New features for Windows Live Hotmail

Hotmail is getting new features soon. We’ve heard about most of these before, but here’s a list of what to expect via the Windows Live Wire blog:

• More storage in Hotmail. Start with 5 GB, and watch your storage grow, as you need it.
• More themes in Hotmail (including some that change based on time of day or weather)
• The top banner ad moved to the side.
• Quickly add maps, directions, movie times and more to e-mail messages. It makes planning a night out so much easier. (UK and US-only, for the moment)
• See “what’s new” updates from people in your network on Hotmail’s Today page.
• Get Hotmail on your mobile phone’s e-mail program. POP3 access is becoming available to Hotmail users in the US and Brazil, in addition to the countries we told you about earlier.
• Create e-mail signatures in HTML.
• The People page has been re-organized.

No sign of Windows Live Web Messenger integration in these updates. I hope they haven’t dropped the feature. I didn’t like the integration from the screenshots, so maybe they’ll come up with something better. If you don’t see these features in your Hotmail account yet, wait for a couple of weeks since the features are rolled out gradually on all servers.