Microsoft releases Hotmail app for Amazon's Kindle Fire

Microsoft's Hotmail service now has a Kindle Fire app.

OK, this may not be as exciting as Google releasing a Gmail app for Apple's iPhone, and there is still no native Gmail app for the Fire. But the Hotmail app for the Fire should be a worthwhile release for many owners of Amazon's popular 7-inch tablet due to the addition of Exchange Active Sync.

Unlike Amazon's included email app on the FIre, which merely downloads your messages via POP3, Microsoft's Hotmail app will synch emails, contacts, folders and subfolders, said David Law, Microsoft's director of Hotmail product management, in a blog post.

While the free Hotmail app for the Fire is technically an Android app, the version for Amazon's tablet is different from the standard Hotmail Android app used by more than 3 million people, Law said.

The differences between the Fire Hotmail app and the standard Android Hotmail app have to do with the changes Amazon made to Android to create the Fire-specific operating system it runs on its tablet, which as we've noted before is unlike any other version of Android out there.

"Because the Kindle Fire uses a different implementation of Android, we needed to make some updates to our previous Hotmail app for Android to ensure it worked well," Law said. "Now that we've finished the work and the app is ready, we're excited to give customers a great Hotmail experience on the Kindle Fire."

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Nathan Olivarez-Giles on Google+

Twitter.com/nateog

Image: A screen shot of the Hotmail app listing in Amazon's Appstore for Android. Credit: Microsoft / Amazon

Hunch profiles the average Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL e-mail user

What is the average e-mail user like? Not to stereotype or anything, but Hunch has an idea.

The New York-based Web application, which is building a “taste graph” of everyone on the Internet using algorithms mixed with user-curated content, looked to its own users for clues.

What it discovered was a very specific archetype for each e-mail provider.

Gmail, the most popular option among Hunchers, is most likely to attract thin, college-educated men aged 18 to 34, according to the site. They tend to be politically liberal city-dwellers who read blogs, own iPhones and laptops and get their music on MP3s and computers.

Hotmail, on the flipside, attracts women of average build in the same age range. These are politically moderate high school graduates living in the suburbs, who enjoy magazines and contemporary fiction and usually own a laptop.

Both groups are often single, childless and extremely well-traveled.

Yahoo draws an entirely different crowd, according to Hunch: Overweight women ages 18 to 49, who tend to be in relationships of one to five years with children, residing in the suburbs or rural areas.

AOL users are most likely to be overweight women ages 35 to 64, who are in a relationship for more than 10 years and are also parents, living in the suburbs.

Both groups feature high school graduates who are also political moderates, Hunch concluded. They are also laptop or desktop owners who listen to the radio and CDs and watch TV on DVRs and don’t travel much out of the country.

All four sectors tend to be nonreligious, Hunch said.

And Hunch also figured out the more personal preferences of users. Gmailers and Hotmailers often sport a T-shirt and jeans, but while the former munches on salty snacks, the latter likes sweets. Yahoo users lounge in pajamas.

Hunch posted its findings in much more detail in a blog post Wednesday.

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Photo: Profile of the most likely Gmail user. Credit: Hunch

Missing Hotmail e-mails restored but glitch's cause still unknown, Microsoft says

Microsoft said the Hotmail e-mails lost over the weekend have been restored and that it's still investigating the cause of the problems, according to the Associated Press.

The Hotmail problems got started last weekend when some users of the free e-mail service took to message boards and social media websites reporting that their e-mails had disappeared and in some cases all of their messages were lost.

Microsoft's Hotmail message board had more than 476 pages of complaints about lost and deleted e-mails, dating back as far as November, the Associated Press said.

Hotmail spokeswoman Catherine Brooker told AP that all affected users currently have their messages back.

Just what caused the glitch is still unknown, but Microsoft is working on figuring that out, Brooker told AP.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Some Hotmail users report missing e-mails

Some users of Microsoft Hotmail are starting off the new year scrambling to get back e-mails of old.  Frantic users have posted complaints on Microsoft's online forum that all of their messages have disappeared.

“Please help me get them back,” wrote one user under the moniker ‘Zacgore' in a post dated Saturday. “All my kids' info and pictures are in there!”

Others complain that the majority of the e-mail in their inboxes was sent to their deleted-mail folders instead. It is unclear from the posts how widespread the problem is. The free Web-based e-mail service is the world's most used with about 360 million users, according to comScore Inc.

Windows Live support technicians have said in numerous threads that the Hotmail team is aware of the problem and working on a fix.

“At this point it appears to be a limited issue, and Microsoft is working with individual users who are impacted. We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers,” Microsoft spokeswoman Catherine Brooker said in statement Saturday. She declined to disclose what caused the glitch.

Microsoft's forum contains 476 pages of complaints about lost and deleted e-mails that date back to early November.

-- Associated Press

Yahoo tries to lure users with an e-mail face-lift

Looking to get people to spend more time on its website, Yahoo has redesigned its free e-mail service, calling it the biggest overhaul in five years.

Yahoo says the new version that begins to roll out Wednesday will run twice as fast and include several new features.

One of those features is the ability to connect e-mail accounts to Twitter, making it possible to see new Twitter updates and to post to Twitter directly from e-mail. Yahoo already has that feature with Facebook. Yahoo e-mail users will also be able to play videos and look at pictures without having to leave their inbox.

Yahoo announced that it planned to make big changes to e-mail at an event at its Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters last month.

Yahoo's estimated 273 million e-mail users can decide if they want to switch to the new version during a testing period that will last until the end of the year. All e-mail accounts will automatically switch over next year.

Yahoo is trying to hold onto its e-mail users because they tend to visit frequently, giving Yahoo more opportunities to show them ads. Millions of Web surfers are increasingly using popular services such as Facebook and Twitter to communicate. Yahoo also faces stiff competition from Google's Gmail, which now has an estimated 193 million users, according to ComScore.

Gmail and Microsoft's Hotmail have also introduced a number of upgrades to their e-mail services.

To get the new version, search on Yahoo.com for "Yahoo! Mail Beta" or visit http://features.mail.yahoo.com/and click "Try It Now."

-- Jessica Guynn