It’s finally summer in Seattle, and baseball games when the roof on Safeco Field is open are the best. With Windows Live Calendar and subscriptions to a couple of online calendars, I can figure out when the Seattle Mariners are playing at home and what the weather forecast is. Then I’ll know when I should try to score some tickets.

Why subscribe instead of import calendars?

Well, there are a few differences between subscribing and importing:

• If you subscribe to an online calendar, whenever the third-party calendar is updated, your calendar is updated as well. This is great for calendars on the web, like sports schedules. To subscribe to an online calendar, all you need to know is the URL for the calendar and then paste it into Windows Live Calendar.
• If you import an online calendar, you don’t get calendar updates, you get a copy or “snapshot” of the calendar. This is great for uploading calendars from a computer, like migrating from an old calendar to Windows Live Calendar. To import a calendar, you need to save the .ics file to your computer and then import it into Windows Live Calendar.

After a little web searching on Bing, I found the two calendars that I need: the Mariner’s home game schedule for 2009, and the weekly Seattle weather forecast.

To subscribe to an online calendar:

1. Go to Windows Live Calendar and sign in with your Windows Live ID.
2. Click Subscribe at the top of the web page.
3. In the Calendar URL box, paste the URL for the online calendar, name the calendar, change the color (if you want), and click Subscribe to calendar.

Subscribing to the Mariner’s home game schedule

Windows Live Calendar lets you know that your subscription was added. Just click Done to see your calendars. And if the events don't show up on your calendar right away, check back because it will be updated shortly.

And now, just repeat for the Seattle weather calendar.

Voila, the Seattle weather forecast is there, too

Darn, no home games this week. I guess I’ll just have to keep checking my Windows Live Calendar.

Dawn Hollingsworth, CrackerJack fan
- Windows Live team

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We are happy to announce that Hotmail customers in the US, Canada, and Brazil can now add other e-mail accounts to Hotmail!* No need to sign into multiple services to check all your messages on the web. Instead, you can see any POP-enabled e-mail account (including Yahoo! Mail (Plus), AOL Mail, and Gmail) right from your Hotmail account. You can put all of your messages together in your inbox or each e-mail account in its own folder, your choice.

You can set this up in Hotmail in three simple steps:

1. Click Add an e-mail account on the left-hand side of the Hotmail inbox.
2. Type the e-mail address and password for your other account, and click Next.
3. Choose where you want the messages to go, and click Save.

Note: In order for this to work, make sure POP has been turned on in the POP-enabled e-mail service you want to add (this could involve signing in to the service and changing your settings there).

We hope this feature will help you simplify your digital life!

- Windows Live Hotmail Team

* This feature was launched earlier this year in the UK, France, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Germany, and was greeted with some very positive feedback. Today, customers in the US, Canada, and Brazil will see the feature for the first time. More countries will come later this year.

(Republished courtesy of the Hotmail team blog) 

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With new web-based instant messaging (IM) now available in Windows Live Hotmail worldwide, we are preparing to retire MSN Web Messenger. The old MSN Web Messenger experience will end on June 30, 2009.

With Hotmail’s new web-based IM, you can chat from your Hotmail inbox or contact list, instead of going to MSN Web Messenger (http://webmessenger.msn.com/). Go directly to the Windows Live People page (also known as “your contact list”) at http://people.live.com and sign into Messenger (orange arrow in the picture below) to continue instant messaging on the web with your Messenger friends.

Instant messaging from Hotmail makes it easier to communicate and share in new ways in comparison to MSN Web Messenger. For example, our integration with the suite of other Windows Live services allows you to see when your Messenger friends are online while reading an e-mail and immediately start a chat to clarify something in your friend’s e-mail message.

Give it a try! We hope that you’ll enjoy Hotmail’s web-based IM, the new version of Messenger on the web.

