http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/default.aspxBlogs for Windows Liveen-US7.x Productionhttp://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/11/06/the-next-chapter-for-the-windows-live-messenger-network.aspxTue, 06 Nov 2012 18:08:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:683bd3c2-ab66-48da-993b-480690f78796Brian Hall More than 12 years ago we released the first version of Messenger to help people chat and keep in touch online in a more personal way. One of the unique things about IM and Messenger in particular is that it has always been about the network of people far more than any one “app.” Almost every one of us joined the Messenger network to be with the people who were on the network – to chat, share stories, laugh, gossip, and just be together. Messenger enabled each of us to communicate and share with the people we care about. A lot has changed for IM and Messenger. We started to text more on our phones, to broadcast messages on Facebook and Twitter, and Skype became the best way to have video and voice calls (in addition to also letting you IM). Recently, we added the ability to sign in to Skype using a Microsoft account, the same account you use for Messenger, Hotmail, Outlook.com, and more, bringing your contacts to Skype automatically. This makes Skype fantastic for connecting with that network of people you know and love. Today, we’ve announced on the Skype blog that we are now encouraging all Messenger users to update by  downloading the latest version of Skype . In the coming months, we will retire the Messenger apps for all regions worldwide except for mainland China. Many of us use and love Messenger today – but it’s always been about the people that make up Messenger – not the app itself. We’re confident that Skype provides a better experience and even stronger network – today and even more so in the future, especially with the addition of the Messenger network. And most importantly, because more of the people you care about will be on Skype, you can connect in richer ways, and you can be connected on more devices and platforms. We will enable Skype to work better with Outlook.com than Messenger ever has too. Chris Jones laid out our plans for reimagining cloud services for Windows and Windows Phone in May. Since then we’ve made major updates to SkyDrive , released Outlook.com , Windows 8, the new Office, and Windows Phone 8 – all powered by a single Microsoft account – and today, we've announced the future for Messenger and Skype. This will be the final post on “Inside Windows Live.” It’s been quite a journey, and we’re excited about a future of amazing devices and services! Brian Hall http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/07/20/experiencing-modern-office-with-skydrive-cloud-first-no-compromises.aspxFri, 20 Jul 2012 17:33:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:9a2c6c54-eb5a-474b-8dd6-8e50513befd9Omar Shahine Last November, we shared our thoughts on the state of personal cloud storage and our vision for connecting file, app and device clouds to address key customer problems. For example, students start and finish projects in Microsoft Office, but that 75% of them use other tools in between, such as email, Google Docs, and Dropbox. Using these different tools can lead to formatting loss, extra steps and versions, or just confusion, since each tool has its own limitations. It’s been nine months since we shared our vision. Yet we know many of you are still struggling with these problems – or worse, you’re forced to compromise and use lesser tools. Announced earlier this week, the new Office puts an end to that.  It connects naturally to the cloud – giving you automatic access to personal documents from any device and the ability to easily share and create together with anyone – right from Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. (There’s also a new version of SkyDrive designed for organizations . Employees can now get the benefits of SkyDrive for work documents while administrators get the management and compliance features they need.) And today, we’re excited to announce the new Office Web Apps for SkyDrive customers. Available as an opt-in preview , this is the most significant update we have ever released. The new Web Apps offer a great new look, improved performance, and many new features. Here’s how to start experiencing a modern Office with SkyDrive today: Install Office 365 Home Premium Preview The install takes just a few minutes and you can: Save documents to SkyDrive automatically Office installs SkyDrive for the Windows desktop so new documents are automatically saved privately and safely to the cloud. Your documents are all stored offline on your PC allowing you to work anywhere, any time, on any doc. Share using SkyDrive without leaving the app From Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, you can share any document using SkyDrive. This includes sharing to any email address in your Microsoft account address book (including your Google, LinkedIn, and Hotmail contacts), getting a view or view & edit link, or posting to a social network connected to your Microsoft account (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn). Work together in real time Edit documents or presentations in real time without ever leaving Word or PowerPoint. You can also collaborate with others using Office 2010 or Office 2011. Opt in to Office Web Apps Preview Sign in using this special link and create a new document. Then you can: Get improved authoring right in your browser While many people enjoyed the convenience of using the Office Web Apps in a browser, they missed functionality that they were used to in desktop Office. With this release you can now create more professional looking documents and we implemented many top customer requests. Touch support Office Web Apps now work with more browsers and devices. They include a new touch-friendly user interface so you can work on your documents on devices like Windows 8 tablets or modern smartphones. Work together with anyone You can now work together at the same time as others in all four Office Web Apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote). We encourage you to visit the Office Next blog for details about all of the features including screenshots. This is a big week for SkyDrive and Office. Please try out the new features, share with friends, and give us your feedback via Twitter or by clicking the smiley face in the products. We’re listening. Omar Shahine Group Program Manager, SkyDrive.com http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/07/15/keeping-your-microsoft-account-more-secure.aspxSun, 15 Jul 2012 17:58:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:ddb05386-3bfb-4c4e-a08b-247a60f88f93Eric Doerr Increasingly, it seems like you can’t read the news without seeing a headline about a security issue exposing customer account information for criminals to exploit. As a guy who works every day to keep the Microsoft account system (formerly Windows Live ID) secure, each time I read something like this my heart goes out first to the people whose accounts are victimized by these criminals, and secondly to my colleagues at the compromised companies. Bad guys only have to be right once, defenders have to be right 100% of the time – and I’ve been impressed by the competence and dedication of my peers across the industry. Of course, as has been extensively covered, these attacks shine a spotlight on the core issue – people reuse passwords between different websites. This highlights the longstanding security advice to use unique passwords, as criminals have become increasingly sophisticated about taking a list of usernames and passwords from one service and then “replaying” that list against other major account systems. When they find matching passwords they are able to spread their abuse beyond the original account system they attacked. We don’t blog much about our security work – no need to give the bad guys more ideas on how to attack our customers. However, given the events of this past week , we’ve had enough questions that I wanted to take the time to share at a high level how we protect our customers from these attacks, and re-emphasize what each of you can do to better protect yourself. Many sources of leaked credentials Let’s start with how we find out about these customers who are at risk. We regularly get notified of lists of compromised external account info (email addresses and/or passwords from other networks) from different sources. They contact us so that we can make sure our customers are protected if they use the same password for their Microsoft account. Sometimes it’s one of the many worldwide law enforcement agencies who reaches out. Sometimes it’s an ISP. Sometimes it’s another company who runs an identity system. And occasionally lists are published on public websites for the world to see. The amount of detail and fidelity of these lists of customers varies – often these are incomplete or encrypted lists that don’t put real customers at risk. But occasionally they are lists of complete usernames and passwords that are a real threat to our customers. How we protect our customers When we get a list, first, we check to see if it actually matches any accounts and passwords in our system. This is done in an automated and secure way so no human actually sees the account info of our customers. You’d be surprised how often the lists – especially the publicly posted ones – are complete garbage with zero matches. But sometimes there are hits – on average, we see successful password matches of around 20% of matching usernames. A recent one only had 4.5% overlap. This is actually exciting because it means that, on average, 80% of our customers are following safe password practices, and this reflects a growing sophistication in our customers. Next, we look to see if there is evidence of criminal activity, like sending spam. If we do see signs of criminal activity, we suspend the account and ask the rightful owner to go through account recovery to regain control. In other cases we simply ask the customer to change their password (before any harm can be done). Occasionally we get information about a set of customers, but there isn’t enough account information to identify who has reused passwords and is therefore at risk. Then we have a judgment call – do we ask 100% of those customers to reset their passwords, even though only 20% are probably at risk? Or do we leave the 20% at risk to avoid inconveniencing the 80%? Where there is a credible threat, the answer is simple – we err on the side of protecting customers. This is a drag for those of you who are very careful with your passwords, and I do apologize for that inconvenience, but I hope you forgive us for protecting your neighbor. It might be you some day. If your account is ever on one of these lists, here’s what you will see when you next sign in to Hotmail, SkyDrive, Xbox or another Microsoft service with your Microsoft account. (You might also see something like this if you have a password that is too common). When you see this, please pardon the inconvenience and take a moment to change your password to a new, unique password. How you can protect yourself Follow the simple steps below to better protect yourself from criminals looking to take advantage of you. Always choose strong, unique passwords. Here’s how . Add security proofs to your account , and check them regularly to ensure they are up to date. You can add a phone, email address, or trusted PC as a proof, and these are used to recover your account if you ever lose access. Here’s how . Be careful using your account in public places, and especially on shared PCs. Shared PCs like those in hotels and Internet cafes are notoriously insecure, and often have malicious software installed that will steal your password. If you have to use one, sign in with a single-use code instead of your normal password. Here’s how . Be careful sharing personal information – passwords, email addresses, physical addresses, credit card info – these pieces of info can all be used to attempt to access your account. Install protection against viruses, spyware, and malware on your computer, and keep it up to date. There are many excellent choices available, including Microsoft Security Essentials , which is free. Make sure your browser phishing filters are active. For IE, click the Tools icon on the toolbar, point to Safety , and then click Turn on SmartScreen Filter . For other browsers, check your help files for instructions. Ensure you are on the correct site before entering personal info. Beware of websites that seem too good to be true (offering amazing deals) and always check the address bar to ensure it’s the right URL. Also remember that we will never