Microsoft has just unveiled Outlook.com, its new Web-based e-mail service that promises a clutter-free interface reminiscent of its Windows 8 and Windows Phone look and feel. Like the company said before, it won’t have targeted ads or a big fat search bar at the top. This is a complete reboot of Hotmail.com aimed squarely at Gmail.

What’s impressive, from a quick hands on since its launch an hour or so ago, is first of all the neat interface. You can imagine people accessing this even from their tablet browsers, despite the fact that they can sync their e-mails on their onboard client via Exchange ActiveSync.

There are several fancy features, for example, linking up friends’ updates over social networks like Facebook and Twitter, which flow like a feed for you to glance at while at work. Question is, will users switch from those social networks, where they may be spending more time than on e-mail?

I don’t know, but what will make them like the new Outlook.com may not be the “connectedness” but something simpler. Here, the interface for typing an e-mail is one of the neatest I’ve seen.

Outlook.com keeps the less important stuff – like subject and e-mail address – on the side while you concentrate on the message. I’ve liked Gmail since I switched from Yahoo four years ago; now Outlook.com actually looks very attractive as an alternative.

Since Microsoft is aiming this Hotmail.com replacement at Google, it has included online storage in the shape of SkyDrive and also collaboration tools that let you view and share popular Office documents easily.

I’ve viewed and edited a couple of Powerpoints and Word files and I can say the formats didn’t run all over the place, as you sometimes can get when previewing with Google Docs. Strangely though, I can’t seem to preview PDFs as with Gmail.

There are rough edge, of course. The other programs, like Calendar, are still stuck in the old, uncool interface. To get back to your e-mail program from there, it still has a Hotmail button.

What about video chats? Microsoft has that in Skype, which it plans to integrate in the new e-mail service. It’s not ready yet, it says, but it will eventually rival Google Talk. How closely the Microsoft experience is integrated remains to be seen but Skype + Outlook is no small fry even when coming up against Gmail.

When it comes to contacts, Microsoft lets you easily add contacts from your other online services. If you want to keep your Google or Yahoo account, simply forward the e-mail to the Outlook.com account. Like other e-mail services, Microsoft will also try to pull contacts from your LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Of course, if you are thinking of signing up for a cool e-mail address, this is the right time to chope your account before others do. If you already have a Live Messenger or Hotmail account, you can also just log in with either account.

Indeed, all the functionality here is what Microsoft should have had much earlier before it lost so many customers to Gmail. Its largely unsuccessful attempt to fight off Google with its previous round of Live services didn’t stop or even slow down Google and it certainly didn’t see Facebook coming along.

Outlook.com comes in a busy year for the company, when it has been showing off Windows 8, the Surface tablet and more recently, Office 15. Now in the fight of its life to maintain its position in the market, it has probably never churned out so much software that actually works this well.

Check out Outlook.com yourself and let us know what you think!

The next Nexus phone from Google and Samsung, the Galaxy Nexus, will start shipping in November with new features like an improved Gmail experience and the ability for the phone to unlock by simply recognising a user’s face.

They are part of Google’s new Android 4.0 operating system, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich, which will feature for the first time on the Galaxy Nexus, according to a Google show-and-tell in Hong Kong this morning.

Traditionally, Google has rolled out new OSes on its Nexus phones, which are a favourite of phone geeks as these devices have the latest Google OS and do away with most of the add-ons that phone makers add to their Android offerings.

The Galaxy Nexus, previously dubbed the Nexus Prime by fans, will come with a large 4.65-inch screen Super AMOLED screen reminiscent of the HTC Sensation XL. The Samsung-made phone also sports a 1.2GHz dual-core processor that should be able to handle most tasks on the phone, including shooting high-def videos with the 1080p-capable camera.

Among the interesting new features, Ice Cream Sandwich can unlock a phone by simply recognising a user with its camera. So there’s no need to swipe the screen for one of the most oft-repeated actions today.