- Your Windows Live Hotmail Team

(Republished courtesy of the Hotmail team blog)

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As we mentioned last week, Windows Live Messenger is turning 10 very soon and as part of our celebration, we will be sharing, here on our blog, different stories from our users, tips/tricks and fun facts, leading up to big day, July 22nd 2009.  We’ll also have special guest posts from people that work on Messenger and from around the community.  It’s going to be a great month so stay tuned.

Today’s Fun Factoid

If Windows Live Messenger was a country, it would be the third largest country in the world (behind China and India, and before the United States) and almost 10 times the size of Canada.

Today’s Messenger user story

Thanks everyone for the stories.  We’ve gotten an overwhelming number of funny, touching and odd stories and there is still time to submit one.  If you want to share your story and let others participate in your special moment with Messenger, please send your short story in English to IloveMessenger@live.com by June 28th.

Our first story comes from Clem from Canada.

“I had just met a really cute girl and we started exchanging IMs on Windows Live Messenger.  Even though we were on IM, I was still pretty nervous (yes, lame i know) but of course, tried to keep it cool.  Things seemed like they were going pretty well and we chatted for a little while until she said she had to go, to work on a finance homework problem that she was stuck on.  Being the helpful guy that I am, I offered to help… (limited finance knowledge, but hey, I had to try).  She sent me the problem over IM and I was in luck, a good friend of mine, Jon, was online.  He’d know the answer.  Quickly, I drafted the IM…

“Yo Jon, I’m trying hard to impress this really cute girl I just met, do you have a moment to help me figure out the answer to a finance problem so I can send it on to her.  You need to help me out, she is so hot!”

…then hit send.  It would probably take him a moment to respond, so I went back to the conversation with the girl… I read the last message and saw my message to Jon posted there… oh I guess I hadn’t switched windows, so I doubled checked… and that’s when I realized that I had posted that message to HER instead of Jon by accident.  My jaw hit the ground and stomach fell out.  I can’t really explain how embarrassed I was, and although I didn’t look in the mirror, I could feel my face heat up and I’m sure I was glowing with embarrassment like a tomato…

I didn’t know what to do… I wished you guys had built in an ‘undo’ at that point. :)  All I saw from her end was ‘Jen is typing’… but no message… then ‘Jen is typing’ but no words… that went on for about 4-5 minutes, then finally, she said something like “I have to go to bed, bye” and went offline.

We actually ended up becoming friends but nothing beyond that.  We never mentioned that ‘incident’, but my friends still get a good kick out of telling the story to people (yes, I have great friends) ;).  Anyways, I hope you enjoyed that and keep up the great work.”

I actually LOL’ed when I read that the first time.  Thanks for sharing Clem.  I bet many of us have done something similar. :)

Tip/Trick – Create your own custom emoticon

Did you know you can make your own emoticons from your own photos/images?  This has been around for a little while and is a nice way to be creative and have some fun in Messenger.  Here’s how.

	Step 1 – Click the Show menu button Step 2 – Click Tools Step 3 – Click Emoticons Now the Emoticon window will pop up.
	Step 4 – Click Create. Step 5 – Pick a photo/image to use. Note: It can be a bmp, jpg, png or even an animated gif. Step 6 – Type the keys that you want to use to bring up the emoticon.  In this case I’ve picked “woof” because it’s a picture of my dog.  Note: You can pick any keys you’d like. Just make sure it’s not something you type too often or it will keep appearing in your sentences. :) When you are done hit OK.
	Step 7 – Now scroll down to see your “Custom emoticons.” Step 8 – Your emoticon now shows up and you can use it.
	I open a chat with Dharmesh, since he loves dogs, and I send him the emoticon just by typing “woof.”  Once it shows up in his conversation window, he can right-click and add it to his collection. Have fun!

Thanks for reading.

- The Windows Live Messenger team

(Republished from the Windows Live Messenger blog)

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Hi – I’m Ann and I design stuff in the social networking area of Windows Live. One of the things I love about Windows Live is the variety of settings you can change to suit your preferences. You can pick different layouts and themes, what kind of content you want to see, and how you want to be contacted.

