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We just made a new release and this time we've got two really nice new features to introduce.
Smaller things includes a News reader application and new features in the Calendar and in the Mail application.
Sharing
In the previous release we introduced a completely new feature called Shared Windows which to my knowledge is completely unique for icloud. This time around the sharing functionality focuses on content. You can very easily share files to other users of icloud through some different means. For example:
- You have a "share pad" on the desktop onto where you can drag files to share
- You can drag files onto a messenger chat window
- You can right click on files in the Document Explorer and choose share
- You can share directly from applications. Currently only the Photo application has this functionality built in but we'll add it to all applications where it makes sense.
Drag files into the chat window to share.
Share files through the Share dialog. Pick friends, files and a comment
So how do you know when people have shared files to you?
Well, there is a couple of different ways. If the file was shared through a chat window then you'll get a notification in the chat window together with a link to the file. If the file was shared some other way you'll get notified through the share pad that will show the latest shares. You can also always find everything that has been shared to you by finding the Friends folder in the Document Explorer. We also put messages about things such as shares into the Messages folder in the file system but this isn't very well formatted yet so it's unreadable to most people. We will also build knowledge about shared files into applications as long as it adds value. The Photo application currently have this built in so you'll be able to see shared files in there as well.
See files shared to you in the share pad.
You can see all files shared to you through the Friends folder in Document Explorer
MSN
The next BIG feature of this release is MSN integration. That means that you can configure an existing MSN account of yours in the icloud Messenger application.
Find the menu option to open the configuration dialog.
The Messenger will then, after logon (you logon to MSN by clicking the grey MSN butterfly icon in the Messenger window), automatically import all your MSN contacts into your Friends list. It may take a while when you do this depending on how many contacts you have and the Messenger may be a little bit unresponsive while this is happening. After logon and import you'll be able to chat with MSN friends as usual.
Grey butterfly icon in lower left corner of Messenger
application indicates that you're offline
Color butterfly icon indicates that you're online
We still have a couple of issues to fix. The biggest ones being file transfer support, avatar handling (that almost works) and some optimizations. We'll continue to develop the integration so you'll be able to see these things within a month or so.
The MSN integration has been implemented using a Jabber server. This may not mean anything to you but the nice thing is that Jabber has support for a number of other messenger networks as well such as GTalk and ICQ (and of course Jabber itself...). This will be added as we go along and when we feel that the MSN integration has matured a bit.
News application
This application is a traditional news reader application. You can add feeds, categorize them, we keep track of read items and other things you expect from a news reader. You can't import feeds from other applications yet but that will come (probably using OPML since several other readers can use that format). We will also add sharing to this application.
Calendar
The Calendar now sports a month view which more or less was the last view to add (of the traditional calendar views anyway). That means that you can now see your appointments in a day view, week view and a month view. Things to come before year end is the possibility to share calendars and use multiple calendars at once (using overlays).
Mail
The Mail application also got some love this time. The two main features includes:
- Filters. You can define filters for different conditions that will either move or delete emails. This can be useful to delete/move emails that has been marked as spam or move emails from certain senders to a specific folder. The filter functionality is pretty simple at this time although we added the features we think people use the most. The filters will be more refined in time when we see demand for it.
- Possibility to work with several accounts at the same time. It has previously been possible to configure several accounts but you could only work with one at a time in the client (although the server synced all accounts). This has now been fixed.
Coming up shortly
We have two applications almost done that will be released in a week or two. Those are iPlay, a music player application, and a Todo application.
iclod Todo application
iPlay application
Firefox report
The Firefox port is progressing. Most of the underlying infrastructure is
working (file system, message system, window manager etc...) and we're now
mostly trying to get the UI parts to play nicely. The plan is to have
something useful, maybe not complete, out in a not too distant future in
order to get you all something to test (we actually have a date set
internally but the risks is still pretty big so it's not time to
communicate it yet).
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