Download Squad isn't alone when it comes to awesome redesigns -- today, Weblogs Inc.'s parent company, AOL, launched a totally redesigned AOL.com. It looks pretty great, especially when you compare it to the other portal offerings from Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. The biggest change comes in the form of allowing direct access to outside content -- including e-mail providers like Yahoo and Gmail, social networks like Facebook and MySpace and links to non AOL sites via a new RSS reader built into the site.

I had the opportunity to talk to James Clark, the VP of the AOL.com portal, about the redesign process, both from a business and web development level, as well as ways AOL is hoping to use the newly designed page to help transform the AOL brand.

Redesigning a site of any scale can be a challenge, but redesigning a site that receives over a billion PVs a month opens up an entirely new set of both business and user challenges. Starting in 2007, the AOL team started doing research on how its competitors display the web and more importantly, how end users (not necessarily AOL users, just Internet users) use the Internet. James told me that what they found was that the "one size fits all portal was outdated and outmoded." In this day and age, even traditional AOL users get content from multiple services and expect a level of control that traditional portals just don't give them.

Last month, AOL addressed those needs by implementing the ability to check and view e-mail from other providers -- like Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail -- directly from the AOL.com page, the same way AOL users can access AOL mail. Today's redesign continues with that trend, offering access to MySpace, Facebook, and AIM (Twitter and Bebo support will be complete very soon) all from AOL.com. You can even update all profiles simultaneously directly from the toolbar.

Additionally, users can add their own links to pages right at the top of the screen (and you don't even have to register or login to access any of this stuff -- not even Google will let you customize stuff without logging in with a Google account). Probably the coolest feature is at the bottom of the home page. AOL has integrated an RSS reader into the page. It comes preloaded with categories and websites, but you can add your own categories and your own sites. Even more interesting, the sites aren't just AOL properties. In the Tech section, for instance, CNET, TechCrunch, Slashdot and Wired are all listed -- and none of those sites are affiliated with AOL.

It's been a while since Microsoft's free Hotmail email service received a major overhaul. Last year, Microsoft increased users' email storage space from 2GB to 5GB. But now the company is also starting to roll out a new site design.

The update brings faster page load times for anyone using the "full version" of Hotmail, while "classic version" users now get access to drag & drop and other features that were previously only available to full users. Microsoft has also improved the contact list. You'll see profile pictures for email contacts if your contacts have uploaded pictures for their Windows Live Messenger profiles. You can also see recently sent messages from your contacts when viewing their profiles

The new Hotmail also has a new auto-complete feature for email addresses and a contact picker that helps detect misspelled addresses.

The new version of Hotmail is not yet available for all users. And some users who have received the updated are less than thrilled with it. It's not clear if the new version is actually more difficult to use, or if some of the people who now have access to it haven't yet figured out where all the buttons are.

Does it frustrate you that even though you can add HTML links in the content of your email when creating it in Gmail, you can't add an HTML link to your signature? It sure frustrates me. Many webmail services have very limited signature editors, making it difficult to create a compelling signature.

If you would like to use more than just plain text in your signature for your webmail account, give WiseStamp a try. WiseStamp is a Firefox add-on that gives you a rich text editor to create your email signature, and gives handy links to instant messaging services or social networks that you can add in to personalize your signature further. WiseStamp supports Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, and Hotmail.

RIM and Microsoft have announced a deal that will officially bring Windows Live Services -- specifically Hotmail and Messenger -- to Blackberry handsets. Has hell frozen over? We wouldn't know. What we do know is the two companies have been rivals in the mobile industry up until now, but they both gain significantly from agreement.

Microsoft is no stranger to the idea of playing in a competitor's sandbox (remember Office for Mac?). By making Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail more accessible on the Crackberry, the company further pushes its communications services towards mass standardization especially in the business world. RIM also benefits from the agreement in the same way Apple benefits from Office for Mac: an OS is only as good as the software on it.

Messenger on Blackberry should retain most of its functions. It looks like users will be able to do the usual: IM, set status, pull up buddy lists, save conversations, use emoticons, and even send and receive files. While it looks like users can join group chats, creating group chats seems to be absent from the feature list.