Earlier I wrote a blog entry on how to decide who can see your stuff on Windows Live, but this entry is devoted to deciding who can send you invitations or private messages, or ask to see your space. You may be getting contacted by people you don’t know (and don’t want to know!). It’s really easy to stop the insanity.

How to change who can contact you

1. Go to your general options page. You can get there from the options dropdown on your homepage or profile. Click Options, and then click More options.
   
2. On the general options page, in the Notifications section, click Communications preferences.
3. Use the dropdown menus to set who can contact you. The different choices are:
• Anyone – this means anyone on the Internet can contact you
• People in your network - these are the people on your profile, in Messenger, or both
• People in your extended network - these are the people connected with the people in your network (you can think of them as “friends of your friends”)
• No one
4. If you make any changes, be sure to click Save.

How I decided on my settings

There are benefits and drawbacks to each of these settings, depending on your perspective. For “Who can invite you to their network?” I chose “People in your extended network.”

That means only people who know my friends can invite me to be friends. This seems reasonable but doesn’t account for long-lost friends who might Bing me and want to be friends but don’t know anyone I’m currently connected to. I’ve decided that’s ok because, for sending private messages, I chose “Anyone.” I have it set to “Anyone” because sometimes people read my blog and want to comment privately about something I wrote and I want them to be able to do that.

However, using the extended network setting is only as good as your network is choosy! One of my friends, Chris, has 873 friends! Now, I know he doesn’t know 873 people – he’s just accepting every invitation he receives, so some of them might be spammers. That means all of those people can send me invitations, which some of them do. For now, I’m living with it, and Chris gets a ribbing from all of us at every opportunity.

The remaining option is for space access requests, which are irrelevant for me since my space is public. Your space may not be public, so this setting might be valuable to you.

So that’s how you set who can contact you. If you have any comments or suggestions, please send us feedback.

- Ann, Social Media UX
  Windows Live team

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It’s almost moving time! We’ve been busy getting Windows Live Calendar ready for when we move all MSN Calendar customers over to the new and improved service on Windows Live.

Over the coming months, we will be moving all existing MSN Calendar customers over to Windows Live Calendar. The move will be gradual, that is, not everyone will see their calendars change on the same day.

If you’re just trying Windows Live Calendar for the first time, you may notice that while MSN Calendar already gave you easy scheduling of appointments, reminders, and calendar sharing, Windows Live Calendar gives you even more:

• Multiple calendars that can be individually colored and shared
• An easy way to subscribe to public (iCal) online calendars
• Drag-and-drop rescheduling of events
• Holiday calendars based on your location
• A birthday calendar that pulls dates from your Windows Live contact list
• A to-do list to help keep you organized (we’ll move all of your MSN Calendar’s tasks and notes into your new Windows Live to-do list)

Here’s what you need to know for the move:

• If you only access your MSN Calendar through the web, we’ll move all your stuff for you. You won’t have to do anything.
• If you use Microsoft Office Outlook to view your calendar, make sure you’re using the newest version of Outlook Connector. This will allow Outlook to connect directly to your Windows Live Calendar. To find out which version of Outlook Connector you’re using, open Outlook, click Outlook Connector and then select About Outlook Connector. If the version number is 12.0.6414.1000 or greater, you’re good to go. If not, you’ll need to download and install the latest version.
• If you’ve published or shared any of your MSN Calendars, you’ll need to publish or share them again in Windows Live Calendar.

That’s it—we’ll do the rest.

Note: Windows Live Calendar doesn’t currently support displaying attachments or sending reminders to a secondary e-mail address.

See you on Windows Live Calendar!

-  Windows Live team

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(Republished from the Windows Live Messenger blog)

Wow, who would have thought that it has been almost 10 years since Messenger was launched. Windows Live Messenger (called MSN Messenger back then) was released to the public on a warm, sunny Seattle day on July 22nd, 1999.

