Hide Your Real Email Address With Hotmail

Matt Rosoff

Lots of people have multiple email addresses: one for work, one for personal use, and then one or two that might be called "spam-catcher" addresses -- used for low-priority e-commerce transactions, sharing on public Web sites (like comment boards), or communications with people or organizations who you don't trust with to keep your real email address private.

The problem with these spam-catcher accounts is that they require more maintenance than they're worth. You have to remember to check them periodically, and when they get overwhelmed with spam, you have to kill them and then sign up for a new one.

On Friday, Microsoft's Hotmail made it much easier to create and maintain spam-catcher accounts with a new feature called aliases. You simply enter a new email address in a special window, and Hotmail will let you send and receive messages from that alias as if it were your main Hotmail account. When you no longer want the alias, you can shut it off and all emails sent to that alias will stop showing up.

Hotmail will let you create up to five aliases per year, and up to fifteen total.

Hotmail already offered another way to create aliases by adding a "+" to the end of your email address -- for instance, "mattrosoff@hotmail+spamcatcher.com". But you have to create special rules to sort the "+" addresses, which is a hassle, and it's too easy for spammers to guess your real email address simply by stripping off the "+" portion at the end.

Microsoft has been steadily adding features to Hotmail over the last two years in hopes of staving off Google's Gmail. Hotmail is still the most popular service in the world, with more than 300 million users, and Yahoo's a close second, but Gmail is coming on strong with close to 200 million users.

Windows Phone developers to get copy-and-paste tools and more Microsoft news from the week

By Mary Jo Foley

It’s that time: Time for the end-of-the-week Microsoft news roundup.
Developers are set to get an updated Windows Phone 7 software development kit (SDK) that will allow them to prep their applications for the first WP7 update (codenamed NoDo). The NoDo update will add copy-and-paste; performance tweaks; improved marketplace search and other minor updates to the Windows Phone OS 7. NoDo — originally known as the “January update” by Microsoft — is now expected in early February. Microsoft officials said in a podcast that developers would get the SDK refresh on February 4. As of nearly 4 pm ET, still no SDK. (A spokesperson said this afternoon that it was “coming soon.”)
Update: 6:40 pm ET: The announcement about the availability of the updated WP7 tools (known as the “January Update”) is out. Microsoft is warning it may take a while for the bits to make it onto the servers.
Will Nokia become a Windows Phone 7 OEM? There’s been a lot of back-and-forth among Wall Street analysts and other mobile watchers this week as to whether Nokia and Microsoft will announce a licensing deal in the coming week or two. Some believe Nokia is going to become a Windows Phone 7 OEM. Others believe Nokia will, instead, become an Android OEM. (Most seem to believe Nokia will not completely drop its Symbian OS platform, regardless of its path.) I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t see Nokia going the WP7 route, as they’d be required to adhere to a locked-down Microsoft chassis design — relegating the mobile phone leader to “mere” handset provider. Maybe Microsoft — hoping to boost its market share in a fell swoop (a la Yahoo in the search space) will bend the rules and give Nokia more leeway? If not, color me skeptical of Nokia going the WP7 route.
Windows Azure broadens beta of “Extra Small Instances” from private to public: Microsoft this week broadened the beta program for its entry-level developer-focused offer for Windows Azure, known as “Extra Small Instances.” Any and all interested customers can now use the beta version to prototype new applications on Microsoft’s cloud platform. (Note: This beta, like all Microsoft cloud betas, is paid, not free, and is .05 cents per hour.)
Microsoft adds new aliasing capability to Hotmail. Starting as of February 3, Hotmail users can add up to five aliases per year to their Hotmail account, up to fifteen aliases in total. The goal: To allow users to organize different types of mail inside a single Hotmail account without having to share their primary Hotmail address if they don’t want to.