What’s also noteworthy is the native camera app. It comes with a number of improvements like easy sharing to Twitter, Facebook and other social networks, as well as editing tools that enable special effects and red eye adjustment that used to be available on third-party apps like Vignette. This means there’s less need to buy an additional camera app with the Samsung Nexus out of the box.

Among the other useful but less “magical” improvements is the tweaked Gmail interface. Users get a two-line preview, so they can easily decide whether to fire up a message or leave it in the inbox. There’s also an action bar at the bottom of the screen that lets you select multiple messages at one go and either archive and delete them, for example.

Better yet, you can search for messages for the past 30 days or more when you are offline. Until now, you need an Internet connection for to search your e-mail, but the new offline feature now means you can easily look up a message even when you are overseas and don’t want to incur expensive roaming charges.

There are a lot more features to be explored in Ice Cream Sandwich, which we will have updates for later. Also, as yet, there are no specific details of shipping dates for Singapore, but we’ll have them here once we do.

The Galaxy Nexus looks interesting, and with a souped up Ice Cream Sandwich beefing up already strong OS features, the Android ecosystem looks capable of continuing on its meteoric growth in the past two years.

One question for Google has been whether it could continue to work well with partners such as HTC and Samsung after it bought Motorola Mobility just a couple of months ago. Encouragingly for its partners, the Samsung-made Galaxy Nexus runs the latest Android OS, while Motorola’s Razr launched just hours ago comes with the older Android 2.3.5.

For a long time now we’ve been envious of our American friends, who could make calls to mobile phones and landlines from their Gmail account. We can now enjoy that as well, as Google brings that feature to 150 countries in 35 languages, along with the obligatory cute video explaining the service.

To make a call, simply select the little green phone icon in the chat module right within Gmail. If you can’t see that icon, be patient as Google rolls out the feature over the coming days. For Google Apps users, check with your administrator and see if they have enabled Google Voice and Google Checkout in the administrator control panel.

Calling a local number in Gmail yields several advantages over a competing product such as Skype. For one, Google will only charge you US$0.02 per minute for both landlines and mobile phones, while Skype charges a teeny bit more at US$0.023 per minute. Also, you won’t have to install any software on your computer to use Google’s service.

Currently, Google allows the buying of credit in four currencies: US dollars, Canadian dollars, British pounds, and euros. You must have credits to make a call, making this feature a potential money spinner for Google.

But as the world moves towards faster mobile data transfer speeds, it becomes possible to transmit more data over IP (a topic that was recently covered at the UNWIRED conference), so we have to wonder if buying credits to call landlines and mobile phones is something that will last.

After all, I can use make a Skype-to-Skype call on an iPhone/Android phone and not pay a single cent, except to my telco. How will these services profit once everything is transmitted over IP? Until that day rolls around, hit this page to see how much it costs to call within Gmail.

Stand aside, browser wars; a new battle is heating up between Microsoft and Google and this time, the battlefield is email.

Google fired the first shot by launching a new website called Email Intervention, designed to help you stage an intervention among your friends who still use that outdated email address from the 1990s. The accompanying video featuring an “intervention specialist” is cute, funny and completely in Google’s cheeky style.

Out of the blue, a video meant for internal salespeople leaked out from Microsoft and drew quite a few chuckles from us. Unexpectedly hilarious, Microsoft’s clip featured “Gmail Man”, a mailman who goes around reading your personal email and then says, “Who cares?”

In the video, the Redmond company exaggerates the function of Gmail’s advertisements, emphasising the privacy and security of its own product, and throws in a few catchy jingles to boot.

His favourite game is peekaboo,
His favourite words, “So what?”
He smiles in your face when
You stutter, “But, but, but…”
His ads are unsolicited,
Based on what you type,
Makes you wanna ditch Gmail
And go Office 3-6-5.

The message Microsoft is trying to bring across is how Google’s enterprise offerings, although inexpensive, are merely channels for it to sell ads. When you buy an Office 365 plan, there are no ads!