If you use Outlook Express to manage your Hotmail account, Microsoft wants you to download Windows Live Mail instead. Come June 30th, Microsoft will be shutting off Hotmail support for Outlook Express because the company is switching the protocol used by Hotmail from DAV to a newer protocol called DeltaSynch.

The move isn't really intended to inconvenience Outlook Express users. It's just that Outlook Express uses outdated protocols. Windows Live Mail is available as a free download, and it supports POP3 and IMAP as well as DeltaSynch. Microsoft says the new protocol does a better job of handling large email inboxes since it allows your email client just to download changes since the last synch instead of grabbing every single header, as DAV does.

While it's possible to add DeltaSynch support to Outlook Express, Microsoft decided it would be easier to push its new email client. Or you could always just access your webmail services like Hotmail through the web interface. Do you still use a desktop email client, and if so which one do you use?

[via LiveSide]

Computerworld is reporting (and ReadWriteWeb is confirming) that Microsoft will be joining the Data Portability Working Group. Microsoft adds to the growing list of companies that have signed on with DataPortability.org. Since the beginning of the year, Google, Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr (Yahoo!) and SixApart have joined the project. The project, which in its own words, aims to allow users to "connect, control, share and remix" their data across multiple online services and protocols. As the Computerworld article points out, getting Microsoft to join in is a real boon to the project because of its vast user base. More than 400 million users have an account with Windows Live Messenger, Hotmail or both.

The concept of data portability has become a pretty hot topic in the last few weeks, thanks to the brouhaha over Robert Scoble's screen-scraping scheme that led him to get banned from Facebook for less than a day and with the announcement that high profile players, Google and Facebook, would be joining the endeavor.

As a video we posted last week explains, attempting to keep accounts and contacts synchronized across multiple sites and platforms is one of the more tedious side effects of the whole Web 2.0 revolution. DataPortability.org wants to change that.

And although it is still very early, moves like last week's announcement that Yahoo! will begin supporting the OpenID 2.0 framework leave us hopeful and inspired.

As expected, Microsoft is releasing its updated suite of Windows Live applications and services. And as of this evening that means you can sign up for a brand new xxx@live.com e-mail address to replace your musty old xxx@hotmail.com address.

You're supposed to be able to sign up by going through get.live.com as well, but it looks like you may have mixed results if you go that route right now.

In addition to Live.com email addresses, Microsoft is offering up localized email accounts for more than 30 countries, from Argentina to Vietnam.

[via Bink.nu]

Checking multiple accounts is just a fact of life for many users. Log into a Yahoo account, then switch over to Gmail, then off to Facebook. Fuser aims to make things a little easier.

With Fuser, users can check multiple email accounts and social networks from one place and with one interface. Emails can be pulled in, read and replied to from popular email apps like Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail and SquirrelMail as well as POP and IMAP emails and such social networks as MySpace and Facebook with a single login.

There is no limit to the number of email and social network accounts you tie into Fuser. All emails can be sent to one inbox, or the application can be set up so that incoming mail can be better organized through folders. As for security, Fuser does not store any of your emails. It simply views them. So if you delete an email from your regular email account, it is deleted in Fuser. All information is stored in encrypted databases, including passwords, usernames and any information that is transmitted.

Fuser is a great way to streamline emails, and a real timesaver if you find yourself switching between a number of locations.

[via TechCrunch]

We haven't heard from Microsoft's Hotmail in a little while, but now that we have, we are happy about them staying in the email game and making some performance adjustments.

With Google's Gmail and Yahoo's Mail throwing Gigabytes at users, it was time that Hotmail stepped up its game and gave users a little more storage. The change from 2GB of free email, just got boosted to 5GB, with paid users getting 10GB of storage. Could it be too late? Have users already switched to another service because of the lack of space?

Other changes the team has implemented are increasing the amount of time that messages stay in junk and deleted items, contact de-duplication, smaller header so users can see more of the email, vacation replies, accepting meeting requests, and the ability to turn off the today page. With all these new changes to Hotmail, it sounds like we have an online Outlook integration in the works.

Consilient wants to push your email. Should we forget about Blackberry's and try out Consilient's new push mobile email application? This former partner of RIM looks like it has the inside scoop on push technology with this new offering that was built for the Asian market, and has recently traveled to North American soil.

