Omar Shahine and team - New Hotmail "Kahuna"
- Posted: Sep 20, 2005 at 7:11 PM
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Hundreds of millions of people use Hotmail. Here's the first look at the next-generation of Hotmail, code-named "Kahuna."
You meet the team which is located at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus, hear their design philosophy, and get a first look.
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I can't wait till they get to the good part!
EDIT:
OK I saw it, in conclusion: innovative as hell. When ads start drowning the site it will turn me off. Gmails conversation feature dominates every single other web mail, even software based client.
Keep up the work team!
Just an idea, have RSS feeds in virtual folders where read write states are syned with your passport, which is synced with your home PC so you can truely read your content everywhere, and not have to read the same thing twice.
Omar, when are you guys going to go larger with the Beta?...I would love to be in on that.
Talking about backing-up or transfering your mail from one service to another are there some thoughts on that? Are there some thoughts on creating a standard way of exchanging mail, contacts and calendar info amongst web-based mail services? Like an rss extention or something?
Talking about calendar are you thinking of implementing a rich calendaring experience as well? This is at least a place where there is no competitor yet who has implemented an ajax-based calendaring experience. And in any case, calendaring needs a lot of improvements. It needs to become a mainstream activity. How many users now use the current Hotmail Calendar? How many don't and why not? Do you find calendaring solutions, especially web-based ones, to be optimal? Clearly not and with your experience with the Office Outlook product you could certainly inovate in this space.
Talking about other Microsoft generally, or MSN specifically, products are there some thoughts of better integration between your services? Currently sites are scattered all around the place: start.com, msn.com, MSN developer center on msdn, etc, etc. Inconsistent user interface whilst msn.com has not really improved: still toooo overloaded. You have some really good services but who knows about them: MSN Games, MSN Video, etc? More integration and more awareness through a cleaner and consistent user experience would greatly help.
After all, there is a reason why Google's new services are all conveniently placed under lab.google.com. Were is the MSN equivalent? There is a reason why underneath every beta or new Google service there is a convenient Discuss link for feedback but not only one-way feedback but two-way feedback. Where is the MSN or Microsoft equivalent? How can I report a bug in Microsoft products? A whole mess.
Talking about integration that would be nice but also you should be careful to allow third parties to plug into your services. Where is the inovative api platform: eg. the MSN Activity API is a good step but too complicated to make your activity available to the public (you have to go through the Bestapp contest and still your activity is only available on a little known by users website).
Integration is bad if done to the extreme: allow a link to publish to my blog but only if that blog is on MSN Spaces. Why don't you allow an api by which you could publish to any blog service. Standards like these need to be driven by someone and MSN is in a good position to do that. Instead of thinking only about your own services and their integration, or simply thinking about exposing the MSN properties through an api set (eg. MSN Search), you should think more on how to drive more standards which will unify more the current and future web-based and xml web services. After all, the platform that succeeds is a platform that gets wide adoption not only by developers and end users but also by competitors through standards or through rich interoperability.
Also, I want to ask the program manager the following programming questions:
If you could achieve so much with ajax (dhtml and javascript) technologies why wasn't it used all these years?
If ajax is so powerful why write desktop apps any more? I mean with the new Hotmail it seems that you can do everything: reproduce Office Outlook on the web, even drag and drop. After all, html programming is more appealing to everyone. Ask university students what they know better: how to write a web site or how to write a Windows application. "Windows application?" they will say, "What is that and how do I write one, how do I get started". Writing html is much easier and there is a lot of matterial on the web on how to get started. Most of the university assignments or program developed for students' thesis that are not scientific but are more in the sphere of user productivity are built on the web: scheduling systems, portals, education systems for distance learning, etc, etc.
Why has Java failed on the desktop or in the web browser (applets) and ajax has succeeded? After all, with Java which is almost available on all computers since the vm mostly comes pre-installed you could do much more, faster, more cleanly and much more easily than with dhtml and javascript. There must be a reason that html and web-based programming is more appealing amongst new developers and students than say Windows programming or Java. And the reason is surely not availability of the Java VM I guess.
I love Microsoft dearly, but I wouldn't touch IE6 with a barge poll
Although IE7 looks very, very interesting...
many people when they get any interesting mail such as those from one particular group will forward it to more than one friend or other groups (which i do most of the time) . so if we have a feature like group messaging in cell phone where in we can create a list/group in our account and a single click on it must forward or send the message to all people in the list. i feel it will improve communication as all people will get messages which at present is sent only to few people (that too after remembering all the people who must get it )
just consider this.
