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Watch That Tiny $74 1.5GHz Android-Powered Thumb-Puter In Action My first email account was a hotmail account. It was the heady days of 1998 – I was 18 and about to go and follow every young Australian’s clichéd dream of backpacking through Europe. These were the days when finding an internet cafe was a rare occurrence, and even when you did you had to tolerate dial up speeds. Back then, I probably would have signed up for a hotmail.com.au email address if it was available. But that was over a decade ago, and today my hotmail account is a magnet for spam and newsletters I can’t be bothered unsubscribing from.
As you may have heard, about 10,000 Hotmail passwords were leaked online yesterday, and that list only started with the letters A and B. At that rate, over 100,000 users could have been lured into giving their passwords to fake websites. Now the BBC says it’s seen a list on the same Website that had more than 20,000 email accounts — this time with addresses from Gmail, Yahoo, Comcast, Earthlink and AOL.
In an effort to scoop up some of those people who are tethered to their current webmail services by nothing except the sheer inconvenience of switching, Google has implemented easy migration tools for straggling Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL users. The service does their current POP3 import feature one better, grabbing contacts as well. The feature should roll out to everyone within a few days. [Gmail Blog]
David Gallagher at the New York Times had to do some rumour control when a reader wrote accusing Microsoft of prohibiting the word “Tibet” in Hotmail addresses to appease the Chinese government. No “freetibet@hotmail.com”, no “tibetsmellsofwetmonks@hotmail.com”, no “ilovetibet@hotmail.com.” Is this another Chinese-Microsoft evil conspiracy? While there are some of those going on between China and companies like Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo, this is not the case.
Not content to just offer a new version of Windows Live Messenger for a competing platform, Microsoft today released an updated official version of the full Windows Live app for Windows Mobile that features contacts syncing, support for Live Spaces, Live Maps, and push email from Hotmail, MSN, or Live accounts. It’s a free mobile download, though you’ll have to make sure you nuke the old version first lest you mess up your device. [Download, via JK On The Run]
The Blackberry Internet Services 2.5 upgrade (and subsequent downtime) is still go for a June 29 launch, but there’s a catch. According to the Boy Genius Report, some of the “sexiest” 2.5 features won’t be available until Blackberry OS 4.5 arrives–in September. From the looks of the BIS 2.5 presentation they got their boy-sized mitts on, at least one of those features is push AOL email and Hotmail/MSN accounts. Of course, if you have a newer Blackberry handset, or plan on buying one before September, it will come with 4.5 OS already installed. [Boy Genius Report]
In addition to the big Bold BlackBerry news at RIM’s Wireless Enterprise Symposium, the company announced it would finally support Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger, says Crave. This includes push, realtime sync and full HTML support, plus an “almost PC-like” Messenger experience, with file transfers, custom status messages and cartoon emoticons. Like the Bold itself, this service is due in the vague “this summer” timeframe. Ironically, this might actually be more than what Microsoft itself is doing for poor old Hotmail. [Crave]
