Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Don?t wait for your cloud - use Hotmail and SkyDrive today on your PC, Mac, or Phone

Microsoft is committed to offering cloud services that deliver access to your information across devices and platforms. Hotmail provides sync of mail, calendar and contacts across devices, and SkyDrive gives you access to up to 25GB of documents, photos, and videos from anywhere in the world through the web. And of course these services are available today for free across your Windows PC, phone, and web.

Hotmail ? your mail, calendar, and contacts anywhere

An important part of a great mail service is the ability to get to all of your email on any device you use, integrated with the applications that you use every day. With Hotmail, you can sync your mail, calendar, and contacts from Hotmail right to your Windows Phone, Android phone, BlackBerry, iPhone, and iPad ? as well as to Microsoft Outlook and Windows Live Mail. Don?t use Hotmail yet? As we discussed previously, you can bring all your email accounts together into Hotmail so all your mail is available across all of your devices. And because we have ever growing storage, you can keep all of your mail, calendar, and contacts in the cloud, so when you buy a new phone or PC, all you have to do is type your account name and password to get set up.

SkyDrive photos and videos ? snap, sync, and share

SkyDrive has always been a place where you could share and store your photos, either from Windows Live Photo Gallery or from any web browser. Of course we know a lot of photos get taken on your phone, and that you have it with you all the time. So when Windows Phone 7 was released in October, it gave us an opportunity to design SkyDrive into the experience. When you take a picture on your phone, you can upload that photo to SkyDrive in one click or even have the phone automatically upload photos to SkyDrive as they are taken ? so you can access all your photos from the web. And your SkyDrive albums appear in the Pictures hub, automatically synced to your phone with built-in commenting, so your photos are immediately available on Windows Phone without having to configure a thing. And with 25GB of storage, you have plenty of space for your important memories.

Our experience shows that connecting cloud services to the devices and applications you use makes it easier to get things done. In fact, Windows Phone users are already uploading 10 times as many photos per month (about 120 photos per month) to SkyDrive as typical users.

Photo uploads per month for SkyDrive users

SkyDrive and Office ? on the web, on the phone, on your PC or Mac

Today, more than 250 million documents are shared through SkyDrive, making it one of the most popular ways to upload, view, edit or share documents on the web. Again, we worked to connect our services to the applications and devices you use every day. You can save your Office documents right to SkyDrive from Office 2010 on your PC and Office for Mac 2011, or you can upload documents from your web browser. Once documents are uploaded, SkyDrive works seamlessly with the Office Web Apps for accessing, editing and sharing docs in your browser or in the desktop client. And, thanks to SkyDrive, OneNote works seamlessly across your PC, phone (OneNote Mobile for Windows Phone and OneNote Mobile for iPhone) and web browser (the OneNote Web App).

More to come this fall starting with Windows Phone ?Mango?

And as we announced last month, there is more to come this fall starting with Windows Phone ?Mango.? You can:

  • Share photos stored on SkyDrive via email, text, or IM
    SkyDrive lets you store thousands of pictures in the cloud. You can show them off to friends on your phone in the Pictures hub, and now you can share SkyDrive photos with anyone over email, text, or Messenger/Facebook.
    SkyDrive photo sharing
  • Share your video on SkyDrive
    With Mango, all the goodness you had with photos has been extended to videos. Once you?re finished shooting your video, you can caption it and share immediately on SkyDrive, and the upload will happen in the background while you move on to other things.
    Video preparing to upload in background 
  • Browse your documents stored on SkyDrive
    Windows Phone lets you view folders and files directly on your phone, so when you group things on SkyDrive, you know they?ll be available with the same folder structure on your phone.
    Viewing SkyDrive documents
  • See what?s been shared with you
    More than 70% of the folders created on SkyDrive are shared with other people, which makes it all the more important to see everything shared with you on your phone. This pivot view will show you the complete list of documents shared with you, letting you open and edit in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.
    Viewing shared documents on SkyDrive
  • Search your SkyDrive documents
    If you store a lot of stuff on SkyDrive, being able to do a quick search is important. In the Office hub, you can easily search across your SkyDrive for the document you need without having to wade through your folders and other files.
    Searching SkyDrive documents

Watch these videos for a quick preview of what?s to come:

We?re thrilled to power your cloud with Hotmail and SkyDrive, and are looking forward to bringing even more cloud power to the devices you use every day. So start using Hotmail and SkyDrive and make sure to check out the new Windows Phone experience coming this fall.

Mike Torres

Group Program Manager, SkyDrive Devices and Roaming

Brody Dalle Taryn Manning Nikki Cox Carla Gugino Ana Hickmann

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