You can create a Contact Group and then you can just type the name of the group to send mail to all of the group.
Does this solve your scenario?
-Imran Qureshi
PM - Hotmail (Kahuna)
Is Fireant part of Atlas, start.com, or something altogether different?
this is my first post. (yay!)
Why is the guy in the video using Sun Microsystems LCD screens?
Is the new hotmail entirely Kosher (running on windows built from microsoft technologies, and not using anything else than microsoft technologies?)
If not,
Explain!
thanks
Well I for one would love to Beta Test Kahuna as I’m a student studying an Honoros Degree in Information Technology but more specifically because I have had a very great experience Beta Testing other products like Msn Messenger and Windows Visual Studio .NET, but I guess we would all love an invite to Kahuna but that just isn’t possible is it though it does just seem that every time there’s invites being handed out that I miss my opportunity to grab one, I guess that’s just my luck!
Anyway I can’t wait for the final release of it, keep up the good work everybody on the team and don’t forget to update us along the way with what progress you have made.
http://www.challenger.se/samples/woco.htm
Hotkey are:
Up Arrow -> Previous match
Down Arrow -> Next Match
TAB -> Accept suggested word
ESC -> Toggles the auto complete
So, Word Complete auto completes words based on the characters the user has typed and shows them by autocompleting, but as selected.
There are 28 languages that is supported with, including special characters specific to the languages.
I have chosen to limit the dictionary size to ~30 Kb, but there isn't any noticeable change in performance with bigger dictionaries.
One upcoming feature is red waves under unrecognized words.
Best regards,
Hakan Bilgin
I agree, it's got to have Firefox support. Gmail has it. Yahoo! beta mail has it. Why can't Hotmail (Kahuna) have it? I'm sure you're working on it, but it would be nice to have a clarification on that.
Oh, and it looks pretty damn sweet
No RSS extension needed. Back in the 80's a bunch of guys developed the vCard and vCalendar standard. vCalendar is more commonly know today as Apple iCal, but it is really just vCal. No changes or additions.
The only possible improvement would be an RDF/XML implementation of vCard, for easier transfer between different packages in a more year-2005-friendly manner.
Anyway, this problem was solved 20+ years ago.
In response to all your other comments, if Microsoft just gave away all their Intellectual Property on the web, and let you use anyone else's products, they wouldn't be making much money. Their plan is one of proprietary formats and content. They want you to live in Microsoft land.[6]
Oh, and in response to all the Firefox people, I say this:
As long as they adhere to W3C standards, it will have Firefox support. Hell, I am using Firefox right now on an MS forum, and it works just fine.
Please, please, please support other browsers though!
The beta name given is mail. Is it going to be: name@mail.com from now on? I'd actually want mail rather than hotmail, if that's on the cards. Also, POP access should be a definite requirement.
Rgds,
Farooq
Unfortunately Mail.com, as a domain and as a service already exists, so I doubt the 'hot' will be dropping from Hotmail with the arrival of the new system.
...So basically, judging from the Hotmail staff's response, I'm guessing they're still using:
- HTML3.2 practices, including "tables for layout" etc
- IE-specific AJAX / Scripting code
- Non-IE browsers are served uber "downlevel" content, even though if the Hotmail team coded to spec than ALL browsers could work with the "uplevel" version
...not that this isn't happening accross MSN anyway.*forgive me*
But isn't this just inspired by GMail.. and aren't you using very similar technologies as what they are using on GMail??
Thanks,
And "YES" I would also like to be a part of the "Beta" if possible..
While it's cool that Kahuna's frontend is written with the latest release of .Net/VS, I'd like to know a bit more about how the backend is implemented. Is that managed as well? Or was the legacy investment of the existing hotmail harder to abandon?
Also, I have a sort of wierd question/suggestion... Would it be possible to have POP forwarding to the kahuna servers rather than from the servers to a client? If I were to switch to kahuna, for example, this could be used as a way to gradually move off my existing account until I have time to alert all my contacts.
Just a thought.
Gmail bought nothing to the table that outlook/yahoo/hotmail/genericemailprovider didnt already have.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1860796,00.asp
Yahoo! Mail - Dramatically improved interface. Automatically checks for new mail. Drag-and-drop message organization. Includes new reading pane and ability to view multiple messages simultaneously.
-Imran
PM - Hotmail Kahuna
You can create a Contact Group and then you can just type the name of the group to send mail to all of the group.
Does this solve your scenario?