send you email asking for your password or other security or account information. Any email asking for this information is always a phishing scam designed to lure you into disclosing your password or other account information. As a final note, of course we have security systems that are constantly evolving to block unauthorized access to your account even if the attacker has your password. These systems reason about normal patterns of login, location, and other factors, and will block unauthorized access or at times will provide an additional identity challenge to make sure that you are really you. But criminals do sometimes get around these systems, so having good, strong, unique passwords and following our security tips is always a good idea. Thanks for helping us keep you safe. Eric Doerr Group Program Manager – Microsoft account http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/07/12/an-update-to-skydrive-with-a-new-logo.aspxThu, 12 Jul 2012 18:18:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:5850873b-297a-43e1-bd04-a9cc3c9fbd75Mike Torres Today, many SkyDrive users may notice an automatic update to SkyDrive for Windows (Version 16.4.6003.0710). Most of the changes in this update aren't really visible. Millions of people depend on SkyDrive to automatically sync files, so as with most updates, this one improves performance, reliability, and compatibility of SkyDrive. However, there are a couple things you might notice in this update: New status window Many people asked for a simple way to check at a glance whether their SkyDrive is in sync. With this update, when you click SkyDrive in the system tray, a small status window appears. It lets you know if SkyDrive is up to date, and gives you the time at which SkyDrive was last updated. If SkyDrive is still syncing, you'll also see the number of megabytes and files you have remaining to sync. We’ve also added new options in the context menu that you see when you right-click (“View sync problems” and “Report a problem”) to make it easier to identify and report issues. New SkyDrive logo We designed SkyDrive to provide Windows customers access to important files anywhere. With the upcoming release of Windows 8, the time was right to redesign the SkyDrive logo. The refreshed logo is a natural evolution of the work we’re doing across Microsoft to deliver a more consistent experience across all of our products.     As we update SkyDrive for other platforms, apps, and devices, you'll see the updated logo appear more broadly. We will also be making it available to partners and developers. We hope you enjoy the update, and we look forward to your continued feedback. Mike Torres http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/06/15/9-tips-for-working-with-skydrive-on-windows-pcs.aspxFri, 15 Jun 2012 18:28:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:a52f766e-48ec-40f5-9d55-01157bef1c96Anand Babu We’ve received many comments and tweets about how people use SkyDrive everyday to access, create, and share across devices. In this post, Lia Yu , a product marketer on our team, shares a few of our favorite tips.        - Anand Babu, Group Product Marketer, SkyDrive When you install the free SkyDrive app on your computer, you can access your photos and files from almost anywhere, store them, and securely share them. And with the arrival of Windows 8 Release Preview, SkyDrive is automatically available right on the Start screen and any of your Windows 8 apps can connect directly to SkyDrive. We’ve had SkyDrive on our Windows PCs for some time now and wanted to share some of our favorite tips on ways to use it. 1. Access SkyDrive easily from any Windows 8 app In addition to browsing and managing your files directly using the SkyDrive app, you can also use other Windows 8 apps to choose a file or save files to SkyDrive. For instance, to choose a lock screen or a picture password, you can select from photos on your SkyDrive, right from the file browser. Just choose SkyDrive from the dropdown list of file locations and select a picture. Or, if you’re using an app like SketchBook, the sketches you create can be saved directly to SkyDrive, right from the app. Again, just choose SkyDrive in the dropdown list of file locations.   2. Fetch Photos from another device For those of you already using Windows 8 Release Preview, you can quickly “fetch” a photo from another PC, right in the Photos app. The ability to fetch a photo is enabled the same way as fetching a file from SkyDrive.com . All you need is the SkyDrive app installed on the PC you want to fetch photos from and an internet connection. The Photos app in Windows 8 Release Preview will automatically populate the PCs you have enabled fetch for, so you can easily begin browsing the photos on all those devices. 3. Organize your files on SkyDrive If you’ve used SkyDrive for a while, you may have created a lot of folders that aren’t very well organized. You might consider taking this opportunity to organize your SkyDrive, which is especially easy now that you can more drag and drop within the SkyDrive folder on your Windows PC. And even if you’ve shared some of these files and folders, with the SkyDrive sharing update last year, you can almost always do this without “breaking” the sharing access for others. There are a few things to keep in mind as you do this. Apps like Office and devices like your Windows Phone are designed to work with “special” folders in your SkyDrive. These folders include Documents, Pictures, Public, Mobile uploads, Blog images, SkyDrive camera roll, Twitter uploads, and BitLocker. If you delete or rename these folders, SkyDrive will automatically recreate them to ensure these apps or devices can keep working. Of course you can still move around folders or files that are within these special folders. 4. Add SkyDrive to your Windows libraries for easier access SkyDrive is designed to be simple yet powerful. With a single SkyDrive folder, there are many options to personalize the experience. If you want to view your SkyDrive files alongside your other Documents and Pictures, add the Documents or Pictures subfolders in your SkyDrive to the respective libraries in Windows 7 (or Windows 8). This can be particularly convenient if you use apps like Photo Gallery or Office that show files from certain libraries by default. It’s also another reason to keep your SkyDrive organized. 5. Make SkyDrive your “primary” drive If you want to go cloud-first and treat SkyDrive as your primary location for personal files, then set the default save location in your libraries to your SkyDrive folders. You can even go all the way and remove any other local folders from your libraries. 6. Redirect your Desktop to SkyDrive Often we leave “work in progress” files on our desktop. When moving between PCs, it can be easy to forget these important files. Solve this by redirecting the desktop on your PCs to a folder on SkyDrive. Right click on Desktop in your user folder and select properties. Then change the location for the Desktop to the folder of your choice on SkyDrive. 7. Add OneNote notebooks to SkyDrive If you already use OneNote with SkyDrive, you may notice that your notebooks show up in your SkyDrive folder as shortcuts – not actual files. This is because of the unique way that OneNote works with SkyDrive to enable special features such as co-authoring. If you want to add OneNote notebooks currently stored only on your PC to SkyDrive, open OneNote 2010, click File , then Share , then scroll to Share On. Select Web, then in Web Location, choose SkyDrive . After that, you can view or edit notebooks on the web. Also if you are on a PC (or Mac) without OneNote 2010, you can access your notebook by clicking the respective shortcut in your SkyDrive folder as access your OneNote notebooks from the web. 8. Work together on Office docs If you plan to work together with someone else on a document using Word 2010 or 2011, PowerPoint 2010 or 2011, or Office Web Apps, open the file directly from SkyDrive.com, not from your SkyDrive folder. This lets you and your friends work on the “live” version of the document so that you can work simultaneously without creating versioning issues. 9. Get easier access to shared folders and sharing options In the preview release of SkyDrive for Windows (and Mac ), you can view your personal files in Explorer (or Finder). To view files shared with you or files in your groups, visit SkyDrive.com or use the SkyDrive app for Windows 8. For quick access to SkyDrive.com, pin it to your taskbar using IE. You can also customize your taskbar to always show the SkyDrive system tray icon. Then you can right-click SkyDrive in the system tray and select “Go to SkyDrive.com”. With SkyDrive in the system tray, you can also easily check whether syncing is complete. A green line will slide across the bottom of the icon if SkyDrive is still syncing and disappear when it’s done. So that’s a pretty quick roundup of some of our favorite tips on SkyDrive. We find SkyDrive incredibly useful, and we’re sure some of you do too. We’re guessing that some of you have some tips of your own. Feel free to share feedback and your own tips in the comments. Thanks! http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/05/30/updates-to-the-skydrive-apps-for-windows-and-mac.aspxWed, 30 May 2012 17:23:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:22f99261-2b56-4aea-bdc7-71e6481b64abMike Torres Last month we released preview versions of SkyDrive for Windows and OS X Lion , along with big updates to our iOS and Windows Phone apps. We also announced a new, more flexible approach to personal cloud storage that allows power users to get additional paid storage up to 100GB. It’s been an incredible month since! Our goal was to build a cloud that seamlessly connects your files to the apps and devices you use every day, and we’ve been thrilled with the response so far. In just a few weeks, more people were using SkyDrive apps than have used Mesh. People using SkyDrive for Windows or Mac are now our most engaged users – syncing files across several devices, sharing with SkyDrive.com, and working together with Office Web Apps. At the same time, we continue to listen and respond to your feedback across forums , blogs, Twitter , and Facebook . We recently rolled out an update to the SkyDrive app for Windows Phone that fixed a few minor bugs, and we have a small bug-fix-only update to our iOS app on the way as well. Today we’re also starting to push updates to the SkyDrive apps for Windows desktop and for Mac, which will appear automatically on your PC or Mac over the course of the next week or so. You don’t need to do anything, as the updates occur automatically in the background. Here are a few of the improvements and fixes in the updates: SkyDrive for Windows desktop will power a cool new feature in the upcoming Windows 8 Release Preview, available the first week of June. Right from the Photos app in Windows 8, you can fetch photos stored on your other PCs that have SkyDrive installed – no matter where you are or how many terabytes of photos you have stored on the PC you are accessing. We’ll have more to say about this shortly, so stay tuned. SkyDrive for OS X Lion no longer shows an app icon in the dock when running. We’ve definitely heard the feedback that it wasn’t necessary. Your SkyDrive folder now updates more quickly and reliably when changes are made on other devices, including SkyDrive.com. The limit on the number of total files in the SkyDrive folder created by the apps has been raised from 150,000 to a whopping 10 million! This should unblock some power users from easily adding lots of files to their SkyDrive folder. We made lots of smaller bug fixes to improve overall reliability. Our primary goal throughout this preview period for our desktop apps is to really nail the fundamentals. This means we want the synchronization process to be fast and dependable, and for your SkyDrive folder to “just work,” so that it simply feels like magic. By the way, if you’d like to see if you’re running the latest build, you can see the build number by clicking Settings (in Windows, this is in the right-click menu for the SkyDrive system tray icon, and on the Mac, it’s on the application menu) and then About . The build number to look for is 16.4.4111.0525 . But again, if you’re still running an older build (if the last four numbers are lower than 0525), there’s nothing you need to do. You'll get the update automatically in the next week or so, provided the SkyDrive app is running. Thanks for all of your support and great feedback over the last month! Mike Torres Group Program Manager, SkyDrive Apps http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/05/17/better-shorter-urls-with-sdrv-ms.aspxThu, 17 May 2012 18:15:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:a5e6c168-d365-48a9-ab76-e4f29f19c5a8Omar Shahine If you’re like most people, when you share files via SkyDrive you typically do so directly via email. This is one reason we built the connected address book, bringing together your friends’ addresses across Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn.  