Microsoft also Recycles unused account names

Looks like Yahoo isn't alone in dealing with unintended consequences of reusing abandoned account names. Although it isn't said in its terms of service, Microsoft also recycles deleted account names.

In Microsoft accounts, you're required to login at least once every 270 days to keep your account active. If not, your account can be terminated and its contents deleted. And after 360 days, that account is once again up for grabs.

This is something we'll all have to deal with - unless you want future generations to create even more weird account names than they already use: just imagine a "John Smith" trying to register an account 20 years from now, probably having to become a "JohnSmith29889887234234". But in Microsoft's case, the issue is that this is something that should be clearly mentioned in its terms of service. (Google, by the way, does not reuse deleted accounts, meaning that a deleted account is locked forever).

I also wonder how these deleted account might impact other things. Lets imagine you have an Xbox account with lots of games. You die (no surprise there). After those 270 days your account gets deleted (ok, if the Xbox stays in use, it might trick it into thinking you're still active, but that's not the point here)... and probably locking out the rest of your family from the contents you had bought.


In any case, for the account recycling issue, maybe it's best for the big players to come around and figure a way to deal with these inevitable scenarios. Facebook and Yahoo proposed to create a "created date" for accounts, that would allow the systems to know if the person you're trying to reach now belongs to a newer user. I don't know if that's the best solution, but this is definitely something worth discussing... as nothing lasts forever, not even on the internet.

Microsoft Launches Outlook.com

Microsoft is trying to get up to speed in the web email area, and now offers an improved and rejuvenated web email that stands on top of its famed email program name: Outlook.com.

As you'd expect, this outlook.com follows the new design guidelines of the metro and Windows 8 guidelines, and that's a good thing - for once, I could actually navigate around it and figure out how to use it without getting frustrated like on the previous hotmail/live interfaces. This new design also means there's little wasted space (and no big ads that makes us believe we're in a spam site), with the focus being on the email and the content that matters the most.
And if you remember how different it was to open the old web exchange site in another browser other than Internet Explorer, you'll like to know that outlook.com does indeed work perfectly fine in any modern browser - it even has some nifty animations, like "flying" the sent mail out of the screen.

This outlook.com can also integrate lots other services and accounts: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google and Skype (soon), making it a "one-stop-check-all" service to keep all your contacts in sync, as well as check all your friends updates and new photos.

All the incoming mails can be sorted automatically: from your contacts, mailing lists, social networks, etc. so you can easily manage it all with just a few clicks. And you also het the free Office Web Apps – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote - to view/edit/create your documents and attachments (as well as the free SkyDrive cloud storage space).

Do give it a try, and don't forget to grab your @outlook.com email account before someone does it.
(If you already have an hotmail account - or msn, or live - you can simply update to this new outlook.com service and keep all your contacts, email, filters, etc. In this case, you can also add an @Outlook.com email address to your account if you want.)