-Imran Qureshi
PM - Hotmail (Kahuna)"
thank you Mr. Imran. just now discovered the feature and it is very useful to me
For betas go to http://sandbox.msn.com/, and feedback go to http://feedback.msn.com/ or http://communities.microsoft.com/.
@Matthew
My comments on testing the product:
I would say, giving the sample product to School / College / University and asking them to come up with bug lists will be a easy & good way of testing this product; also not to forget saying that the one who identifies MAX BUG + Quality Bug should be awarded the best.
IMHO, this will be a good exercise:D
Thanks
PP
Imran, when you said you dont know what you guys will be doing in next release, that statement came as surprise to me, not sure if you were joking.
I think having a web-site where people can publish / add their requirement would be a great idea, I'm sure people will add their ideas there
IMHO, college/school kids are your best bet to ask for featurtes, I guess their mind works like an wild-horse (my experience)
Will this new version "Kahuna" be good and perform better than the old version, especially in every other country
Also, will this version of hotmail support different languages?
First things first, I have to congratulate the Microsoft team for finally committing a decent effort to reinvigorating the ageing, cumbersome Hotmail service. For the record, I make frequent use of Google’s Gmail because of its relative simplicity and speed.
I am looking for reasons to switch back to regular Hotmail use, though the current service is just not reflective of my needs because its interface is confusing with features buried scores of clicks away, its speed can be likened to a cure for insomnia, and its storage/attachment management is lacking in comparison to similar services. The lack of Outlook access is also a disappointment.
At the top of my list of wants for the new service are as follows:
Cheers
http://spaces.msn.com/members/imranq2
-Imran
Kahuna PM
1. I really cant stand the current image uploader, the good part is that it allows me to select many images easily but the bad is that it truncates their sizes, which messes them up! It would be better if all other files were given the same treatment as images, making it far easier to select and upload a group of files at once.
2. Sometimes I forget who a person/company is, even from my contact list. It must be easier to view contact details before opening mail e.g. by hovering over the new e-mail a bubble could pop up with their details. Further more Hotmail could present past conversations based on the RE header of the email to show if it had changed over time.
3. It should be mandatory for all Hotmail users to add personal information to their online profiles, if not then what is the point of the option to find out more about the user if they don’t fill it in.
4. I would like to see an events list showing the events of the day or week, collating data such as who I sent mail to, subjects most discussed, tasks completed (to do list), images/files I sent, had emails I sent and marked as urgent been read, ratio of junk received in the past week (which would show if the junk filter was working better or worse).
Basically this is for the Today page and would show things that went on, allowing for one to console him/herself that a task had been carried out.
5. Add swoosh graphics al la channel 9. When clicking a video on C9 it swoops in too the main video window. Before the current Hotmail was released the promo flash video showed similar graphics when moving an email to another folder via a menu. I think Hotmail should make good on those past promises and take a leaf out of C9’s book.
6. I am forever downloading images from websites and then manually attaching the URL into the files meta-data, having this is really useful for a lone image. I believe Hotmail should automatically attach meta-data when downloading images from it; such as who it was from (contact list) or the website URL when it does not apply to an individual e.g. PayPal.com, and also that it was from the Hotmail service. On the flip side consider Hotmail auto-attaching meta-data when uploading: the IP number, time/date stamp, username/contact or e-mail. It would then be nice if Vista could recognise who a file was from and when clicking that file the shell allowed to me contact the person.
7. I remember in an early video demo build of Longhorn it was possible to put a selection of images to one side in a folder in the shell. I sometimes send images to many people but prefer to send the same images to one person, without revealing all the other emails. Currently I press back in the browser to change the email to send to, sometimes this does not work and I have to spend time re-attaching images/files. What about a more official way to do this like automatically putting uploaded files/images into a virtual folder to temporarily deal with until logging out of the session, allowing me to send any file easily.
8. Two people can log into Hotmail at the same time, yet no alarm bells are rung. There may be a legitimate reason, which is why I would not like to see this feature disabled, rather I would like to be notified if someone is logged in when I am. Possibly on the Today page documenting the log in/out sessions of the day/week (expandable/archived) with a time/date stamp of the last time my account was logged into, the duration and possibly logging the IP for me to C&P to MS if I was suspicious, could hook up to Virtual Earth to view location of rogue logger?
9. I am using one of the new .co.uk addresses, I am half English/Spanish, therefore I would like to either have the British flag in the corner of my email or a diagonally split UK/ES version. Even if it is an option I have to enable, it is still something I feel would be a good addition to Hotmail.
