Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hotmail development team on Reddit

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 122 posts

Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit

#91

Post by nck4222 »

jokermatt999 wrote: post #61

Some good lessons about PR can be learned here. For one, don't use your normal marketing tone/marketing speak in a candid Q/A session like this one. The IE9 AMA and this AMA have done more to make me lose respect for Microsoft than anything else I've seen from them (although, I should note that I'm not old enough to have been around in their true "evil empire" style days). If they would actually answer questions hone…

I agree, and on a related note I think part of it boils down to know your audience. They had marketers going and talk to a group who are largely power users. Of course the audience is going to be disappointed.

Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit

#92

Post by cryptoz »

kgo wrote: post #90
cryptoz wrote: post #3

I found the much more insulting thing on that thread was the Hotmail developers' insistence that user's emails should be deleted after 270 days of inactivity. This point was brought up many times (well, about the old 30-day or 90-day limits), and all the devs said was "we fixed that! it used to be 30, now it's 270". That is so incredibly insulting. If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could com…

I wouldn't trust any free service not to delete all my emails, either accidentally or intentionally. Hotmail supports IMAP and POP. So even if you normally use the web-interface, open up thunderbird every few months a month and sync up.

You are correct, except for "Hotmail supports IMAP and POP." No, Hotmail does not support IMAP. That was actually the source of a lot of Reddit's anger (MS devs didn't seem to understand that people want IMAP, so there won't be any support for it any time soon).

Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit

#93

Post by kgo »

cryptoz wrote: post #92
kgo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't trust any free service not to delete all my emails, either accidentally or intentionally. Hotmail supports IMAP and POP. So even if you normally use the web-interface, open up thunderbird every few months a month and sync up.

You are correct, except for "Hotmail supports IMAP and POP." No, Hotmail does not support IMAP. That was actually the source of a lot of Reddit's anger (MS devs didn't seem to understand that people want IMAP, so there won't be any support for it any time soon).

Wow. Yeah. Apologies. I did a quick google search and the first few pages were 'configuring IMAP on hotmail'... Checking again, the next few were "WHY THE HELL DOESN'T HOTMAIL HAVE IMAP?"

Anyway, hopefully they at least let you do pop without removing the message from your inbox.

Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit

#94

Post by zandorg »

raganwald wrote: post #85
cryptoz wrote: post #3

I found the much more insulting thing on that thread was the Hotmail developers' insistence that user's emails should be deleted after 270 days of inactivity. This point was brought up many times (well, about the old 30-day or 90-day limits), and all the devs said was "we fixed that! it used to be 30, now it's 270". That is so incredibly insulting. If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could com…

A few years back I was working with a BigButNimbleCo (yes, they exist) and there was a sudden kerfuffle. It seems that the Exchange servers had started crashing because there was too much email in them, and IT was sending out warnings that stuff was going to be deleted, so save what you wanted into archive files on the file shares. Sorry, I may not have explained this very clearly: Exchange was crashing because it he…

I've kept email since I switched from Hotmail to POP3 in about 1998. The wonderful bit is I wrote a desktop application which scans any number of hard drives and finds all mail in the main 5 formats (Mbox, Kmail files, Outlook I haven't been able to find a customer for it but I love using it.

But the point is "Don't throw away all that old email, put it in a database so you can search over 100,000 messages for just a few results to look at".

Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit

#96

Post by Zak »

cryptoz wrote: post #87
Zak wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's forbidden from bringing her own computer Why? That seems horribly broken.

Yes, I agree! She and I had a bit of a fight about this, actually. I think it's absurd (and they're allowed to bring cameras that are as bulky and expensive as netbooks!). But those're the rules. shrug Anyway, it's not that big of a deal in the end: they have very little free time when abroad, and most (all?) of them aren't software devs :) so they can live a few months without holding their own computers.

It seems like a size/weight limit on luggage would be the right answer there; the specific items being brought are none of anyone's business assuming they aren't illegal.

Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit

#97

Post by jedbrown »

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #68
cryptoz wrote: post #3

I found the much more insulting thing on that thread was the Hotmail developers' insistence that user's emails should be deleted after 270 days of inactivity. This point was brought up many times (well, about the old 30-day or 90-day limits), and all the devs said was "we fixed that! it used to be 30, now it's 270". That is so incredibly insulting. If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could com…

"If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could come home to find 10 years of email deleted." That is more insulting. We have Internet here so you can check your mail.

Different example: Xinjiang, the largest administrative region in China (17% of the land area) was disconnected from all internet and phone from early July 2009 until May 2010 (because China wanted to be the sole purveyor of information regarding ethnic unrest in the region). There may not be many people using hotmail in that region, but anyone who could not afford to travel 1000 kilometers to a different region for email would not have logged in during that period.

Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit

#98

Post by u48998 »

I'm not a fan/user of Hotmail but what I don't understand is why people compare it to Gmail, or why people compare one service to another? If there are limitations and issues, than discuss on its own merits.

Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit

#99

Post by aquadoctorbob »

landhar wrote: post #77
dstein wrote: post #20

The condescending attitude Microsoft has for users and developers can also be seen in their responses to Reddit's Q&A with the IE9 team: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/dk3s0/the_ie9_te...

Well, I didn't find the IE9 folks as condescending as the Hotmail crew. Their answers are actually very interesting, they don't appear as incompetents. EDIT : Sorry. I take it back, I just read this: ---------8 iamnotobama writes: Does it work on my ubuntu laptop? Dear iamnotobama - You may be surprised to hear that it actually does work on your laptop. It's a three-step process: 1. Install Windows 7 2. Install IE9,…

Really? I thought that one was the most human of their responses because it is so obviously tongue-in-cheek.

Re: Hotmail development team on Reddit

#100

Post by lars »

sukuriant wrote: post #54
dstein wrote: post #20

The condescending attitude Microsoft has for users and developers can also be seen in their responses to Reddit's Q&A with the IE9 team: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/dk3s0/the_ie9_te...

Or are those responses as professional as they can make themselves sound? They didn't seem that arrogant to me, just very political and containing context. Microsoft is a HUGE company and it has gotten in trouble more than once for various things. And, forgive me, but how are their responses bad? In particular, I found their response to why IE doesn't do silent updates to be incredibly acceptable! (not to mention if…

> And, forgive me, but how are their responses bad?

Great question!

At reddit, we are committed to quality comment criticism. Before the release of this criticism we leveraged Rich Internet Applications to survey our users' core requirements in order to provide the best comment reading experience for our users. I'm pleased to announce that our latest criticism will have full support for immersive webrage typing and HW accelerated upvote/downvote technology.

-Lars

(Seriously, check out this summary of their fabulously well constructed non-answers and evasive bullshit: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dkk3l/iama_we_are_memb... )

Post reply on HN