Another benefit: when you share photos via email, your friends get a beautiful email with thumbnail previews. Back in December, we added another way to share . You can get a link to any file or folder on SkyDrive and send that link to friends. You can choose to let friends edit or add files, or choose to make the link read-only. Since then, SkyDrive users have created over 13 million links—copying and pasting them into their favorite apps or services. While this feature has been popular, we’ve also gotten a lot of feedback that our links are too long and too ugly. We agree! Sharing with links just got a bit friendlier: We’ve shortened our regular URLs by 40%. Our previous URLs didn’t even fit inside a Tweet! Oh the shame! You can shorten them even further thanks to our new partnership with bitly and the new domain for shortened SkyDrive URLs: http://sdrv.ms We’ve added OpenGraph support to our URLs so that when you paste them into places like Facebook, a nice thumbnail preview gets generated Shorter links As you can see in the Share dialog, there is a Shorten button Shortening using our own custom domain Clicking the button will result in a very short URL using the SDRV.MS domain Support for OpenGraph for link previews If you copy that URL to Facebook you’ll see a nicer preview Stats on your short links Since bitly powers the shortener, you also get great power features. For example, you can add a ‘+’ to the end of any short URL to see statistics. You can also generate a QR code for that URL by appending ’.qrcode’ to that URL. We hope you enjoy these changes, and thanks for using SkyDrive! Omar Shahine Group Program Manager, SkyDrive.com http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/05/10/six-tips-to-make-skydrive-your-cloud-backpack.aspxThu, 10 May 2012 16:00:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:bed43f3a-3826-4d30-a8de-89f20af14d98Anand Babu Earlier this year, we shared a few tips for students to work together with SkyDrive and Office on important projects—without compromising formatting or features. We heard great feedback and we look forward to sharing winners from our Collaboration Challenge soon! Increasingly, we see students and teachers use services like SkyDrive to store everything in one place for easy sharing and access anywhere on campus. We call this your “cloud backpack”. In this post, Mark Grimaldi on the SkyDrive product marketing team will share a few tips to use SkyDrive this way. - Anand Babu, Group Product Marketer, SkyDrive If you’re a student, it’s the same routine every day. You gather everything you need—your notebook for class, binder full of handouts, readings or homework assignments, textbooks, laptop, smartphone and maybe even your tablet. And of course your power adapters. Then you stuff it all into your backpack—everything you think you might need throughout the day—because you may not be back home until it’s time for bed. Surely, there must be a better way to have everything you might need without hauling it around with you everywhere you go. Well, there is. With SkyDrive , you get a “cloud backpack” where you can store, create and access all of your documents, notes, photos or files from anywhere. Our new SkyDrive at School page shows how anyone can get started with a cloud backpack, but we wanted to share a few extra tips to help you go “all in.” Tip #1: Upgrade your notebook and put it in the cloud OneNote 2010 is a powerful note-taking application that’s great for school. With OneNote, you can organize your notes by your classes, instantly search through them, draw graphs or diagrams, and even record your lectures. If you’re not using OneNote yet, check out these tips on the OneNote Blog to get started. To make OneNote even more useful for you, connect it to SkyDrive and try these suggestions: Study from anywhere By saving your notebook on SkyDrive, you can access it from any computer (even a Mac!) using the OneNote Web App . You can also study on-the-go since OneNote is also available on pretty much every mobile device . To save your OneNote notebook to SkyDrive, just click File and then Share to save it on the web. Copy things to OneNote Whether for class or a research project, you can send printouts, screenshots or web clippings right to OneNote to stay organized. Find a helpful website for your research paper? Just highlight what you want from Internet Explorer and right click Send to OneNote 2010 to insert it into your notebook. You can send a whole webpage, a paragraph or image. OneNote will even show where you copied the content from so you can easily cite and reference it later. Have a PDF or some other file from your professor? You can Print directly to your OneNote notebook and save it next to your notes from the same lecture. To take a snapshot of anything on your screen, press Windows + S on your keyboard. You can also drop and drag an entire file into OneNote from your desktop. By default, OneNote always asks where you want new notes to go. You can set a default preference by clicking File , Options , and then Send to OneNote . If you select a notebook that’s synced to SkyDrive, you can rest assured that anything you send to OneNote will be available anywhere, automatically. Share your notes with classmates without a photocopier With all of your notes in the cloud, you can easily share them with your friends and classmates. From SkyDrive.com, just right click your notebook and select Share . If you want, you can even give them access to your notebook so that they can add their own notes. Now everyone can work together in the same notebook, and studying for finals just got a little easier. Tip #2: Never be without your important files Odds are, you’re either working on an important project right now or will be shortly. Well, SkyDrive can help keep you more organized and make sure that you’re never without the files that you need. When you install SkyDrive for Windows or Mac , you get a SkyDrive folder on your computer. Everything you save or copy there is automatically synced to your SkyDrive. So move your spreadsheets, downloaded articles, and everything else you’ve gathered. No matter what happens to your computer, you can easily get to your stuff from any web browser. Tip #3: Work with Office anywhere SkyDrive does more than store your files. It also works with free Office Web Apps so you can view, edit and print from any web browser. If you’re working on a Word document on your laptop at the library and your battery dies, you can easily pick up right where you left off just by logging into SkyDrive.com at the computer lab. If you get inspired on the bus ride back home, you can update your document using the Office Hub on your Windows Phone. You can rest assured that your formatting remains intact. Any changes you make will be waiting to sync when you plug in your computer back at your dorm room. What’s more, SkyDrive also keeps track of the various versions of your Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. So don’t worry about renaming your files V1, V2… V14a. Just work in the documents saved in your SkyDrive folder and SkyDrive will take care of the rest. Tip #4: Never leave something at home again You’ve been there before. You’re at the computer lab ready to print out your paper and you forgot your USB drive. Or you’re away from your computer and you realize you didn’t email your TA your homework assignment. Or maybe you’ve just met someone at a company you’d like to work for and you want to send them your résumé, but you won’t be home for hours. These aren’t a problem anymore. Even if you forget to put something in your SkyDrive folder—or never thought you’d need it there—you can still access it from any computer. SkyDrive for Windows lets you fetch any file on your personal computer (as long as it’s online) from SkyDrive.com. Once you find that paper to print, you can click Copy to SkyDrive and use Word Web App to view, print and share. Tip #5: Scan papers to SkyDrive using your phone From handouts to class readings, old notes or recent assignments, you have so much paper to carry around and keep organized. Why not scan and upload everything to SkyDrive? Use a smartphone app like Handyscan for Windows Phone (shown below) or Docscan for iPhone to create PDF versions of all of your handouts, homework, or even lecture notes from your friends. You can save the files directly to SkyDrive and they’ll be synced across your devices. If you want to do more – like add comments or keep scans alongside class notes, you can import PDFs and other files into OneNote. Tip #6: Access files on the go USB drives are easily left behind. Emailing yourself documents makes it easy to lose track of the latest version or crowds your inbox. With SkyDrive, you can access everything, all around campus, from any web browser. You can also use the SkyDrive app for Windows Phone , iPhone and iPad , or Android apps —no matter where you are. Bringing a cloud backpack to every student and teacher While we hope these tips are helpful, we know it will take some time before everyone upgrades to a “cloud backpack”. Here are a few ways you can help: If you are a teacher, share class materials or class notes directly using SkyDrive. You can also provide feedback on assignments and papers through shared documents. If you are a developer, use our APIs to integrate SkyDrive into applications that students use and love. And if you are a student, what tips did we miss? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter how you’re using a cloud backpack today. We can help spread the word! Mark Grimaldi, Product Marketing Manager, SkyDrive http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/04/25/an-exciting-few-days-for-personal-cloud-storage-and-skydrive.aspxWed, 25 Apr 2012 22:41:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:6a67daf5-5b2a-4500-b4ae-4f5629841c43Anand Babu This week, we’ve seen a welcome update from Dropbox, a new chapter for SkyDrive and the long awaited emergence of Google Nessie. Is it only Wednesday? We’re very encouraged by the response we’ve received this week, and it’s hard not to be pretty happy when we hear positive feedback on all of the improvements we’ve made and the value we provide vs. other solutions. But the most exciting thing for us has been the response from our customers. We’ve been thrilled to hear from you on Twitter and blogs, and we’ve had an overwhelming number of downloads of SkyDrive across Windows 8, Windows 7, iOS and Mac. We're listening to your feedback for the future, and we’ll keep adding storage and bandwidth as fast as we can. Thank you! What do comparison charts leave out? With this week’s events, it can be fun and useful to compare features across services. We’ve seen these charts across the web, and of course we recently updated our own chart . However these comparisons often neglect one thing. Is each provider actually trying to build similar experiences? As we look at the category, we see our approach with SkyDrive is increasingly unique. We don’t think people want another file cloud to manage. They don't want an app cloud tied to one browser, social network or ad network. They don't want yet another proprietary device cloud. People want a cloud that seamlessly connects their files to the apps and devices they use every day. Over a billion people rely on Office apps and their Windows devices every day to create, capture and share from anywhere. That’s why we’re building personal cloud storage for our customers that works seamlessly with Office and Windows. Of course we know Office and Windows customers have other devices and use other apps. We want them to enjoy SkyDrive too, so we’re working to make it available anywhere – directly and in partnership with developers . As we do all of this, there should be no doubt that our business model is aligned with your interests. A few things to try today So how exactly will SkyDrive let you work seamlessly with Office and Windows from anywhere? We thought we’d share a few things you can try today. Word, Excel and PowerPoint: Work across web and desktop, online or offline - no conversions, no compromises With SkyDrive for Windows and Mac, you can easily work with documents using the Office apps you love – Word, Excel and PowerPoint – from anywhere. Unlike other services, you can do this without converting between formats or compromising on features. Below is a short video to demonstrate along with a few tips for collaboration . OneNote: Capture