Outlook.com - unveiled

If you happen to log into Hotmail.com today, you'll be in for a bit of a surprise.

Outlook.com is a new personal email service that reimagines the way that people use email. It offers a cleaner look, with fewer and less obtrusive ads to boot, plus it offers more powerful integration with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Chris Jones, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Windows Live, says "we think the time is right to reimagine personal email, from the datacenter to the user experience."