Bangalore, February 21, 2014: It is one year this week since Microsoft relaunched its email product, Hotmail, as Outlook.com.
The company has carefully listened to its customers and made a number of small but significant improvements in the 12 months gone by. There are a lot many keyboard short cuts; closer integration with Internet voice and video calling client Skype; a complete palette of colour options; the ability to import one's GMail into Outlook; an update to the useful sweep feature which provides a lot of control over one's mail -- you can decide to keep just the latest of regular update services from the same mailer, for example. And unlike many competitors, one can open to an inbox page entirely free of advertisements.
Outlook is not about maximizing revenue but creating a compelling email client, explained Senthilkumar Sundaram, Director, Product Marketing with Microsoft India.
For the first time, Outlook.com is available for Mac platforms; but if the user responses to the #OutlookTurnsOne twitter hashtag are any indication, the product's seamless integration with other Microsoft tools like Office and Windows is what people appreciate.
Outlook is the latest avatar of Hotmail the world's first free email client, which Microsoft bought from Indian developer Sabeer Bhatia in 1997 for $ 400 million.
Here is a link to a YoTube video where Outlook.com's Shwetha Nagaraj and others  explain its new features.

SkyDrive relaunched as OneDrive
Microsoft also used the occasion to relaunch its cloud storage offering SkyDrive under its new name OneDrive.
OneDrive is free for customers up to the first 7 GB of storage; customers also have the option to purchase storage in 50GB, 100GB and 200GB increments. Current customers will be able to use their existing SkyDrive credentials to access their files in OneDrive.
In addition, current customers who refer friends can receive up to 5 GB of free storage (in 500MB increments) for each friend who accepts an invitation to OneDrive. Customers can also receive 3 GB of free storage by utilizing the camera backup feature. More information on OneDrive can be found  here