notes, voice clips, scans and more on the go. Access and search later Over the years, people have called OneNote a hidden gem . Thankfully more people are discovering it with the launch of OneNote for Android, iPhone, iPad and Windows Phone. Use your phone to take notes, record voice clips, scan documents and sync them instantly to SkyDrive. Your stuff is pushed to OneNote 2010 on your PC where you can organize and search – even audio and images . You can share notebooks with your spouse, friends or teams who can use OneNote Web App - free. Fetch files in Windows: Turn your PC into a private cloud to access any file, not just what’s in the cloud Moving files to the cloud offers many advantages – particularly for sharing and collaboration. However, you shouldn’t have to upload everything just to access it anywhere. With “fetch”, SkyDrive works seamlessly with your Windows PC so you can access any file from anywhere. You can even stream videos. Windows transcodes your video automatically to fit your connection. Windows 8 Consumer Preview: Every app connects to the cloud, no setup required With SkyDrive for Windows, the cloud is another folder on your desktop. Any existing Windows app that can access the file system can now access SkyDrive. SkyDrive for Windows 8 also brings a seamless cloud experience to new Windows 8 apps. This opens up new possibilities, for example, using SkyDrive together with apps available now in the Windows Store like Mail , Docstoc and Skitch . Please try these out today, share your feedback – and tell your friends. In the coming months, you’ll see SkyDrive continue to bring seamless personal cloud storage to Windows and Office that’s available anywhere. http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/04/25/skydrive-apis-bring-your-data-to-any-app-any-platform-any-device.aspxWed, 25 Apr 2012 18:15:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:fb3c5900-23ef-406b-ba51-b27761de2a73Dare Obasanjo On Monday, we released preview versions of SkyDrive for Windows and Mac , along with updates for iOS and Windows Phone. With SkyDrive on your desktop, you can now access files in the cloud right from any of your PC or Mac apps. And since we launched our API , we’ve been excited to see mobile, web, and Windows 8 developers add SkyDrive to their apps. A key principle behind the approach we’ve taken with the SkyDrive developer platform is that while it should be seamlessly accessible from Windows devices and apps, it should also be ready to enable developers on any platform to build apps that make SkyDrive more useful. It’s your data. It should not be limited to apps for a single browser or brand of devices. Given our recent announcements, we wanted to reiterate how developers can integrate SkyDrive into their apps and devices, showcase a few of our favorite integrations and let people know about a few developer events we are sponsoring in Amsterdam, NYC and Las Vegas. Android apps Developers of Android apps can use the Live SDK for Android to build mobile and tablet apps that provide access to a user’s documents and photos in SkyDrive. The SDK supports Android versions 2.2 (Froyo) to 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Browser for SkyDrive (below) is one of our most popular SkyDrive apps on Android. For more information see our getting started docs for Android development . Desktop apps (Windows or Mac) With SkyDrive for Windows and Mac, users can transparently cloud-enable their desktop apps without needing to customize the apps since the SkyDrive folder looks like a regular folder on the file system. This opens up literally millions of new possibilities for users. In some cases, a desktop app may want to integrate directly with SkyDrive, without relying on the user having SkyDrive installed. For example, the SkyDrive gadget for Xobni brings powerful cloud-based sharing to Outlook, making it easy to share large files with email recipients without worrying about large file size limitations. For more information see our getting started docs for desktop development . iOS apps In addition to the SkyDrive for iPhone and iPad , SkyDrive customers can also use any iPhone or iPad apps that use our SDK for iOS to integrate with SkyDrive. The SDK supports development using Xcode 4.1 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Xcode 4.2 on Mac OS X Lion. A great example of an iOS app that integrates well with SkyDrive is DocScan . When there is no scanner available, DocScan lets you instantly scan multi-page documents with your iPhone, then annotate, and store them in the cloud for later use . For more information see our getting started docs for iOS development Mobile Devices Not only are developers already delivering great SkyDrive apps that people can download to their Android and other phones – but some of the biggest Android OEMs like HTC have also already built SkyDrive right into their phones. HTC’s newest 4.0 devices such as the HTC One X come with SkyDrive, letting you seamlessly work with your SkyDrive photos and documents from their native Mail, Gallery, and Polaris Office experiences. We have been excited by the enthusiasm for SkyDrive of people making other consumer devices like cameras. Samsung’s new line of WiFi enabled SMART cameras ( Amazon ) enables users to never lose their valuable memories by uploading pictures to SkyDrive directly from the camera. Windows Phone apps On Windows Phone, there have already been dozens of apps that have taken advantage of our SDK for Windows Phone . Apps such as HandyScan (shown below) augment SkyDrive’s seamless integration into the Office and Pictures hub on the phone by bringing personal cloud storage to the apps Windows Phone customers use every day. ` For more information see our getting started docs for Windows Phone development Showcasing your apps As you can tell, we’re really proud of some of the apps that have integrated with SkyDrive and would like to share them with as many people as possible. That is why, with our release on Monday, we’ve also launched a new app showcase . Now millions of SkyDrive users can discover apps from third party developers that make it easier to share or work from anywhere. The showcase is available from within SkyDrive.com, so users can easily find apps while using the service. Every month, we’ll add apps to our showcase based on usage and positive feedback from customers. Let us know about apps you like by telling us on Twitter . Bringing SkyDrive to you and your app To recap, developers can learn more about the SkyDrive API by visiting dev.live.com . You’ll find links to code samples on GitHub and overview docs , and you can also download our SDKs for Windows 8, WP7, iOS, and Android to simplify development on your favorite device platform. We also have REST APIs and a JavaScript API for web development. To get the word out about how SkyDrive can help you and your apps, we’ll be attending and sponsoring a few developer events in the coming weeks: 4/25 – 4/27: TNW – Amsterdam 4/27 –4/29: Mobile Dev Camp – NYC 4/30 – 5/4: Future Insights Live – Las Vegas Let us know if you’ll be there! We’d love to meet you. We’ll be available to help with questions you have on SkyDrive, and we’ll also have cool t-shirts to give away and some other special prizes for people integrating SkyDrive with their apps at these hackathons. Hope to see you there. Dare Obasanjo Lead Program Manager, Live Connect Platform http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/04/01/an-even-faster-version-of-skydrive.aspxSun, 01 Apr 2012 18:25:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:10237a96-ccf4-46ef-8ef1-b380c1523627Tony East Update, April 24, 2012: Please note: Even though it works great and shows off our developer APIs, SkyCMD was our April Fool’s joke for 2012.  However, check out these real improvements to SkyDrive . The past year has been an amazing time here on the SkyDrive team. We’re all very eager to ship the work we announced in our next release, but we can’t just sit back and relax. Like a shark, we have to keep moving forward. As we started to think about the next generation interface for SkyDrive, we needed something fresh. It’s too easy to get caught up in the visual distraction of a traditional GUI, especially when you really just want to see a directory listing of your files. As we pulled together the vision, our design principles included getting back to our monochromatic roots, presenting the user with fewer commands, all while providing the most powerful interface possible. So what is the next big thing? Forget touch and even the mouse The more we thought about it, the more we realized that the model we were looking for was right in front of us – or at least used to be. We harkened back to a time when computing was simpler. Sure, interface design has changed over the years, but do people really want to navigate through their files with the flick of a finger or view photos with a click of a mouse? Maybe. But we believe the first and best way for humans to interact with computers is through terse commands entered via the good old keyboard. That’s when it hit us: what the world needs is a SkyDrive Command Line Interface! Introducing SkyCMD Starting today, you can finally interact with SkyDrive the way you’ve always wanted to. You can use the classic DOS syntax to easily navigate your file hierarchy—familiar commands like “dir” and “cd.” Simple. Powerful. SkyCMD: Command line access to your files on SkyDrive. Go to http://skycmd.com and check it out. Once you connect SkyCMD to your SkyDrive account you can do many of the powerful things that only a CLI can offer. As for customization, try the “color” command to give your SkyCMD window a little flare. Built from our SkyDrive APIs One of our amazing developers, Luke, came up with the early rendition of SkyCMD and showed it around the SkyDrive hallways a couple months ago. We all loved it and knew that if it had a few more obscure commands and the right ASCII art we had a winner on our hands. The volume of internal feature requests for SkyCMD grew to the point that we’ve put the entire SkyDrive engineering organization to work building it. Our developer APIs, which Dare Obasanjo wrote about in his blog post back in December, are so powerful we just used those. We have even put the source code out as part of our sample code . Of course in the near future we are going to ship what we recently announced and then some. But going forward the future of SkyDrive is SkyCMD ! Tony East Lead Program Manager, SkyDrive.com http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/02/21/the-war-on-graymail-after-90-days-over-100-million-sweeps-cleanups-and-newsletters-filtered.aspxTue, 21 Feb 2012 17:25:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:20abba16-0a2a-4615-aafd-8033701b2205Dick Craddock Hotmail introduced advanced features for fighting the war on graymail this past fall, and since then, customers have conquered graymail over 100 million times using features like Sweep and Schedule Cleanup. In this post, I’ll talk about how Hotmail customers are taking control of their email with Sweep, Schedule Cleanup, and Hotmail’s newsletter filter, and we’ll show you how these tools can help you conquer graymail in your own inbox in just 60 seconds. The best tools for fighting graymail Graymail—messages  like newsletters, daily deals, and notifications—is filling up inboxes all over the world. Newsletters alone typically make up more than 50% of a person’s email. Managing all that graymail takes time and can be a hassle. Hotmail continues to add innovative features to let you take control of graymail and take back your inbox. Hotmail’s newsletter category automatically identifies most newsletters and lets you see them all in one place with a single click. One-click unsubscribe lets you get rid of unwanted newsletters instantly. Schedule Cleanup is a powerful new feature that lets you automatically manage bulk mail. With Schedule Cleanup, you can: Keep only the latest message from a given sender (by far the most popular choice when using Schedule Cleanup). Delete messages as they get old (3 days, 10 days, 30 days, or 60 days). Move messages to a folder as they get old. Schedule Cleanup not only takes care of the mail you’ve already received, but keeps working for you as you receive new mail. It’s one of the most efficient ways to keep your inbox tidy. Sweep lets you move or delete unwanted graymail quickly and easily, and can even automatically set up rules for managing new mail as it arrives. Categories let you organize your mail the way you want. Hotmail automatically categorizes things like newsletters, social updates, photos, Office docs and shipping updates. Now, you can create your own categories and have each one show up as a QuickView. And of course, these features work well together. Categories can be used together with Schedule Cleanup, making those tools even more powerful. For instance, you can use Schedule Cleanup to delete all newsletters as they get old, just by using Schedule Cleanup on the newsletter category. 