Microsoft updates Outlook.com calendar with Metro look, greater connectivity - williamsblithad

The Lookout.com calendar gets a warm Metro face protrusive Tuesday, every bit Microsoft rolls unsuccessful a major new climb to this basic constituent of its online service. According to a Microsoft blog mail service, the new calendar will be available "more or less the world this calendar week," though, of line, your Outlook.com accounting will have to personify upgraded first.

Metro look, many improvements

A Metro-fied calendar was noticeably absentminded from the novel Outlook.com rollout last class. Instead users were perplexed with a pastel, old-school calendar scene evocative of the 1990s. But the calendar view shown today sports the jewel-toned, frizzy-cornered Metro look, matching up with SkyDrive and other Underground-fied components of Outlook.com.

The new Outlook.com calendar has a Metro-fied look into and a smoother procedure for managing events.

Underneath it all, says Microsoft, is a raft of improvements that should look familiar to anyone World Health Organization's using Google Calendar. According to Microsoft, creating events in the calendar volition now take less clicks, and it'll be easier to jump to specific years and events.

New calendar is more connected

Microsoft also emphasizes the connectivity of the new calendar. Obviously, it terminate sync calendars across Windows devices, and it also can connect to social networking services like LinkedIn and Facebook, and add the birthdays of hoi polloi you know to your calendar. You canful plowshare your calendar with specific people via e-mail addresses, or create a connection to your calendar for wider sharing, with adjustable redaction and privacy settings. And, of course, you can import calendars from new services—Microsoft helpfully provides a link to display you how to export a Google Calendar to Outlook.com.

The Calendar updates are a long time coming, especially given the popularity of archrival Google's Calendar. About 360 million users of Outlook.com are ready and waiting to see whether this spic-and-span calendar bathroom live equal to the expectations. Stay tuned for our men-on as soon as we catch on.

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Melissa Riofrio spent her formative journalistic years reviewing much of the biggest iron at PCWorld--desktops, laptops, storage, printers--and she continuing to revolve about hardware testing during stints at Computer Currents and CNET. Currently, to boot to leading PCWorld's content direction, she covers productivity laptops and Chromebooks.