5 Tips to Maximize Your Windows Live Experience

“Windows Live” is an umbrella term for Microsoft’s service offerings of three types — browser-based web applications like Live Hotmail and SkyDrive, various desktop applications packaged as Live Essentials, and mobile applications for access through mobile phones. You can sign up at Windows Live for free and get access to all of the Live applications and services. Here at MakeUseOf, we have previously covered Windows Live Writer and SkyDrive, as well as Live Sync and Live Mesh.

WindowsLiveHome

With 500 million users, Windows Live is ranked the 5th most popular site by Alexa. In the UK, it is the 2nd most popular site after Facebook. With many innovations in recent times, there is something in it for everyone. Here are 5 tips to maximize your Windows Live experience.

Tip #1. Link Multiple Live IDs

If you have multiple Live IDs, you might find yourself signing out from one ID to use the other ID. You can avoid this by linking your multiple IDs. After you’ve link multiple IDs to your primary ID, you only need to sign in once using your primary ID. You can then “switch to” other IDs without signing out, and thus can check email or shared photos of other IDs. The active ID is selected easily from a drop-down menu.

Thus, you can use one Live ID for your professional network, another for your personal circle, and easily switch between the two. Or, if you’re often helping Mom to use any of the plethora of Windows Live services, you can link her account to yours to speed things up, by seeing exactly what she sees in her browser.

Linked Live IDs

On the Live homepage, click Options, select More Options. In the General section, click Linked IDs under the Account category. Now, you can add other Live accounts to easily switch between them, without having to sign out.

SwitchLiveId

Simply click the drop-down menu in the upper-right corner to choose your current active ID.

Tip #2. Import your Social Contacts

You can now add all your Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Hi5 contacts to your Windows Live Network. On the Live homepage, click Add People. Select the network from which to add your contacts, and click the right arrow.

Add People

You will need to sign in to your other network and allow access. Facebook Connect works both ways as seen below.

windowslivefacebookconnect

Similarly, incorporating LinkedIn within Windows Live allows you to view your LinkedIn network updates from within Windows Live, and broadcast your updates from LinkedIn to Windows Live automatically.

addfromlinkedin

Tip #3. Get Social with Web Activities

Stay up-to-date with your friends and let them know what you’re up to, automatically. Like Friendfeed, Windows Live automatically aggregates your updates from 20 web services that you can share with your network. So your updates to Digg, Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Flickr, etc. are broadcasted automatically for you.

webactivities

Click Profile in the top header on the Live homepage. In the Web Activities section in the left side-bar, you can add and manage your feeds. You can individually choose the privacy setting of each feed. So for example, you can restrict your Facebook updates to your network, and make your WordPress blog updates publicly visible to everyone.

Tip #4. Use SkyDrive as a Virtual Drive

Anyone having a (free) Windows Live ID has a free SkyDrive account with 25 GB cloud storage free. Check our previous coverage of SkyDrive to get started (note that the free storage has since been increased to 25 GB). To enhance SkyDrive’s usability, you can use it as a virtual drive on your desktop with Gladinet. Gladinet is now in Release Candidate, and you can check out our previous coverage of Gladinet to get started.

detailsglad

You can also use this virtual drive with a backup tool like Comodo Backup or Microsoft SyncToy to automatically backup your files and folders to your Skydrive.

Tip #5. Use Hotmail for your Custom Domain

If you have registered your own custom domain, you can use Hotmail to provide email hosting services. Note that Windows Live does not provide a free domain – this is only for users who have already purchased their own domain.

Just like Gmail with Google Apps, you can use Live Hotmail for your own domain. You can customize Hotmail with your organization logo and use it for up to 500 email accounts. This allows you to have email addresses of the type abc@yourdomain.com, but using the familiar Hotmail interface. To get started, visit the Windows Live Admin Center.

customhotmail

Why would anyone want to use Live Hotmail? For starters, millions of users are familiar with the Hotmail interface. This might also be a preferable option if your organization uses MS Office, or if your users prefer traditional email folders to Gmail’s labels.

These are some of the ways to get the most out of Windows Live. Do you know any other great tips? Share them with us in the comments!

Tagged: email • windows live

Mahendra Palsule

I have worked in IT (Software) for over 17 years, in the outsourcing industry, product companies and web startups. I am an early adopter, tech trendspotter, and dad. I spend time writing for MakeUseOf, as part-time Editor at Techmeme, and blogging at Skeptic Geek.

http://marcusatmicrosoft.spaces.live.com MarcusatMicrosoft

Great post! Thanks for sharing. Have you ever considered joining our Windows community to syndicate these sorts of posts out to more people? More info up at http://clubhouse.microsoft.com

Thanks again.

http://whatareyouwatching.uni.cc/index.php?x=1 Television Spy

Didn’t know about the custom email, wonder if it came out before or after google apps.

http://blog.sterex.in Manoj Sterex

Lol! Thats true. They rolled out that feature after Google Apps. However, I prefer Google Apps to Live – Google is more versatile.

JK the Fifth

Nice tips, especially the first one.

PS: your email address is readable in the third pic.
http://mahendrap.wordpress.com Mahendra

@MarcusatMicrosoft: Thanks, I will check it out!

@JK the Fifth: Thank you. The blurring of the email address is to avoid automated bots reading it. I’ve no issue with MUO readers getting in touch!
Denny Crane

Wow, some of the coolest tips I have seen yet!

RT
http://www.online-privacy.vze.com
http://gyit.co.uk GY IT

I would love to try these out, unfortunately Microsoft will not support XP 64 with Live, I can’t even use Live messenger.
Oh well, W7 will be out soon enough and finally I can get back using Live services.
http://www.bleeman.com Bill

With regards to Tip #5 and Custom Domains, is it still a problem creating an E-mail account in your custom domain that is a current Windows Live ID? I tried setting up a domain last year and discovered this “glitch”.

So, if you are john@doe.com and you set that as your Windows Live ID way back when and now you want to move doe.com to Windows Live, it wouldn’t let you setup an E-mail account for john@doe.com as you would get an “already exists” error.
http://mahendrap.wordpress.com Mahendra

Bill, this is certainly a unique situation. Here are some options I think you can try:

1. Use a new Live ID and auto-forward email to your old ID.
2. Link the two IDs as in Tip #1, so that you can easily switch between the two.
3. The Live blog post at http://customdomains.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!F5B34AF099177648!235.entry specifies that you should use ‘Import User’ feature and not ‘Add User’ when you are moving to a custom domain and want to use existing email addresses registered as Live IDs. Maybe this works for you?
4. The last resort is asking this question at Windows Live Support.

Hope this helps!
http://www.trulyrandom.net/ Daniel Johnson

Hi,

Thanks for the article, it shows some interesting things to Windows Live that I and many other people hadn’t discovered yet.

Thanks,
Daniel

http://www.trulyrandom.net