100 million actions and counting It’s been just two months since we finished the deployment of our most recent major release, and we’ve already seen millions of people use these tools to quickly take control of their own inbox. Let’s take a look at some of the numbers. Since November, 2011, customers have performed over 100 million actions to conquer graymail: Sweeping, categorizing, and using Schedule Cleanup. You’re using Sweep to get unwanted email out of your inbox: 90% of Sweep actions are “Delete all from this sender.” You’re letting Sweep set up rules automatically: When you use Sweep to move mail from a given sender into a folder, you let Sweep automatically set up a rule 60% of the time . That means Sweep keeps working for you as you get new email, even when you are away from your inbox. You’re using Schedule Cleanup to keep only the most recent newsletter or deal: 65% of Schedule Cleanup actions are “Only keep the latest message from this sender.” And what’s more, we’re seeing an increasing use of these powerful tools. Each month, more people use Sweep and Schedule Cleanup to get rid of their graymail. In fact, we’ve seen a double-digit increase in the use of these features month-over-month since our October release. Take back your inbox in 60 seconds The best news is that these tools are quick and easy to use. In this video, we’ll show you how you can take back your own inbox in just 60 seconds. More and more people are using Hotmail’s innovative tools to fight their own war on graymail, and we hope you’ll give these tools a try yourself. We’d love to hear about your own experience using Sweep, Schedule Cleanup, categories, and the rest. As always, thanks for using Hotmail. Dick Craddock Group Program Manager, Hotmail http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/02/20/skydrive-and-windows-8.aspxMon, 20 Feb 2012 17:02:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:a4b3e26f-0a2a-4cbe-b928-f3aa847ecd92Omar Shahine Mike Torres and I just shared a post and video on the Building Windows 8 blog that details a key step we are taking with Windows 8 towards our vision of personal cloud storage .  The post describes how we plan to scale our services to billions of people, and some of the coming improvements, including a new Metro style app for Windows 8, SkyDrive integration in Windows Explorer, and the ability to fetch any file remotely from SkyDrive.com.  We encourage you to read the full post and share comments on Building Windows 8 . - Omar http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/02/13/we-aren-t-surprised-that-hotmail-s-spam-protection-is-the-best-in-the-business.aspxMon, 13 Feb 2012 17:30:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:213f2546-2b0c-4bfa-a0fe-98f9c910188cDick Craddock Hotmail has come a long way in spam protection and is now among the best in the industry in keeping spam out of your i nbox. Our own internal metrics, customer feedback, and even a recent third-party report confirms that no mail service offers better protection than Hotmail. You can read all about it in the Gadgetwise column in the New York Times . Our years of improvements in Hotmail’s SmartScreen technology have led to record low rates of spam in the inbox (SITI), and our customers can tell the difference. We’ve driven SITI down below 3% for a typical Hotmail inbox, and, more importantly, we’ve kept the number there. Beyond the metrics Our metrics tell us that we’re doing a good job, and we’re pleased with the progress. But let’s look beyond metrics for a moment. Keeping your inbox clean is about three things, and Hotmail does a great job on all three: Driving true SITI down as low as possible We’ve recently lowered true SITI an additional 25% since our last update . We’re getting great results, and we just keep improving. Reducing clutter and graymail We automatically identify newsletters and give our customers powerful tools for getting through their Inbox faster, including one-click filters to see only the mail you want. Reduce obvious spam in the Junk folder Sure, it’s great to keep spam out of the inbox, but you still need to visit your Junk folder every now and then to make sure you haven’t missed something important. Hotmail not only keeps more spam out of your inbox, it keeps obvious spam out of your Junk folder to make this job easier. In fact, our recent efforts have reduced the size of our customers’ Junk folders by more than 50% - that’s about a half a billion fewer pure spam messages per day. Our customers can tell the difference Metrics are great, but what we really care about is hearing from our customers about their own experiences with Hotmail. We have several ways to get customer feedback: Customer support : Complaints related to spam, including phishing, junk and malware, have dropped by over 40% over the past year. Direct customer feedback : Hotmail includes a feedback link, which we call “voice of the customer” or VOTC. Our voice of the customer data gives us incredibly valuable feedback and verbatim comments from you on what’s going well and what isn’t. We take this feedback seriously: members of the development team read this feedback every day and spend time categorizing it, finding patterns and trends, and using it to make product improvments. The total number of complaints related to spam has shrunk by over 50% over the past two years. This would be a great result by itself, but it’s even more remarkable when you consider that our overall feedback volume has been steadily increasing. We’ve seen really spectacular progress in certain areas around spam management. For example, complaints about managing safe and blocked sender lists has dropped to near zero. Questions like “why did my mail end up where it did?” have similarly dropped to near zero. Complaints around “repeat spam” have been cut in half – from 35% down to 17% of complaint volume. While we’re happy with the results, we know that there are still areas to improve. For example, we still see feedback on phishing attacks . In-product telemetry: We know that customers who use Hotmail regularly (for example, as their primary email) see lower than average SITI due to our investments in personalization of our spam filtering. Put simply: the more you use Hotmail, the better the experience gets. An independent study confirms it: no one beats Hotmail As much as we invest in our own telemetry and instrumentation to understand the spam problem, sometimes it’s nice to get an outside perspective. Cascade Insights gave us just that recently with a comprehensive study of the major email services to see how each performed in the face of incoming spam. We were excited to see an analyst go deep on SPAM and compare the different webmail providers, so we’ve paid Cascade for rights to access and distribute their private report and methodology. The short story? No one did better than Hotmail. In fact, Hotmail and Gmail were dead even when dealing with spam, and both did much better than other email providers. The methodology defined by Cascade Insights was straightforward and consistent across email providers. It’s important to note that this was just one study which used a particular methodology, and that your own results may vary. But we’re confident that if you use Hotmail for your primary email, you’ll get the best spam protection in the industry – no one does it better. Give us a try If you’re already using Hotmail, we want to hear from you. You can use the Feedback link in Hotmail to let us know about your own spam experience. If you haven’t tried us out in a while, take a look. If you have a Hotmail account that you haven’t been using, you may see some accumulation of mail you don’t want. Some of it might be old spam, and some might be graymail . (That’s legitimate email that you just don’t want, like newsletters or daily deals you’re no longer interested in. We’ll have more on that subject soon.) We recommend using Sweep to clean up your Inbox, then using Hotmail as your primary email for a while to get the benefit of our improvements, especially what we’ve done with personalization. Once you start using your account again, you should see very little spam on an ongoing basis. We’re working hard to keep spam out of your inbox, and we hope you like the results. As always, thanks for using Hotmail. Dick Craddock Group Program Manager, Hotmail http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/02/10/solving-the-attachment-problem-with-skydrive.aspxFri, 10 Feb 2012 16:57:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:e0f49929-0fff-426b-a985-043656a81bcaAnand Babu We’ve talked about our approach to connecting the file cloud, app cloud and device cloud. A key part of the work we are doing in the app cloud is to bring the benefits of cloud-based file sharing to email apps. In this post, Lia Yu, a product marketer on the SkyDrive team, describes the problems people have with traditional email attachments and how the cloud can solve them. We’ve also included a few tips for how SkyDrive can help at work – where we’re often inundated with attachments. (SkyDrive may be particularly helpful if your workplace hasn’t made the switch yet from outdated to modern tools.) We hope you find these tips helpful – and look out for more updates soon. - Anand Babu, Group Product Marketer, SkyDrive The attachment problem Every day, the average office worker receives over 170 email messages a day, and sends over 35. With that kind of volume, it’s understandable that over half of the average work day consists of dealing with email. That’s over 1000 hours a year. It’s worth taking a look at where people can save some time on the process. Dealing with email attachments is a big contributor to the amount of time spent on email. In Hotmail alone, there are over 1 billion email messages sent with file attachments per week. While attachments can be useful, in many situations, they aren’t the right tool for the job. To see how much time an attachment can waste during its life, click here to see our infographic. Here are some examples of when attachments are frequently a waste of time: 1. Working together on a document If you use email to work with others on a doc, everyone has their own edited version saved locally on a computer that they then have to send as an email attachment to the group. With so many doc versions being sent back and forth, docs can get lost and a lot of extra work is created. If people edit simultaneously, someone will have to go through multiple versions and try to merge edits into one doc. It’s colossally inefficient and potentially migraine inducing. Photo courtesy of The Oatmeal www.theoatmeal.com © 2012 Matthew Inman 2. Sharing and publishing files If you need to share files with a large audience, using email often means sending files over and over again—either because you need to update the files after you send them, or because the people you sent the files to lost your attachment in the chaos of their inbox. 3. Sending large files Most of us have had the problem where we tried to send files that got bounced back because their file size was too big, or because your recipient’s inbox couldn’t handle a massive file you just sent. Even if you zip or break apart your attachments, that takes a lot of extra time-wasting steps to send those files. Photo courtesy of The Oatmeal. www.theoatmeal.com © 2012 Matthew Inman 4. Making notes and files available anywhere, anytime, across devices Accessing your important files anywhere should not require you to send an email to yourself. Even though we all do it, that method is pretty primitive. You usually end up having to search for the email buried somewhere in your inbox or sending it again later. The attachment solution Today’s cloud services offer a great alternative to attachments that solve many of these problems. Instead of emailing docs back and forth for group editing, SkyDrive lets you edit the doc in one place using Office Web Apps or Office on your PC and Mac —saving all your versions in one place. Sharing files, large or small, is also easier on SkyDrive because you can send out a link to the doc to avoid attachment size limits. Also, you can use the link to edit the doc even after you send it to others. Yet despite the efficiency of the cloud, the vast majority of people still cling to email attachments. What’s holding people back? While some services solve the attachment problem better than others the real enemy is inertia. We spend so much of our time in email that attachments seem like the most convenient option. There are two key things we are doing to address this inertia: 1. Connecting SkyDrive to webmail Our primary approach has been to bring SkyDrive into the natural place where people send files, which as we’ve mentioned is email. Hotmail allows you to easily send documents and photos via SkyDrive . The integration of Office Web Apps means you won’t lose your formatting when you send your files as online documents. And you can even configure Hotmail to always send files using SkyDrive by default. Of course, for people using services like Gmail, you can access your email right from Hotmail as well as import your contacts . This way, you can send those links to SkyDrive files using the Hotmail features, while still keeping your Gmail identity. Already, files uploaded to SkyDrive represent over 15% of the total number of email attachments sent via Hotmail every month. This share is growing rapidly – with monthly uploads to SkyDrive up over 90% in the last year alone. 