Consilient's free push offering includes access to five email accounts, including Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo, along with IMAP and POP accounts. The company states that they do not store passwords and the free application will push out emails in real time as they are received into personal and corporate email accounts that have been setup in the application. The push application is available for most popular phones and Windows Mobile devices, and does have the ability to accept attachments in Word, PDF and Excel formats.

For users wishing to upgrade from the free account, a $5/month (plus a $10 activation fee) plan is available that will unlock enhanced features that allow content sharing and mobile social networking.

Windows Mobile 6 is the first version of Windows Mobile to include push email support without setting up an Exchange server. Of course, it only works with Hotmail, but it's a start.

Once you have a Hotmail account, all you have to do is:

1. Open Windows Live on your mobile device.
2. Enter your Live information and set your device to use Live services including Messenger, Mail, and Contacts.
3. Click on menu and selection options.
4. Select Sync Schedule
5. Under frequency, select "as items arrive."

Now every time an email is sent to your Hotmail account, a copy will be sent to your Windows Mobile device. You can even configure your phone or PDA to work with both Hotmail and an Exchange server, allowing you to receive push email from two separate accounts.

[via MobileViews]

Microsoft has announced that they will be keeping the Hotmail name when they officially launch their Live email service worldwide, with some users seeing reference to the Windows Live Hotmail name in their beta versions. Microsoft also announced their two major goals when they chose to take on the building of the new web mail service: Build a faster and safer mail service and create a powerful service to meet the needs of a broader customer set.

A lot of buzz with the new name as well, apparently some users think it's a bad idea that Hotmail was kept in the name, hinting at the fact that it's a dated name that reeks of old technology. Microsoft says that they are bringing the best of both worlds together. What are your thoughts? Should they have left the Hotmail name out of the mix and stuck with the fresh Live that has been so heavily marked over the past year?

If you have multiple web-mail accounts, it can sometimes be a hassle to keep track of them all. Although notifier applications exist for many of them, most are not able to monitor multiple accounts, and almost none can monitor accounts from more than one service. Notifier2 was created to help you consolidate your notification utilities down to one.

Notifier2 will show you a preview of the messages in any of your mailboxes, without having to actually log in and view them. It also has some nifty features for bloggers or site owners, in that it can also monitor Adsense, Amazon and Sitemeter accounts.

There are limits on the free version, namely the total number of accounts you can monitor is limited to 4, and you cannot set the interval to check for updates to less than 15 minutes. The paid version removes those restrictions for $9.99.

To be honest, I'm starting to get confused. It's been known for some time that the next version of Outlook Express, the one that will ship with Windows Vista, is going to be called Windows Mail. Windows Live Mail, on the other hand, is Microsoft's web-based successor to Hotmail. We've got the web and the desktop covered, right? But now here comes Windows Live Mail Desktop. Uh.. wuh? Fortunately the product has its own blog which gives us some hints, in particular this post that has a handy chart comparing Mail and Live Mail Desktop. Here's what (I think) I know: Windows Live Mail Desktop is going to be a free desktop e-mail client that will sort of be the missing link between Windows Mail and Windows Live, offering support for multiple e-mail accounts in separate folders (including webmail from AOL and Gmail, they say), a new contacts interface that has something to do with Live Messenger, RSS and blogging features, emoticons and inline spell-checking, and a UI that matches Windows Live. And it's currently in a very small managed beta.

Okay, so it looks like there's some interesting work going into Windows Live Mail Desktop, but if it's so much better than Windows Mail, why have two different free e-mail products? Why not offer one really great product with one name rather than confusing the hell out of consumers (and bloggers)?

[Via Slashdot]

When the Wall Street Journal's Lee Gomes has a few programmers over for dinner, he doesn't skimp on the guest list. He invited Google's Paul Buchheit, Microsoft's Kevin Doerr, and Yahoo!'s Ethan Diamond, all lead programmers in their companies' e-mail divisions, for a chat over dinner, assuring the companies that he "wasn't interested in a shouting match." Unfortunately the narrative is terribly brief, but it describes how all three developers recognize Gmail as the catalyst for the current phase of innovation in the webmail world and how the next incarnation of Yahoo! and Microsoft's products will give it a run for its money when finally released.