This morning, during Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates’ keynote at the company’s annual financial analysts’ meeting, a product manager demonsrated the Outlook Connector for MSN. The new product, which is testing and will release with the next version of MSN later this year, adds MSN e-mail, calendaring and contact management to Outlook. The connector takes advantage of new features in Office Outlook 2003 that allow the keeping of multiple calendar and contact databases. Microsoft is trying to solve the problem of someone that keeps work e-mail, calendars and contacts in Outlook but the same type of information and e-mail in MSN for personal use. The connector also makes it possible for the sharing of calendars and other information with family members and others.
This is a big deal. If you use a portable device or more than one computer it is not easy to mange across them with any of the services and your work info. I hope AOL is paying attention to this…