10. I hope the calendar I’ve been seeing in the Vista screen shots auto syncs with Hotmail, does it?
11. Is there anyway to see if the mail I have sent has been read or deleted and for how long it’s been read. This feature not necessarily for all mail but the ones marked as urgent “!”. Relaying back certain info to the sender would allow them to make an educated guess as to how the issues is being treated, based on the following data:
i. The time opened for
ii. If a browser window was switched instantly and no attention paid to the one with the email
iii. If the user scrolled down the page too quickly to absorb the email; calculating the time taken to determine if the number of lines of text were read, given their normal reading speed of the user (machine learning)
iv. If the email had been opened and then saved for later i.e. glanced at
v. If the e-mail was forwarded (it would be nice if email could not be forwarded if specified) much like MSN Hotmail newsletters cannot be replied to
12. It would be great to send SMS (and MMS) messages from within Hotmail. www.02.co.uk (02 telecom) allows 10 per month for free. Before there used to be no restrictions online, everyone did it - what happened to all of that good will? I would also expect Hotmail to allow the use of Skype, taking the contact detail info it needs from a users profile (more encouragement to add info).
13. There is a nice little note taking feature in the current Hotmail but it is not very convenient to get too. The ability to make notes is really useful when on a public computer, how about letting users customise features they like by adding buttons/features which are mostly hidden to Hotmail, a bit like users can in MS Word.
Thus allowing users to get access to note strait away from a fixed bar always present throughout Hotmail, when saved and Hotmail is loaded back at home all of the notes sync to my desktop and appear as stickies (which I know/hope are going to be included into Vista at some point).
14. When I want to share a programme on TV with a friend who also has WinMCE, instead of the user receiving a horrid long and unfathomable weblink, how about the recipient viewing a nice MCE icon with the shows title/channel and time pulled from the TV online database appear the other end i.e. The long URL is still C&P into Hotmail, but Hotmail could tell what it is and convert it for the other end.
15. Some of my friends are foreign, which means their first language is not English. When sending an email, Hotmail could automatically provide a translation into their language beneath my original message. This would work on the premise that users filled in their profile accurately i.e. the language field and have selected auto convert foreign emails or Hotmail do it automatically as a courtesy.
16. Right now my Hotmail permanently says there are “5 new emails”, but they are hidden amongst all my others. It could be made far easier to get access to the unread emails without having to hunt for them, by having a separate virtual folder solely set-up to contain important marked or unread emails when a threshold is passed at say 10 emails of both types, or to bring up unread emails with a keyboard shortcut.
17. In Vista if a user presses the windows key and tab the windows flick from one to another (like Alt+Tab), I would like to see all my folders in Hotmail spread out and a drop down list show their contents when I press a keyboard shortcut.
18. If I needed some free space online it would be nice to have Vista recognise the free 2GB (supposedly) as an online disk drive, I’m sure what others have done with Google’s G-mail has not escaped your notice. It would also be nice if I could call on some of the 2GB for my space or a blog, allowing me to juggle Hotmail's free space if I needed storage for a file to link to.
19. Allowing users to add/link images when sending feedback would be nice, maybe have a link to them if stored in Hotmail (see #18).
20. I don’t know about the new IE7 but the current and older versions allow for tiny 16x16 icons in the address bar. Instead of having the standard envelope icon for all mail, what about using the company’s website 16x16 icon from those I frequently get mail from or those on my contact list like DVD rental, PayPal, my bank etc...
Users do not just have to be in my address book, I think Hotmail should check the URL of where the mail is coming from e.g. if from Yahoo use a Y! icon or if from Amazon.co.uk use the Amazon logo. I would also like to customise the icons for those individuals in my contact list e.g. a heart for my partner or a football for my football mad friends, using emoticons possibly.
MSN newsletters already use the butterfly logo so why can’t companies or individuals that matter to me do the same, maybe even let users dictate what logo they want to be seen as, with an overriding function for the recipient.
21. When I post a comment at www.engaget.com I get an email asking me to confirm my message, fine, but today I count ten in a row. I have Hotmail set to only shows about 20-25 emails per page, and with 10 at the top a lot of other emails are pushed to the next page, out of site. Why not collapse emails from a single sender say after 4+ emails and expand them when hovered over or clicked. I don't think this should apply when the emails are unread, but certainly when read, as they are just confirmation emails, once read they are left dormant and take a lot of valuable screen viewing space.
22. Sending a greeting card is nice, custom backgrounds have their place. But again special features like these are too awkward or admissible to find. It should be a simple click and taste away, rotating designs should not be felt like a luxury and something that might crash Hotmail, I would like to type my email and quickly click through all the designs to taste which one suits best. Even better would be for the selection list to dynamically change dependant on the month, so as we approach Halloween, these templates should be more prominent.