With more than 330 million active users every month, Windows Live Messenger has grown quite a bit over the last 10 years! But for a 10-year celebration it’s not all about the numbers – even more important is how Messenger has enabled friendships, changed lives, or just brought a lot of fun to a quick chat with a good friend or family member.

We want to learn about those very personal stories and moments for you, and we’d like to ask you to share your story with us. What was your funniest, most unexpected or most emotional moment with Messenger? If you have a great story and you’d like to share it with others, please send it to us! Please note that we will publish the best anecdotes in our Windows Live Messenger marketing or public relations communications. Of course we will do that anonymously, only mentioning your first name and home country (and maybe a related picture if you decide to add one).

If you want to share your story and let others participate in your special moment with Messenger, please send your short story in English to IloveMessenger@live.com by June 28th. Please add your first name and home country – you can also add a related photo if you like. We will share the best stories during the month of July on the Windows Live Messenger blog.

We’re looking forward to reading your personal Messenger story!

The Windows Live Messenger Team

Disclaimer:

By submitting your Messenger story and/or photo you agree that your entry only includes material that you own, or that you have permission from the copyright/trademark owner to use.  By submitting your entry, you agree to allow your entry, in its entirety, to be exhibited on the Internet and in other media, without compensation.  You further agree to allow your first name, likeness and country to be used in connection with your entry, including exhibition on the Internet or in other media, without compensation.

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Let me confess this up front, I LOVE SMS. If you’re like me, or even if you only use SMS occasionally, then the new SMS for Windows Live service may become your favorite feature. We’ve just launched several new services in the United States that let you see and update your information on Windows Live using SMS (text messaging). No mobile browser or data plan needed – if you can send and receive text messages on your mobile phone then you should check out SMS for Windows Live. If you’re in the UK, you might have already tried these services out…if not, now is a good time to do so.

If you’re outside of the US or the UK, we don’t have any dates to announce yet about when SMS for Windows Live will be available in other areas. We’ll update you as soon as we know more.

So what will SMS for Windows Live do for you? In short you can:

• Update your personal message
• Check your Windows Live Calendar
• Invite people to join your network
• Get contact info for people in your Windows Live contact list

To use these services, first you’ll need to register your mobile number with Windows Live (if you haven’t done this yet, we’ll tell you more about it at the end of this blog post), and then you’ll just send a text message (SMS) with a “command” to a shortcode:

• If you’re in the US and your mobile operator is AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, or Nextel, your shortcode is MyLive or 695483.
• If you’re in the UK and your mobile operator is Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, O2, or Virgin, your shortcode is 88804.

Standard SMS messaging costs apply in both the US and UK. So your mobile operator will charge your normal rate for each text message you send and receive. There’s no additional charge from Microsoft.

How to use the new SMS services

After you’ve registered your phone number, and started the service, you’re ready to start sending commands. Below are all of the things you can do with SMS for Windows Live, along with the commands you’ll need to know.

Update your personal message
To update your personal message ([Updated: June 12, 2009] the one that appears on your Profile page, not the one and in Messenger): create a new text message, type the command update followed by your personal message, and send it to the shortcode.

Check your calendar
To see your Windows Live Calendar events for today or tomorrow: Send a text message with the command today or tomorrow. Windows Live sends you a text message that lists the date, time, and subject of each event. To get more details about an event, reply with the event number.

Send this to get a list of today’s events	You’ll get a reply like this one (but with your events, of course)

Invite people to your network
With just an SMS command and an e-mail address you can use your phone to invite a friend to join your network. To send a network invitation: send a text message with the command invite followed by their e-mail address.

You send the invite	You’ll get a reply confirming that the invite was sent

Search your contacts
If you aren’t syncing your Windows Live contacts (or if you don’t have a Windows Mobile phone and can’t sync), you can use SMS commands to search your contacts and see contact details. To search your Windows Live contacts: Send a text message with the command srch followed by the name of the person you’re looking for.