2. Making it easy for other apps and services to work with SkyDrive We know that people share files using many different devices, apps and email clients. That’s a key reason why we’ve focused on making it easy for developers to add SkyDrive to their experiences. An example is Xobni who recently released a SkyDrive Gadget . If you use Xobni for Outlook, it’s easy to email a link to a file on SkyDrive without leaving Outlook. Use the gadget to find the SkyDrive file that you want to share. With a single click, you can copy the link to your clipboard or compose a new message including the link. Tips for avoiding attachment problems To help overcome inertia, we have launched a new site www.attachmentssuck.com to help you teach your friends how to make the switch from attachments to SkyDrive. Encourage your friends and co-workers to start saving themselves (and you) hours of time. In addition, here are a few power tips that are particularly relevant if you share presentations frequently. (You can get other tips for avoiding attachments, here .) Tip 1: Upload and organize presentations on SkyDrive Upload your presentations (or any other file) to SkyDrive. You may also want to use folders or subfolders to keep all of your presentations related to a particular topic or customer in one place. That way, it’s easy for you to reference and easy for recipients to find content—with a single a link to your folder. Upload your presentation to SkyDrive Organize your presentations by subject   Choose to share an entire folder, or just one file Tip 2: Share frequently used presentations right from Outlook If you install the SkyDrive Gadget for Xobni , you can send a link to SkyDrive files right from Outlook. Just click the SkyDrive gadget tab in the Xobni app, find the file you want to share, and click “Email a Link” to pop up an email window with the link. Unlike other cloud services, SkyDrive integrates with Office Web Apps so your recipients don’t need to have the same version of Office that you do (or any Office software) to be able to view what you send them. Also, thanks to our recent sharing improvements, you can easily share files in any of your SkyDrive folders without having to copy or move them to a special folder. Note: The Xobni gadget gives your recipients access to view files only. If you want to let them edit your doc or add files to a folder, visit SkyDrive.com to get a link to view and edit. Tip 3: Send once, update often If you’ll need to make edits to the presentation later, open it from SkyDrive in PowerPoint 2010 and pin the presentation to your Windows 7 taskbar for easy access. Then you can easily update it on your PC and anyone with your link will automatically have access to the updated version. Tip 4: Share your presentation like an expert If you’re giving your presentation remotely or on a screen, you can include a unique bit.ly link on the last slide that directs viewers to your presentation on your SkyDrive. Just go to bit.ly, enter the SkyDrive address of your presentation, hit “customize” and enter a unique and descriptive title after the forward slash. Like: bit.ly/skydriveecards . If you’re giving handouts of your presentation, you can create a QR code to include on the printed version, linking to your presentation on SkyDrive, so meeting attendees can scan the tag/code and access the presentation. To add a QR code to your bit.ly link, just append .qr to the end of the URL like so: bit.ly/skydriveecards.qr. Click the link, and you’ve got your QR code. Tip 5: Present from anywhere When you’re on the road, you can view and edit the presentation from anywhere—even if you’re on a device without Office, using the Office Web Apps on SkyDrive. Where do we go from here? SkyDrive will continue to fight the good fight against the attachment problem. We will do this by making SkyDrive an even better alternative to attachments and by working with partners to bring SkyDrive to the places that people share today. If you’re a developer inspired by our mission to solve the attachment problem, our APIs are available here . Lia Yu, Sr. Product Marketer, SkyDrive http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/02/07/connect-your-android-device-to-skydrive-with-onenote-and-other-apps.aspxTue, 07 Feb 2012 23:03:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:4c9bf676-53d3-4c26-9285-b2f8e8be3047Anand Babu As we design SkyDrive to reach billions of people , we know it’s important that your files are automatically available across Windows devices, while being accessible on a broad range of devices. With Windows Phone, your SkyDrive files are automatically available from the Office and Pictures hubs. SkyDrive will also work seamlessly with Windows 8 . In addition, you can access files from other devices using SkyDrive.com , SkyDrive for iPhone and via 3 rd party apps or devices using SkyDrive APIs. In addition to storing files on SkyDrive, many people use OneNote together with SkyDrive to organize and access notes, web pages, audio clips and more. More people are using SkyDrive in this way as OneNote has become available on new platforms and devices, including the OneNote Web App, OneNote for Windows Phone and OneNote for iPhone & iPad . Today, we’re excited that the Office team is making OneNote for Android available in 57 markets worldwide with easy access to your notes on SkyDrive. The app also offers key OneNote features like checklists, image capture, table editing and support for hyperlinks. Please note that not all Android devices are created equal. You currently need to have a device running Android 2.3 or higher and with access to Android Market to use OneNote for Android. If you have an Android device, we also encourage you to try other apps from partners built using SkyDrive APIs. For example with Browser for SkyDrive or Cloud Explorer for SkyDrive , you can view, access and upload documents or photos on your Android phone. Portfolio for SkyDrive lets you organize and upload photos from your Android phone in batches to SkyDrive. If you want to add SkyDrive support to your app, site or device, please visit our developer center . Portfolio for SkyDrive Browser for SkyDrive We hope you find these apps useful for accessing OneNote and SkyDrive on the go. For full details on OneNote for Android, please visit the OneNote Blog . Anand Babu Product Manager http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/01/26/turn-over-a-new-leaf-and-switch-from-gmail-to-hotmail-in-3-easy-steps.aspxThu, 26 Jan 2012 19:00:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:4aa09e87-0551-464c-a7bd-241d0bf0798eDharmesh Mehta It’s nearing the end of January, and that’s a good time to think about those New Year’s resolutions. A year ago, you might have called us crazy, but a lot has changed in the last 12 months and as a result, there are now many reasons why you may want to consider leaving Gmail and giving Hotmail a try. As we’ve talked about on this blog, Hotmail’s come a long way and we definitely think it’s worth giving Hotmail another look . We’ve started to see some folks make the move from Gmail to Hotmail , and so we want to share with you how to do this. From what we’ve heard, some of the top reasons why people are making the move from Gmail to Hotmail include: Hotmail & Facebook work well together . You can update your Facebook status, chat with Facebook friends, view their updates, and comment right from your Hotmail inbox. You can't do this from Gmail. You can easily share lots of photos and large attachments . Hotmail lets you share hundreds of photos or other files in one message using the integrated online storage from SkyDrive . You can't do this in Gmail. Hotmail works great with Office . Using the Office Web Apps, Hotmail lets you view and edit Office docs for free right in your inbox. Gmail doesn’t work well with Office. Hotmail lets you get a handle on graymail . With customizable categories and scheduled sweeps, you can quickly clean up things like newsletters, social updates, and daily deals so you only see the mail that really matters to you. Gmail doesn’t have Sweep. Here’s how to make the switch in three easy steps Create a Hotmail account. If you don’t already have one, you need to create a Hotmail account. The best way to do this is to get a new email address either @hotmail.com or @live.com. Or, if you already have an email address you want to keep using, you can keep using it and sign up here . You don’t have to use our domain. Import your old messages from Gmail. You’ll probably want to keep your old email and contacts so we’ve made it simple to bring them in. TrueSwitch is an easy tool which will import your email and contacts and forward any new email to Hotmail for 90 days. Go to the TrueSwitch site and follow the steps there. When you sign back in to Hotmail, you’ll notice that it’s beginning to import your emails (this could take a few hours if you have a lot of emails to bring over). Connect your Gmail account. This step is optional, but if you want to make sure you receive future messages from Gmail, you can have Hotmail automatically get all new emails that are sent to your old Gmail account. These are the steps to connect your accounts: a. In your inbox, click Options and then More options . b. Click Sending/receiving email from other accounts . c. Click Add an email account . d. Provide your Gmail account details. That’s it—you’re ready to go! And you can add other accounts too—from Yahoo, AOL, or other providers. Here’s a quick video showing you how to do this:   So start the New Year fresh with a new inbox from Hotmail, built to be the best email service in the world. And for those of you making the switch from Gmail, let us know what you think. Dharmesh Mehta Director - Windows Live Product Management http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/01/24/hotmail-already-powering-over-15-million-phones-and-growing-comes-to-kindle-fire.aspxTue, 24 Jan 2012 21:57:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:5f62d6e7-700d-469b-aa62-11df83176411David Law We think it’s critical that our customers can use Hotmail from any device they choose. So, in addition to making Hotmail work great on devices running Windows, we’ll continue to invest in great experiences on other major device platforms. The recent release of iOS5 and our Hotmail application for Android has made it even easier to use Hotmail on those devices, and the result has been over 12 million active Hotmail users on iOS and over 3 million active users of our Android application. The Hotmail team is happy to announce that our Kindle Fire application for Hotmail is now live in the Kindle store and ready for download for free. The Hotmail Kindle app gives you several advantages over the native Kindle Fire mail application. Whereas the native Kindle application simply downloads your mail via POP3, with the new Hotmail app you can sync all your mail, contacts, folders, and subfolders via the more robust Exchange Active Sync protocol. 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. 