23. Furthering the emphasises on search users would find it easier if Hotmail could take what is highlighted with the cursor, at any time, and then provide the option to search for the highlighted text in either all of Hotmail or all of the correspondence with that sender. A pop-up balloon would do (when hovering over the highlighted text). FireFox allows this but it searches the web, I want to search either all of Hotmail or the sender(s) associated with that correspondence.
24. How about showing a history of correspondence attached to a friends profile. Many websites with forums (e.g. Channel9) attach posts from users to their profiles; in my address book Hotmail could list or collate the emails which a user has either been mentioned in or instigated.
25. Can the new Hotmail have emails sent locked so they can only be opened with a password at the other end.
26. The IM thing at the top of Hotmail I thought originally allowed me to communicate like a chat app when I first saw it, but it doesn’t. If a user is on e.g. a public computer and logged into Hotmail, that user should then be connected to their contact list and allowed to chat and send files as if logged in MSN IM.
27. When feedback is sent to the MS Hotmail division not only should the feedback email be automatically confirmed upon reading, but have the email sent automatically to the Hotmail forum on the MS website (if the box is checked). Plus a copy sent back to the users Hotmail account so after time they could see what they had personally sent. Presently it feels like suggestions just disappear, the amount I personally have sent over the years… it would have been nice to check back and see what I said at times, and see now if it had been implemented, fixed or if it was preposterous
28. Providing a Virtual Earth view based on info from a users profile i.e. where a user lives would be a nice touch to a friends profile, this then branching out into all the things that user is into like a blog, travel pictures with geo-tagging etc...
Putting up a VE map of the globe on the Today Page displaying where all the users on ones contact list reside, with current email conversations, would leave one feeling that they should really keep those conversations up and not just leave them in limbo.
With users displayed on a map this now allows for new ways to commence conversation as local fair ground attractions advertised (based on conversations past with those friends) could be a talking point. By clicking the map markers of users location to compose an email would be fun for kids and adults - this could also be linked to friend’s spaces or blogs, uploading images from mobile phones with GPS data etc...
29. If I am further away than normal from my screen I might not be able to read the text, what about (if selected in the preferences tab) hovering over text and slightly wiggling the mouse so the text grew until legible (stop wiggling mouse) or if the cursor was moved away in error to show I am uninterested.
30. I for one really believe in people entering profile information, I like to get an idea of those contacting me and with better incentives for doing so it would make it more compelling, I also believe the online profile should be the same as the Hotmail one, at present they are kept apart.
I hope you find some of this useful and implementable,
Samuel, UK
Can i get a test account ?
Bentium@msn.com THX
http://spaces.msn.com/members/jomasun/
Hi, I would like to asd who it is codenamed "kahuna"? Is there any special meaning beyond?
Is it mean surfing culture, a keeper of the secret or what else?
thanks
Really great stuffs~~
Thanks:)
Nice T-Shirt Omar
The team had never seen anything like the new hotmail befor?!? Hm, look at the webinterface of the kerio mailserver (www.kerio.com).
New idea:
Easy to create folder and filter from the List-Id header.
Bye,
Ingo[H]
I really like it, the new Windows Live Mail.
The hard work is paying off.
Huh? When you write an application, you make sure you write it so that it's compatible with other browsers. You don't expect browsers to support your app, especially when it's as crappy as "Kahuna", which is nothing but a piss-poor badly designed response to GMail.
I'm not going to get into the deficiencies of Windows Live but its suffice say that it's slow, suffers from a horrible UI, is cluttered with ads, has horrible spyware detection and lacks creative vision (yes, its in bold for a good reason). Microsoft is great at imitating cutting-edge products, adding a twist of crapiness and calling it a product. Unfortunately, this is just another item in a list of imitations that falls short.
Oh, did I mention that if you don't have JS turned off, it's unusable?
I say, hire some people from outside Microsoft (so that you don't end up with brainwashed monkeys) and can provide insight/knowledge not available at Microsoft TechEd conferences and start over. Start with some use cases, then the UI and work your way down. Strive to be better than GMail, not just a pathetic imitator. That guy who invented Hotmail must be laughing at what you guys have done to it.
Also, present the link to "Cancel My Account" as soon as you login since thats the most likely option one is to pursue after comparing this product with other of its kind.
Unbelievable ignorance. Am I also supposed to believe Google Maps had nothing to do with Windows Live Maps?
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