Send srch and a name	You’ll get a reply with your search results

To register your mobile phone and start using SMS for Windows Live

To use SMS for Windows Live, you need to register your phone and start the service. Don’t worry, it’s simple. Here’s how you do it:

1. On a computer go to the Window Live Mobile website and sign in with your Windows Live ID.
2. In the text box under Set up SMS, enter your mobile phone number and click Next.
3. Check your phone info, if everything looks good, click Next. If any of the info isn’t correct, click change it and make your corrections.
4. We’ll send a text message with a four-digit PIN code to your mobile phone. Enter the PIN code and click Next.
5. Your mobile phone number is registered with your Windows Live account. Now you need to start the service. To start using the new SMS for Windows Live services, under Personal Message, Calendar and Contacts, click Start. You’re all set to go!
   If you haven’t tried the other Windows Live SMS services (they’re not new, but maybe they’re new to you) now is a great time to do so. Under Hotmail, Messenger and other alerts, click Start and check out how you can use text messaging with Hotmail, Messenger and alerts.
6. After you start the service you’ll get another text message with some additional info that our lawyers want us to tell you about.

Tip: Save the text message sender as a contact in your mobile phone, so you’ll have it handy when you need it.

Enjoy the new SMS for Windows Live services!

- Dawn Hollingsworth, avid texter
  Windows Live team

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Last week I posted about the future of Windows Live Movie Maker and what we have in store for you later this year.  We’re committed to only releasing a product that meets the high quality bar set by our customers, and we’re working hard to deliver the first official version of Movie Maker soon. Until then, we’re extending the time that Movie Maker beta can be used to the end of this year. If you want to continue playing with the beta version after June 30, 2009, you’ll need to extend the beta by installing a small software update.

Starting July 1, 2009 when you open Movie Maker beta, you’ll be prompted to install the update. If you decide not to install it, you won’t be able to use the beta until you do. By installing the update early, you can continue to use Movie Maker beta without any interruption.

The software update to extend the beta is available here. First choose which language you’d like, and then download and run the update. It’s less than three megabytes, so it’ll only take a minute or two to download over a high-speed connection, or about seven minutes over dial-up.

Again, the official release version of Windows Live Movie Maker is expected to be available later this year, as part of Windows Live Essentials. We’ll let you know on this blog as soon as that official version is available.

Thank you for your continued feedback and for helping us build a great new storytelling product.

- Mike Torres
  Windows Live Movie Maker team

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If you have a family and you worry about keeping them safer online, Windows Live Family Safety can help you do that. If you’re just getting started using Family Safety, or you’ve already been using it for awhile, there’s a terrific article on the Windows Help and How-to site called Staying safer online. In it, Gloria Boyer from the Windows team tells the story of how she set up Family Safety for her sister’s household.

When Gloria set up her sister’s computer she created separate Windows accounts for each family member.  Family Safety works better with separate user accounts (because parents can view reports about the sites each child visits). Plus, this means that each person can also:

• Customize their desktop: Little kids can set a picture of their favorite cartoon character as their desktop background; the older kids can use a picture of their favorite band.
• Set up their own Start menu and taskbar.
• Set their own Internet favorites. Parents’ money management websites won’t appear on the kids’ Favorites lists, and CartoonNetwork.com won’t be on the parents’ lists.

If your family’s used to using just one account, it might sound like a big deal to ask everyone to use separate accounts and passwords.  But there are a few ways to make switching between accounts easier for your family:

• When you leave the computer, lock it using this quick keyboard shortcut: Hold down the Windows key and press the L key.
• Use Fast User Switching so you can switch right to a different account without logging off, which would close down your work.
• Or log off by clicking the Windows Start button, pointing to the arrow next to the Lock icon, and then clicking Log Off.

The next person who wants to use the computer is then free to log on with their own user name and password, and all of their desktop settings and favorites will be just where they left them.

How does all this locking and switching work with Family Safety? Great!  When you switch to a different Windows account, you are still signed in to the Family Safety Filter, no more signing in and out. That’s one less thing to do, and when you have a family to take care of, you have more than enough to do!

-Sylvia French
Windows Live Team

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