The new look and enhanced functionality version of hotmail has been revealed.

The new hotmail makes major advancements by integrating with Microsofts cloud based skydrive (allowing people to send upto 10gb attachments) to share videos, images etc as well as competing with googlemail by allowing users to modify their powerpoint and office documents online.

Other new features include:

  • Social email highlights: Hotmail identifies and categorises emails from social networks like facebook in your inbox, making it easier to sort through your emails.
  • One click filters: Filter your entire inbox to only show messages from specific contacts or companies.
  • Sweep functionality: A virtual brush that allows people to easily remove or file emails from a specific sender in their inbox into folders. Auto-sweep can archive any future emails from that sender so they do not appear as clutter in the inbox automatically.
  • Optional conversation view: Hotmail gives people the option to view messages by threaded conversation to view an entire conversation series in one go.
  • Advanced search and automated search suggestions. Hotmail has added an advanced search pane and made advanced search easy with inbox search auto-complete.  People can type a single letter into the search box and Hotmail automatically suggests a number of searches to help people find the email they are looking for.
  • Enhanced support for mobile users. Mobile browsing is optimised for the latest round of smartphones like the iPhone allowing seemless browsing as if you were on your computer.

In addition there is the new “Microsoft active view” which enables you to view specific content directly within the email body such as YouTube videos, Flickr photo albums, and Linkedin notifications.

The new hotmail will first be released to Austrialian users within a few months and will then be spread to the rest of the globe.

A preview of the new hotmail features is available below: