Online services

Microsoft, Google swap April Fools' barbs

Microsoft and Google have both gotten in some April Fools' Day zingers against each other.

The two competitors often trade insults about each other's respective search engines, online office suites, and other products. But April Fools' Day inspired them to create a couple of full-blown Web pages to make fun of each other.

Microsoft laid its prank at its Bing search engine.

Surf to Bing and type Google in the search field. A Bing page pops up spoofing Google's pure white and stark home page. Hovering over the small boxes that populate the Bing page displays tips that … Read more

Microsoft pins Hotmail, Outlook outage on hot data center

Outlook and Hotmail users can blame the recent outage on an overheated data center, Microsoft says.

On Tuesday at around 1:30 p.m. PT, the two online e-mail services suffered a service disruption, rendering them inaccessible to many users. Microsoft started to bring them back online the rest of the day and on into Wednesday. But access wasn't fully restored until 5:43 a.m. yesterday, according to the company.

Microsoft's status page confirmed that the problem was repaired but offered no details as to the cause. Now the company has revealed the source of the glitch … Read more

Outlook, Hotmail are back up following lengthy outage

Outlook and Hotmail are up and running once again.

A problem had rendered both online e-mail services inaccessible to many users since yesterday. But Microsoft's status page now shows both of them are back in business.

The page gives no details as to what caused the outages or how they were resolved.

Hotmail, Outlook, and SkyDrive were all hit by downtime yesterday, starting at around 2:30 p.m. PT. Many users had taken to Twitter to report the outage and express their frustration over the inability to access their e-mail.

Microsoft's status page shows that the problem … Read more

Hotmail, Outlook, SkyDrive hit by service disruptions

A handful of Microsoft Web services have been inaccessible for hours this afternoon, including Hotmail and Outlook.

Frustrated users of the e-mail services and cloud storage service SkyDrive complain about the services' hours-long inaccessibility.

#hotmail its my own fault for not leaving you a long time ago, but man its miserable not being able to get your email

— Michael Fish (@MFishFinancial) March 13, 2013

Come on #hotmail I want to check my emails! You've been down for AGES!

— Catriona MacIntyre (@catmac6) March 13, 2013

Error, #Hotmail is down. Click the link "check latest status update" The update? &… Read more

Outlook.com suffers downtime, but status page says otherwise

Microsoft has confirmed that its consumer Web-based e-mail service, Outlook.com, is down for some people.

The Redmond, Wash.-based technology giant said on Twitter it is currently "aware of the issue," but did not detail what was causing the downtime. In another tweet, it was noted that it was not clear how long it would take to restore services but that "hacking is not suspected."

In many of the tweets sent by @MicrosoftHelps, the company posted a link to the site to Microsoft's service status page. However, at the time of writing, the site … Read more

Pointers on Microsoft's Hotmail phase-out

Microsoft announced earlier this week that it is closing Hotmail and moving the "hundreds of millions" still using it to Outlook.com by this summer.

The move isn't unexpected, but perhaps more sudden than some anticipated. Hotmail users, once they move (or are moved) will get Outlook.com's clean, Metro-Style interface for their mail -- and ultimately, calendars. (For a walk-through of the user-interface changes Hotmail users will see, check out this Microsoft FAQ.)

Given that many of the new features in Outlook.com -- Microsoft's new Web-mail service that is no longer in "preview," … Read more

Microsoft to further integrate Yammer with Office this summer

Buried in a press release on Yammer momentum are a couple of new details about Microsoft's plans for integrating Yammer with SkyDrive Pro and Office Web Apps by summer 2013.

From the February 20 press release:

"SkyDrive Pro was previewed at the recent SharePoint Conference, and Yammer is implementing it as the underlying platform for file storage. In addition, Yammer is enhancing the ability to preview and edit files directly within Yammer feeds using Office Web Apps. The combination of these capabilities will dramatically enhance a user's ability to create, collaborate, share, and discover content within Yammer. … Read more

Windows Live Mesh users must switch by Wednesday

Still using Windows Live Mesh? You won't be much longer.

Come Wednesday, the online storage and syncing service will draw its final breath, leaving Mesh users without a home. So, where can you go if you're currently using Mesh to back up, store, and synchronize your files?

A variety of online storage sites are available. Microsoft's SkyDrive is one obvious choice since it already offers some, but not all, of the features of Live Mesh.

How do you switch from Live Mesh to SkyDrive? And what are the potential pitfalls? Let's go through the process.

First, … Read more

SkyDrive users can now share Office documents with anyone

People who need to access your shared MS Office documents via a SkyDrive link should now find the process a bit easier.

Using Microsoft's Office Web Apps or Office 2013, you can create a URL of any document that you store online. You can then e-mail that URL to anyone who needs to view or edit your file. Previously, that process required your collaborators to sign in with a Microsoft account before they could tweak your document. Now that restriction is gone.

Users who receive the URL to your document can click on it to view the file in … Read more