DISQUS

One thing you can look to with respect to a proof point for the changes in the organization: the new IE8 beta 2 which also reports through Steven. I've been running it for 2 days and it absolutely screams. Agree that it needs more for the "passionates" but all things considered (given the recent history post-IE6) the progress is very impressive.

It's prob because you're using a version of FF that changed (i.e. broke) things from 2.0. Use the released version. It DOES work perfectly. Can't expect all sites to work with a moving target.

If you'd like to do a video of Hotmail on Firefox, I can hook you up with some folks to demo it working ;)

I use Hotmail everyday in Firefox - both Mac and PC. Works perfectly.

Robert - if you want to switch away from Hotmail (which I'd hate to see but...) you can do it just by using the forwarding feature. We implemented it for people interested in using other mail services, so there's nothing stopping anyone from using the service they like best. I believe it's a premium feature ($19.95/year) to forward to an external address.

BTW, this was funny: "So, every month that Microsoft and Yahoo will be stuck in some courtroom arguing out why this is a good deal means money in the bank for Google as they close mobile phone deal after mobile phone deal"

...because I can almost guarantee that the same people "arguing in courtrooms" wouldn't be the same people writing code or making mobile deals :) Ah well.

Congrats! We're right behind ya by a few weeks!

Storage isn't "virtually free" when you multiply it by hundreds of thousands of users - or millions of them. Email has a very different pattern of usage.

Having said that, expect Microsoft to continue to push new things in this space over time.

Best of breed == things Scoble likes the best :)

I don't know why Microsoft has any bearing on this conversation other than making for a fun headline on TechMeme.

Good write-up. I can't argue with much although I think Hotmail's folders do beat out labels for most non Web 2.0 people. And I would give the IM integration a tie since no one actually uses Gtalk :)

There are two areas that we really focused on outshining the competition - I'm biased but I would have loved to see them appear in your review. They are:

* Native Outlook 2003 & 2007 synchronization. This isn't POP or IMAP access, this is full-on sync of the data in Hotmail with an amazingly rich PIM. The only thing that comes close to this for me is in the enterprise space - Exchange Server. This feature will be released for Outlook this month along with Windows Live Mail - a lightweight client version of Hotmail that serves as an upgrade to Outlook Express and Windows Mail on Vista. Both are worth checking out.

* Online safety. The work the team has done on anti-phishing, virus scanning, and spam protection is serious. 280 million people will benefit from this immediately, which is great.

Of course, there are other things that I dig about Hotmail - the Outlook-style reading pane, the real-time spell checker, the built-in Windows Mobile 6 client with always-on push email, and the basic theme picker (I like customization) but these are just nice-to-haves while the two bullets above are must-haves for me.

BTW, the search works really well.

It's nicely done but... unfortunately, it isn't much use if you don't use Gmail. It doesn't honor the custom reply-to address from Gmail, so any responses go back to an account I don't use (766 spam messages this week).

Totally agree. I almost unsubscribed from John Battelle when I read his poll :)

But I think the 10% reading feeds stat is way, way optimistic. I would bet it's closer to .1% or depending on how measured (i.e. what counts as a feed?) 1-2% as a stretch.

Thanks Pete. Rob and I are going to do what we can to get some stats about the service out there. Things like total number of markets we're in (people will be surprised) and stats around photos and blogs worldwide. The photo numbers will surely surprise many, many people who say things like no one cares about WL Spaces ;)

There's no "retreat" here. I wouldn't recommend an Apple TV to a single human being on the planet :)

Couldn't resist but Windows Live Spaces is seeing many more than 6 million photos uploaded per day. We were at that number last August.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/newsroom/msn...

Master William - thanks for calling me an ass :)

"Either run a HD podcast or a trailer from the Quicktime site."

Normal people don't watch podcasts - they want TV shows, movies, music videos - and they don't get excited about spending $300 to watch movie trailers in high-def. Come on.

Apple will up the quality of the shows on iTunes - it's a matter of time. The point is that current state of the world is weak at best.

Quick: you missed your favorite show last week and didn't record it. What do you do? Until it's obvious, there's a problem. It's not specific to Apple - it's the industry's problem.

ABC is taking some major steps though.

Worked perfectly on the Mac with Firefox!

You can install thousands of gadgets including custom HTML (so technically unlimited) already. There are tons of cool ones in Live Gallery. And if you see one you like on someone's space, you can add it to your own.

And we HAVE made it faster. If something is still running slower than you'd like, you might want to remove some stuff (like gadgets). You can't load your page up with a bunch of Ajax goodness and expect it to load as fast as Google search results of course.

Anonymous comments is something we all want.

Customization has also gotten a LOT more flexible (more layouts, more themes, more color and transparency options, more custom HTML options) and we have even more coming that will allow people to make the page look completely unique without having to deal with HTML.

I can take you through it so you are up to speed on everything.

I know TDavid, I want it too (I have my domain ready to go) but there are some pretty complex scaling and authentication issues to get over first before it's possible. Part of the "problem" with a big service. If we only had 10,000 or 100,000 or even 1 mil users, we could do it tomorrow.

Diego: Ultimately, just like any site, the more content you have on your page(s) the slower the page will load. We do take performance very seriously and are making gains every release - we've improved quite a bit recently.

Maryam: We're working on commenting!

One thing to point out though: comparing WordPress to Spaces is like comparing Twitter to IM or Facebook to Flickr. They are just different tools with different goals for a different audience. Not everyone strives to be the #1 Robert or to get their service mentioned in Mashable on Tuesdays.

Thanks Maryam. I will check it out.

"Mike: and you’re not egotistical? Riiiiigggghhhhhttttt."

Well, I don't know. But I don't praise myself in my own comments every week :)

"When you gonna build a better blog service? My wife is on it and it really really sucks."

That's constructive. You guys have my email address, phone number, office number, and URL. The last time I received any feedback was probably almost 2 years ago.

"maybe they ARE looking for me when they type Robert. PC World named me one of the most important people on the Internet. So did Forbes."

Every once in a while, the ego shines on through the rants :)

Except for the fact that Macs run Windows now. I'm doing it now.

Would be great if you could play these videos at 1.5x speed within this control. I used to do that with Channel 9.

I'm down for the ScobleShow. Of course, attendance is limited at MIX and I'm not a dev, so I won't be there ;) But we should definitely sync up.

Let's not jump to conclusions until you actually see the things Adam's referring to.