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. Take a look and let us know what you think. Thanks, David Law Director – Hotmail Product Management http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2012/01/17/skydrive-and-office-7-tips-for-full-powered-collaboration-in-the-cloud-across-pcs-and-macs.aspxTue, 17 Jan 2012 17:00:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:12d35714-4b2f-4b8c-8b60-3fff5c5b4e97Anand Babu A few months ago, we shared a few challenges that customers have with today’s personal cloud storage services. College students in particular have unique needs that today’s services do not satisfy. While we continue to improve SkyDrive to meet their needs, today’s SkyDrive can already help students work together more efficiently. To spread the word, we’re showcasing what students can do with SkyDrive and Office, and we’re sponsoring a $50K Collaboration Challenge for students at 10 universities across the U.S. who are participating in business plan competitions. This blog post includes a few power tips and FAQs to help you get the most out of SkyDrive and Office for full-powered collaboration. The problem Let’s say you're working on a business plan competition (or another group project) with a few other people. Your teammates are across campus, across town or even across the country. Some use PCs. Some use Macs. You want to put your best foot forward with a compelling pitch deck , smart business plan , and sound financial analysis. How can you easily work together and create something great? You could use web-based apps like Google Docs. While they may work well for simple tasks, they may not have the features you need to create professional documents. You can also have formatting issues when you move between these apps and Office. You could also use a “ file cloud ” like Dropbox, but these tools aren’t really designed for collaboration, and they don’t let you work simultaneously with others on a document. Faced with these choices, many people decide to work independently and email files back and forth. This makes it hard to know if you’re working on the latest version of a document, and sometimes you can run into attachment limits. It also can take a lot of time to piece together different Word documents or PowerPoint presentations from multiple email messages. How SkyDrive can help With SkyDrive, you have a better option. You can store all your files in one place, so everyone can access the latest version. You can also use free Office Web Apps for basic editing from any browser. But what most people don’t know is that SkyDrive and Office Web Apps integrate with the Office apps installed on your PC or Mac so you can work together on documents in the cloud right from your desktop apps. With the right setup, you can work together on a Word doc or PowerPoint presentation with your teammates at the same time. Working this way, your team gets the powerful authoring and formatting tools that you’re used to in Microsoft Office, while also being able to take advantage of cloud-based collaboration. Everyone can work from the latest version and even work on the doc at the same time. You won’t have to convert your document into a different format that could lead to formatting problems. Also with tools like OneNote Web App and PowerPoint embedding, SkyDrive can save your team time by being the one place to brainstorm, create, collaborate and publish. Power tips Here are 7 tips for full-powered collaboration in the cloud—across PCs and Macs. Please also see the FAQs at the end of the blog post. Tip 1: Add SkyDrive.com to your desktop for quick access If you have a PC, you can pin SkyDrive to your Windows 7 taskbar using Internet Explorer 9 for quick access to files and sharing options. If you have a Mac, you have a few different options. Apps like Fluid or Automator bring SkyDrive to your Dock along with a nice SkyDrive icon ( download one here ). However, using these can interfere with the plugin that SkyDrive needs to open Office apps on your Mac (see the FAQ below). We recommend a simpler approach: Use Safari or Firefox to sign in to SkyDrive.com. (Select “Keep me signed in”) Drag the SkyDrive icon in your browser address bar down to the right side of your Dock. Tip 2: Create one space for the team that’s easy to find There are two ways to create a shared space for your team on SkyDrive. You can create a SkyDrive group or you can share a SkyDrive folder with team members. With the latest sharing updates , sharing a folder is a better option for many projects, particularly ones that are short-lived. Now you can go from creation, to collaboration, to publishing—keeping your files in one place without extra versions. To get the most out of the experience: Use subfolders to keep all your group’s files organized in one shared folder. If you organize files this way, your teammates can easily access all files by clicking the parent folder within the “Shared” section of their SkyDrive. Set permissions individually for files or subfolders, if, for example, you need others outside your team to contribute to a part of the project. Once you’re ready to share your project with the world, you can share any file—like your pitch deck—with others. You can even feature it on your blog, by selecting any file on SkyDrive and clicking Embed . Tip 3: Capture meeting notes, brainstorming notes, and to-do’s more efficiently than email SkyDrive works with OneNote so you can organize notes and brainstorm in a virtual notebook that’s shared with your entire team. Instead of sifting through old email threads, everyone can get up to speed on the project history in one place. To start, create a new notebook using OneNote Web App in your shared folder. Then, everyone on your team can easily access it from that folder. OneNote Web App works great across Mac and PC, and you can easily access it along with the rest of your shared files from your SkyDrive bookmark. If you have OneNote 2010 on your PC, sync your notebook locally to work offline and use additional features like screenshot capture, inking and more. You can also access your notes on a Windows Phone , iPhone , or iPad . Tip 4: Access SkyDrive docs right from Word, Excel or PowerPoint—online or offline Once your team is up and running, you may find that you’re working on a couple of documents frequently, such as your pitch deck or financial model. With Windows 7 and Office 2010, if you’ve opened these documents from SkyDrive at least once, you can then pin them to your taskbar just by right-clicking Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Then you can edit and automatically save changes back to the cloud. Also, within Word, Excel or Word 2010, you can use the File/Recent menu for even more pinning options. You can pin additional files, as well as the entire shared folder. If you have a Mac, you can access any SkyDrive document that you’ve opened recently from the File/Open Recent menu of the Office app that you’re using. And if you’re offline, you may still be able to access your SkyDrive docs. On your PC, run Microsoft Office 2010 Upload Center from the start menu or from the tray. You can view recently uploaded files that have been cached for offline use. On the Mac, access Upload Center through the Finder. Tip 5: Use Word co-authoring to ensure your team’s plan flows nicely If you and your teammates use Word 2010 for PC, Word 2011 for Mac, or Word Web App, you can work together on the same Word document on SkyDrive at the same time . If your team’s style is to “divide and conquer”, co-authoring will help your team see the paper as it comes together, so each person can make sure that their piece fits with what the rest of the team is doing. You can even see everyone who is working on a doc at a given time. To get the most out of the experience, use Track Changes for edit rounds. Track Changes lets you review any change your teammates make to the document. If you turn on Track Changes, keep in mind that you won’t be able to edit the document using Word Web App until you accept all of the changes. Tip 6: Avoid last minute PowerPoint assembly with co-authoring SkyDrive works with PowerPoint 2010 for PC and PowerPoint 2011 for Mac so you can work together on the same PowerPoint at the same time. This can be a huge time saver compared to emailing around individual slides, and it lets you keep your formatting consistent. To take advantage of this: Populate your presentation with blank slides that chart your presentation’s “story.” Assign slides to members of your team, so each person knows exactly where to contribute. As each person periodically saves their presentation, they’ll automatically get updates from the rest of the team. Keep Excel and PowerPoint files together and linked on SkyDrive. Then, if one member of your team updates the Excel workbook, you can automatically refresh the corresponding chart in PowerPoint—without having to provide any additional copying, pasting, or emailing. Tip 7: Use version history to avoid disasters For Office documents that you edit online or on your PC, SkyDrive keeps track of different versions automatically, storing the last 25 versions online. These additional versions do not count towards your storage limit on SkyDrive. Versions are really helpful because they can recover your file from a bad change, and they also let you go back in time and see how far your project has come! Click on any Office document to view its version history, and then choose to restore or delete any version. If you decide to restore a previous version, SkyDrive will not overwrite your current file. Instead, it will take a snapshot of your current file and save it as another version. Frequently asked questions Do I need a Hotmail account to use SkyDrive? No. If you use Gmail or another account, you can easily sign up for an account at SkyDrive.com using your existing email address. Once you sign up, you can add contacts from Gmail or Facebook for easier sharing. Why can’t I open docs from SkyDrive.com using Office apps on my PC or Mac? We’re working hard to make sure SkyDrive and Office Web Apps are built using HTML5 and modern web standards to work across browsers. But to be able to open cloud-based files with Word, Excel, or PowerPoint on your PC or Mac, SkyDrive requires a browser plugin that’s currently available for Internet Explorer and Firefox on the PC or Safari and Firefox on the Mac. If you use these browsers and still have issues opening docs, here’s a quick way to troubleshoot the problem: Check if a plugin named “SharePoint…” or “Microsoft Office 2010…” is installed and enabled. If you have a recent version of Office, the plugin should already be installed. Here’s how to check for add-ins on IE8 , IE9 , Firefox and Safari . If you don’t see the plugin, install a free trial of Office 2010 or Office 2011 . This will automatically add the plugin to your browser. You may also need to install the Windows Live ID Sign-in Assistant on Windows. If you use OS X Lion or Snow Leopard, setup Safari to run in 32-bit mode . NOTE: You need Office 2003, 2007 or 2010 on the PC or Office 2008 or Office 2011 on the Mac to open files from SkyDrive. I can’t upload more than one file at a time to SkyDrive. What’s wrong? You should be able to. If you have Silverlight installed and use IE or Safari for Mac, you can upload up to 200 files at the same time. If you use Firefox or Chrome, you can drag and drop multiple files from your desktop to the folder of your choice. Listening to your feedback We hope these tips are helpful for any type of group work. And for students participating in a business plan competition, we encourage your team to try SkyDrive, check out these helpful tips / templates from Guy Kawasaki , and enter our $50K Collaboration Challenge . We’re constantly working to improve the SkyDrive experience. We’d love to hear from you, whether you have additional tips, suggestions or just want to share with us something that you’ve created using SkyDrive. Anand Babu Product Manager http://blogs.windows.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/p/skydrive_student_collab_challenge.aspxMon, 16 Jan 2012 23:46:00 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:134fbebb-f8d5-47fc-9c1f-d741db613f37Unknown Microsoft SkyDrive Student Collaboration Challenge OFFICIAL RULES   COMMON TERMS USED IN THESE RULES: These are the official rules that govern how the Microsoft SkyDrive Student Collaboration Challenge promotion will operate ("Contest"). In these rules, "we," "our," and "us" refer to Microsoft Corporation, the sponsor of this Contest.  "You" refers to an eligible Contest entrant.  CONTEST DESCRIPTION:   This is a skill-based Contest.  The object of this Contest is to encourage university students participating in specific business plan competitions to use SkyDrive to collaborate with their teams. This contest will be divided into two (2) categories: A category for teams/individuals who won their universities business plan competition and used SkyDrive A category for teams/individuals who did not win, but participated in, their universities business plan competition and used SkyDrive but did not have a "category 1" entrant.   All eligible entries received will be judged using the criteria described below to determine winners of the prizes described below. WHAT ARE THE START AND END DATES?  