But what Microsoft is forgetting is that there are no advertisements in Google Apps for Business! Ads are turned off by default, and administrators can turn it on if they so wish. And of course, we all know no real person actually reads our Gmail account. It’s a fully automated system that learns as it goes along.

That’s what Google says, and we all trust Google… Right?

Some 100,000 to 150,000 Gmail users had their messages, chat logs and other personal settings wiped clean early today, due to a serious glitch that would likely cast doubt about the reliability of similar cloud-based services.

Google acknowledged the issue at 4:09am local Singapore time and started investigations into one of the most serious outages to hit the Web mail provider so far. More than 7 hours later, the service was said to have been restored for some users, while others can expect a resolution “in the near future”.

But it is not clear yet if Google would be able to restore all lost messages. On the recovery efforts, a Google statement added: “Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change.”

Google estimates the number affected to be less than 0.08% of the entire user base, which adds up to about 100,000 or 150,000 users, according to various reports from other media outlets. They will be posting the latest updates on this issue here, if you’re keeping tab.

Backing up your Gmail account
As our lives move increasingly to the cloud, worries about losing our data due to server issues become a real concern. We advise all our readers to back up their data, no matter where it resides. In Gmail’s case, there are a few ways you can do just that.

Set up automatic redirecting to Hotmail. Hotmail may not be the first choice for many people, but it has an ample 5GB of storage. Simply set up your Gmail account to forward one copy of all emails to Hotmail and you should feel more at ease! Be sure to keep one copy in Gmail’s inbox, or you’ll be wondering where all your emails went.

Gmail Backup. A free tool for Windows and Linux users, Gmail Backup does exactly what it advertises: back up your emails to a local drive. You have to enable IMAP in your account settings first, so be sure to read the instructions carefully.

Backupify. This incredibly versatile service provides automatic backs up your online data. Backupify supports a wide range of services, ranging from Facebook to Flickr to, of course, Gmail. If you’re concerned that you’re backing up your data to yet another cloud service, rest assured that you can download the archives to your computer any time you want. Unfortunately, it isn’t free, so check out its pricing plans for one that suits you.

How do you backup your data? Were you affected by the Gmail glitch? Let us know in the comments!

Techgoondu had the chance to be at unConference 2009 held yesterday at the Biopolis, thanks to the kind folks at e27 who had put together an excellent program that brought together some of the top forward-thinkers in the region. Here’s a recap of what I felt were the highlights of the event:

Panel discussion: Innovation in Asia and where is it heading?

The panel was chaired by Benjamin Joffe, founder and CEO of +8* (Plus Eight Star). Participants included Scott Rafer, CEO at Lookery, Dr Gang Lu, co-founder of OpenWeb Asia, Dr Lai Kok Fung, co-founder and CEO of Buzzcity, and Wong Hoong Ann, founder of HungryGoWhere.com.

Each panelist was asked to share how he spotted the opportunity that led them to start their companies. Scott, who started MyBlogLog and sold it Yahoo later, noted that his venture was “almost accidental”, while Hoong Ann of HungryGoWhere identified the need for a marketing channel catered to F&B establishments, particularly among small restaurants. His business and ad model was changed many times, because “you need the flexibility to start a business.”

Dr Lai of Buzzcity, which started as as dotcom company specializing in WAP mobile communications, said his company did not plan for the company’s current successes in South Africa and Indonesia. It was only after the rapid rise in the number of users accessing the Web on the cellphone some time later that spearheaded Buzzcity’s business in the two countries.

Dr Gang Lu, shared his experience with start-ups in China, which comprises three groups. The first are the copycats who will copy successful products and business models, but “the problem is everyone else will be doing the same thing”. It will be hard for copycats to stand out from the pack. He noted that at one point, there were over 150 YouTube clones in China, but only 10 are surviving today.

