All we want for Christmas… is a new Calendar, and we’re keeping our fingers crossed that we just may, finally, be getting one. While we don’t have much to go on, there are a couple of indications that a long awaited update to what used to be Windows Live Calendar (and then Hotmail Calendar, and now just Calendar) may finally be getting an update.
First, while the current calendar is available and working, status.live.com reports that Calendar has a “problem”:
… and indeed, we’re not able to add a birthday to a calendar, instead getting the repeated message that “we’re doing some maintenance now”.
In addition to that, The Next Web is reporting that a major promotional push to get users to move from Hotmail to the new Outlook.com interface is set to begin next week (just when the maintenance for Calendar is set to end. Coincidence?):
The Next Web caught up with David Law, Director of Product Management at Outlook.com, to get the lowdown on Outlook. And it seems some Hotmail users will start seeing persuasive messages appear on their Hotmail accounts over this weekend, but the main push will begin next week.
…
“We’ve kind of done it a little bit here and there, but we’re going to send an email and start using some of our own display advertising to actively reach out to Hotmail users,” says Law.
It almost goes without saying that we’re fully expecting a Calendar update to go along with the Metro/Modern Outlook.com interface, but we were expecting a Calendar update back in August, shortly after Outlook.com launched in late July. So was Paul Thurrott, who wrote at the time:
Windows Live Calendar, which is becoming simply Calendar, has not been updated yet—Microsoft tells me that most people access the calendar through their phones or Windows applications, anyway—but it will be in the near future.
And yet here we are, with only a few days left in the year, and still no new Calendar. It has to be coming soon, right?