This Contest starts at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time (PT) on January 17, 2012, and ends at 11:59 p.m. PT on June 15, 2012 ("Entry Period"). CAN I ENTER? You are eligible to enter this Contest if you meet the all of the following requirements at time entry: You are a legal resident of the 50 United States and District of Columbia, and are 18 years of age or older. You are actively enrolled as an undergraduate or graduate student at one of the educational institutions listed below any time between January 16, 2012 and June 1, 2012 and you participated and/or won a business plan competition on or before June 1, 2012; Eligible Universities: Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Northwestern, Stanford, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, or University of Washington; You are NOT an employee of Microsoft Corporation or an employee of a Microsoft subsidiary; You are NOT involved in any part of the administration and execution of this Contest; You are NOT an immediate family (parent, sibling, spouse, child) or household member of a Microsoft employee, an employee of a Microsoft subsidiary, or a person involved in any part of the administration and execution of this Contest. This Contest is void outside the geographic area described above and wherever else prohibited by law. Before entering, you should determine whether you would like to enter this challenge as an individual or as a team. If you would like to participate as a team, your team must consist of the same people you worked with you create your initial business plan and each team member must meet the eligibility requirements above. In order to participate in this Contest, individuals or at least one (1) person from each team  must join the Collaboration Challenge group on Facebook and follow the instructions to create and submit your entry. In order to qualify, all entries must be emailed to skydrivechallenge@live.com.  If you are participating as a team, please select one (1) team captain to submit all entry materials on behalf of the team. Each team member does not need to submit. To be eligible, your entry must consist of the following components: Screenshot proof (files and version history) of SkyDrive usage A 2 paragraph story or explanation ( less than 200 words) of how your group used SkyDrive in your competition (shared on SkyDrive) Verification from your school/competition that you won (winners) or verification of participation (non-winners) This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed, or administered by, or associated with, Facebook. You understand that you are providing your information to the Sponsor and not to Facebook. The information you provide will only be used for administering the Promotion and to contact you if you are a winner. We will only accept one (1) entry per person/team. We are not responsible for entries that we do not receive for any reason, or for entries that we receive but are not decipherable for any reason. We will automatically disqualify: Any incomplete or illegible entry; and Any entries that we receive from you that are in excess of the entry limit described above. WHAT CONSTITUTES AN ELIGIBLE ENTRY? In addition to the entry requirements listed above: your entry must be your own original work; and you must have obtained any and all consents, approvals or licenses required for you to submit your entry; and your entry may not include any third party trademarks (logos, names) or copyrighted materials (music, images, video, recognizable people) unless you have obtained permission to use the materials. You may include Microsoft trademarks, logos, and designs, for which Microsoft grants you a limited license to use for the sole purposes of submitting an entry into this Contest. Entries may NOT contain, as determined by us, in our sole and absolute discretion, any content that: is sexually explicit, unnecessarily violent or derogatory of any ethnic, racial, gender, religious, professional or age group; profane or pornographic; promotes any illegal activity;; is obscene or offensive; defames, misrepresents or contains disparaging remarks about other people or companies; communicates messages or images inconsistent with the positive images and/or good will to which we wish to associate; and/or violates any law; We reserve the right to reject any entry, in our sole and absolute discretion, that we determine does not meet the above criteria. Other than what is set forth below, we are not claiming any ownership rights to your entry.  However, by submitting your entry, you: are granting us an irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide right and license to: (i) use, review, assess, test and otherwise analyze your entry and all its content in connection with this Contest; and (ii) feature your entry and all content in connection with the marketing, sale, or promotion of this Contest (including but not limited to internal and external sales meetings, conference presentations, tradeshows, and screen shots of the Contest entry in press releases) in all media (now known or later developed) agree to sign any necessary documentation that may be required for us and our designees to make use of the rights you granted above; understand and acknowledge that the Sponsor(s) may have developed or commissioned materials similar or identical to your submission and you waive any claims you may have resulting from any similarities to your entry; understand that we cannot control the incoming information you will disclose to our representatives in the course of entering, or what our representatives will remember about your entry. You also understand that we will not restrict work assignments of representatives who have had access to your entry. By entering this Contest, you agree that use of information in our representatives' unaided memories in the development or deployment of our products or services does not create liability for us under this agreement or copyright or trade secret law; understand that you will not receive any compensation or credit for use of your entry, other than what is described in these Official Rules If you do not want to grant us these rights to your entry, please do not enter this Contest. On or around the close of the Entry Period, a panel of judges will review all eligible entries received and select one (1) winning team or individual from each participating University to win the prizes below based upon judging criteria described below. Category 1: Entrants who won their universities business plan competition and used SkyDrive: If you meet all of the criteria above and you are the only individual/team to submit an entry on behalf of your University, you will be awarded the grand prize below. If you meet all of the criteria above but MULTIPLE individuals/teams submit an entry on behalf of your university, we will review all entries and select one (1) winning team/individual based on the entry that best exemplifies teamwork and collaboration. There will be up to ten (10) Grand Prizes (one per participating University). Each winning team/individual will receive a check for $5,000 (to be divided equally among all team members). Category 2: Entrants who did not win, but participated in, their universities business plan competition and used SkyDrive but did not have a "category 1" entrant. If you meet all of the criteria above and you are the only individual/team to submit an entry on behalf of your University, you will be awarded the consolation prize below. If you meet all of the criteria above but MULTIPLE individuals/teams submit an entry on behalf of your university, we will review all entries and select one (1) winning team/individual based on the entry that best exemplifies teamwork and collaboration. There will be up to ten (10) Consolation Prizes (one per participating University). Each winning team/individual will receive a check for $1,000 (to be divided equally among all team members). There will be no more than ten (10) prizes (one per University) awarded overall. Among the 10 prizes, there may be any number of combinations between the grand prize and the consolation prize, dependent upon who enters. The decisions of the judges are final and binding.  If we do not receive a sufficient number of entries meeting the entry requirements, we may, at our discretion, select fewer winners than described above. In the event of a tie between any eligible entries, an additional judge will break the tie based on the judging criteria described above.  The decisions of the judges are final and binding.  If we do not receive a sufficient number of entries meeting the entry requirements, we may, at our discretion, select fewer winners than the number of Contest Prizes described below. The maximum total Approximate Retail Value (ARV) of all prizes: $50,000 If you are a potential winner, we will notify you by sending a message to the e-mail address, the phone number, or mailing address (if any) provided at time of entry within seven (7) days following completion of judging.  If the notification that we send is returned as undeliverable, or you are otherwise unreachable for any reason, we may award to a runner-up. If there is a dispute as to who is the potential winner, we will consider the potential winner to be the authorized account holder of the e-mail address used to enter the Contest. If you are a potential winner, we may require you to sign an Affidavit of Eligibility, Liability/Publicity Release and a W-9 tax form or W-8 BEN tax form within 10 days of notification. If you are a potential winner and you are 18 or older, but are considered a minor in your place of legal residence, we may require your parent or legal guardian to sign all required forms on your behalf.  If you do not complete the required forms as instructed and/or return the required forms within the time period listed on the winner notification message, we may disqualify you and select a runner-up. If you are confirmed as a winner of this Contest: You may not exchange your prize for cash or any other merchandise or services.  However, if for any reason an advertised prize is unavailable, we reserve the right to substitute a prize of equal or greater value; and You may not designate someone else as the winner.  If you are unable or unwilling to accept your prize, we may award it to a runner up; and If you accept a prize, you will be solely responsible for all applicable taxes related to accepting the prize; and If you are otherwise eligible for this Contest, but are considered a minor in your place of residence, we may award the prize to your parent/legal guardian on your behalf; and Unless otherwise noted, all prizes are subject to their manufacturer's warranty and / or terms and conditions.   We will only award one (1) prize per team/individual. WHAT OTHER CONDITIONS AM I AGREEING TO BY ENTERING? By entering this Contest you agree: To abide by these Official Rules; and To release and hold harmless Microsoft and its respective parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, employees and agents from any and all liability or any injury, loss or damage of any kind arising from or in connection with this Contest, or any prize won; and That Microsoft's decisions will be final and binding on all matters related to this Contest; and That, by accepting a prize, Microsoft may use of your proper name and state of residence online and in print, or in any other media, in connection with this Contest, without payment or compensation to you, except where prohibited by law. WHAT LAWS GOVERN THE WAY THIS CONTEST IS EXECUTED AND ADMINISTRATED? This Contest will be governed by the laws of the State of Washington, and you consent to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the courts of the State of Washington for any disputes arising out of this Contest.   If someone cheats, or a virus, bug, catastrophic event, or any other unforeseen or unexpected event that cannot be reasonably anticipated or controlled, (also referred to as force majeure) affects the fairness and / or integrity of this Contest, we reserve the right to cancel, change or suspend this Contest.  This right is reserved whether the event is due to human or technical error. If a solution cannot be found to restore the integrity of the Contest, we reserve the right to select winners from among all eligible entries received before we had to cancel, change or suspend the Contest. If you attempt to compromise the integrity or the legitimate operation of this Contest by hacking or by cheating or committing fraud in ANY way, we may seek damages from you to the fullest extent permitted by law.  Further, we may ban you from participating in any of our future Contest, so please play fairly. HOW CAN I FIND OUT WHO WON ? We will post the names of winners who received a prize worth $25.00 or more online. Our Facebook group will contain a link to the list of winners.  This list will remain posted one month after June 15, 2012. WHO IS SPONSORING THIS CONTEST? Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052