The second group will take successful products and localize them accordingly in their target markets – an example would be Xiaonei.com, which is now more popular than Facebook in China. Finally, the last group of entrepreneurs would chart their own path through innovation that would eventually lead to their own unique products.

The panelists largely agreed that selling to businesses is always more profitable than selling to consumers, since consumers are typically unwilling to pay for Internet services – advertising is thus the most common way of monetizing their services. In some market segments, selling virtual goods has proven to be a viable as exemplified by Xiaonei.com and Kaixin001.com.

Panelists were also quizzed on what they were doing to mitigate the dependency on search engines, particularly Google, for their site traffic. Hoong Ann of HungryGoWhere.com shared his company’s brush with Google which reduced his business by half in a single day after his website was placed on page 945 in the search results. Dr Lai suggested that start-ups should grow their organic traffic, while Dr Gang added that they try to grow traffic from social media platforms, which allow them to seed communities and build their brands without Google.

Techgoondu also checked out some promising products and start-ups, and these caught our eye.

iTwin was born out of Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) and will be commercialized by Exploit Technologies, A*Star’s marketing and commercialization arm. Essentially, it is a device that can be split into two halves. By plugging each half via a USB port into a home and remote PC respectively, a secured communication channel is established to allow the remote PC to access files on the home PC. In fact, the solution is so elegant that no password is required. The communication is encrypted and authentication is provided through a random key generated by the home PC’s device.

The folks behind iTwin expect the device to be launched by Fall 2009 at a price of between US$40 and US$50. Work is for the device’s software for Windows XP is almost completed, and there are plans to support Windows Vista and Mac OS X. The product roadmap also includes video conferencing applications and even mobile device file transfer.

Fusion Garage was founded by R. Chandrasekar, a familiar face in the Singapore tech circle. Chandra was the founder of Radixs, which previously developed the Motion Experience Interface (MXI) operating system and the Velvet Puffin integrated online service that marries social networking and instant messaging.

The company is currently developing the software for the CrunchPad, a web tablet hardware device conceived by the folks at Techcrunch:

The idea is to get a new type of device into people’s hands for as cheap as possible (we were aiming for $200, it looks like $299 is more realistic). It fits perfectly on your lap while you are sitting in front of the TV, so you can look up stuff on Wikipedia or IMDB as you channel surf. It plays Flash video flawlessly so you can watch movies and TV shows on Hulu or Joost or wherever. Or listen to music on MySpace Music. Or use TokBox to have a video chat with your parents. Then check email and call it a day. Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Hulu, Wikipedia, Google Docs and Gmail are the killer apps for this device.

Because the device skips the resource-sucking parts of the operating system and focuses on one application – the browser – very low end hardware can be used and still give users a desktop-like Internet browsing experience.

The team from Fusion Garage did not show off any working prototypes of the Crunchpad at the event. For more information, check out this video:

It’s one of those things that make you go: “why didn’t I think of that”?

Google has come up with another useful tool for its growing Gmail user base, by letting them conveniently talk to their contacts via a video or audio link.

As we know, users can already IM or chat with people over Gmail, using its built-in chat function. The nifty part about this is that you can chat with someone instantly if he/she is online, rather than shooting e-mails to and fro cyberspace.

Now, this is taken further with video and voice chat. If you, like I, already use Gmail, this is a no-brainer to add on, especially if you already got a laptop with camera + microphone built-in.

To install the Google application, you’ll need to open up a chat window, click on options and select the option to do voice/video. It then installs a plugin necessary for the new service.

My only gripe – for an otherwise excellent free service – is that this wasn’t installed automatically into the system. But I’m not really complaining, if it makes it so much more intuitive to chat with anyone on the e-mail list (permitted by you of course).

It’ll be another reason why I am keeping my IM pretty private (I have only a dozen contacts coz I don’t like to add people I end up blocking anyway). I can talk to people on Gmail without exposing my IM list, which can pop up all over the desktop.