the name change and preferred the already well-known Hotmail name, and decided on Windows Live Hotmail. After a period of beta testing, it was officially released to new and existing users in the Netherlands on November 9, 2006, as a pilot market. Development of the beta was finished in April 2007, Windows Live Hotmail was released to new registrations on May 7, 2007, as the 260 million MSN Hotmail accounts worldwide gained access to the new system. The old MSN Hotmail interface was accessible only by users who registered before the Windows Live Hotmail release date and had not chosen to update to the new service. The roll-out to all existing users was completed in October 2007.
Windows Live Hotmail was awarded PC Magazine's Editor's Choice Award in February 2007[17] and again in March 2007 with a rating of 4 out of 5 stars.[18]
It was announced in 2008 on the Windows Live Hotmail website[19] that the service would be updated with focus on improving the speed, increasing the storage space, better user experience and usablity features. It was announced that sign-in and email access speeds will be up to 70 percent faster. The classic and full versions of Windows Live Hotmail are combined in the new release. As a result of user feedback, Hotmail has been updated so that scrolling works for users who have the reading pane turned off. It is also expected that Hotmail team will be moving the advertisement from the top of page to the side, adding more themes, increasing the number of messages on each page, and adding the ability to send instant messages from the user's inbox in future releases.[20]
Support for Mozilla Firefox in the upgraded Windows Live Hotmail took a few months to complete.[21] Full version support for Google Chrome was also added on November 4, 2008. On October 30, 2008, some account holders using various Linux based browsers started experiencing read-only access.[22] However, with the use of a user agent switcher to dupe Hotmail into thinking the user is accessing from Windows, normal functionality is restored, which indicates that Windows Live Hotmail is only allowing certain browsers at the moment. One problem with Windows Live Hotmail is that it does not work with touchscreen internet interfaces such as the iPhone, and other multimedia devices.
As part of the update, Microsoft also added integrated capability for instant messaging with contacts on the Windows Live Messenger service. The feature is the realization of a project that began as "Windows Live Web Messenger" in 2007, a replacement for the outdated "MSN Web Messenger" service.[23]
[edit] Desktop mail client access
[edit] WebDAV
Hotmail was often criticized for allowing only paying subscribers to access it through the WebDAV protocol, which allows e-mails to be downloaded locally via a desktop e-mail client such as Microsoft Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird (with the WebMail extension). WebDAV access was originally available to all Hotmail users, but the service was revoked from new free users in 2004. If a Hotmail account was older than 2004, it was still possible for users to freely access their Hotmail account outside of an internet browser with the above-mentioned programs using WebDAV. If users had a newer account, WebDAV access was only available in Hotmail Premium. In April 2008, Microsoft announced that Hotmail access through WebDAV would be entirely discontinued by June 30, 2008, in favor of the Microsoft-proprietary DeltaSync protocol, citing "obsolescence" of DAV and "greater capabilities" of DeltaSync as the reasons for discontinuing WebDAV support.[24] In May 2008, Microsoft informed that WebDAV will be available longer, not giving a new deadline.[25]
[edit] DeltaSync
For access through Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007, users can download the free Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, subject to passing the Office Genuine Advantage verification. Using the Outlook connector, users can freely access e-mail messages and contacts in any Hotmail account, though access to calendar, tasks and notes requires a premium subscription in addition to the original cost of the Outlook product. Another alternative for users is to use the Windows Live Mail desktop client which has built-in support for Hotmail.[26] Both applications, Windows Live Mail and Microsoft Outlook can access Hotmail through the proprietary DeltaSync protocol.
[edit] POP3
POP3 access is now available for all Hotmail accounts, adding support to access Hotmail from any email client – including most notably the iPhone and other mobile devices.[5]
POP3 Settings:
POP server: pop3.live.com (Port 995)
POP SSL required? Yes
User name: Your Windows Live ID, for example yourname@hotmail.com
Password: The password you usually use to sign in to Hotmail or Windows Live
SMTP server: smtp.live.com (Port 25 or 587)
Authentication required? Yes (this matches your POP username and password)
TLS/SSL required? Yes
[edit] Spam policy and filtering
Like all the major webmail services, Hotmail is often used by spammers for illicit purposes such as junk or chain mailing and unwanted marketing, due to its wide availability, its popularity, and its ease of registration of new accounts. However, Hotmail does not tolerate this practice, and accounts engaging in these activities are terminated without warning.[citation needed]
Microsoft's spam filter is known to discard legitimate emails without warning the receiving user. These emails are acknowledged to the sending user as having been successfully delivered, however they will not appear on the receiver's inbox or junk mail-folder. Mainly affecting small websites' registration procedures, this issue has prompted some sites to ban Microsoft emails altogether.[27]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references (ideally, using inline citations). Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2008) |
- ^ Hotmail Staff. "Hotmail will soon bring you more of your requests, better performance". Microsoft. http://mailcall.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!CC9301187A51FE33!43573.entry. Retrieved on 2007-08-14.
- ^ a b Imran Qureshi. "Why Kahuna is different (part 2)". Microsoft. http://imranq2.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!1p-PlpF3YKhB08FZanM1iesA!649.entry. Retrieved on 2007-03-30.
- ^ Hotmail staff. "We Heard You Loud and Clear". Microsoft. http://mailcall.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!CC9301187A51FE33!29123.entry. Retrieved on 2007-03-23.
- ^ http://free-email-services-review.toptenreviews.com/msn-hotmail-review.html
- ^ a b "POP3 Technology Has Now Rolled Out To Hotmail Customers Worldwide". http://www.liveside.net/main/archive/2009/03/13/pop3-technology-has-now-rolled-out-to-hotmail-customers-worldwide.aspx.
- ^ Live.com attracts 922m visitors online yearly
- ^ "Timeline of computing 1990-forward". AllExperts. http://en.allexperts.com/e/t/ti/timeline_of_computing_1990-forward.htm. Retrieved on 2007-04-10.
- ^ "Hotmail, Microsoft talk deals". CNET. http://news.com.com/2100-1023-206039.html?legacy=cnet. Retrieved on 2007-03-23.
- ^ "Microsoft Buys Hotmail". CNET. http://news.com.com/2100-1033-206717.html?legacy=cnet. Retrieved on 2007-06-22.
- ^ "MSN Hotmail: From Zero to 30 Million Members in 30 Months". Microsoft. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1999/02-08hotmail.asp. Retrieved on 2007-03-23.
- ^ "Converting a UNIX.COM site to Windows". Microsoft Secrets. Security Office. http://www.securityoffice.net/mssecrets/hotmail.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-03.
- ^ Gomes, Lee (2001-06-18). "Is Microsoft Secretly Using Open Source?" (reprint). Microsoft - BSD (Wall Street Journal). http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~lloyd/tildeMisc/2001/2001-MS-BSD.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-03.
- ^ Glave, James. "Hotmail Hackers: 'We Did It'". Wired.com. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1999/08/21503. Retrieved on 2007-11-03.
- ^ Greene, Thomas (2001-08-20). "TheRegister - Hacking Hotmail made easy". http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/08/20/hacking_hotmail_made_easy/. Retrieved on 2008-09-17.
- ^ Knight, Will (2001-08-21). "New Scientist - Hotmail hole leaves email open to view". http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1177/. Retrieved on 2008-09-17.
- ^ Hotmail staff. "M7 new code shipping soon - not yet here!". Microsoft. http://mailcall.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!CC9301187A51FE33!4776.entry. Retrieved on 2007-03-21.
- ^ "Buying Guide: Web E-Mail Clients". PC Magazine. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2091600,00.asp. Retrieved on 2007-03-21.
- ^ "Windows Live Hotmail (beta) Review by PC Magazine". PC Magazine. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2107834,00.asp. Retrieved on 2007-04-10.
- ^ Windows Live Hotmail - Coming Soon
- ^ Hotmail: Classic scrolling is back, and more updates
- ^ "Hotmail Reverted To Classic With Firefox 3 - Page 6". http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=672705&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=75.
- ^ "Firefox Support Forum". 2008-10-30. http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?forumId=1&comments_parentId=195460. Retrieved on 2008-11-06.
- ^ LiveSide.net: Windows Live Web Messenger goes into dogfood
- ^ "Microsoft Announces Changes for Accessing Hotmail with Outlook Express". http://emailsupport.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!5D6F5A79A79B6708!5359.entry.
- ^ "Responding to Customer Feedback – Disabling DAV". http://emailsupport.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!5D6F5A79A79B6708!5745.entry.
- ^ "Windows Live Hotmail". http://get.live.com/wlmail/overview. Retrieved on 2008-10-29.
- ^ Goodin, Dan (2007-05-01). "TheRegister - Hotmail Friendly Fire". http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/01/hotmail_friendly_fire/. Retrieved on 2007-12-15.
[edit] External links
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