Free Hack to forward hotmail

Since my article on trying to get your hotmail account on your mobile, I found a hack that seems to work and is free, I should call it a workaround and not a hack as your not doing anything illegal. However I guess once MS find out this will probably stop working.

The issue is with a free account you cannot forward to anything but .hotmail, .msn or .live email accounts.

The hack is:

1. Go to options and subscribe to 'Mobile alerts for new messages', this will lead you through a wizard which requires a mobile number that you have to verify, just follow the steps its simple. Once you are signed up and back, just click on finish this process. If you have already signed up in the past then you can skip this step. I have included a screenshot of what the mobile alerts screen should look like once it is setup.
2. Then goto Options --> 'Forward mail to another e-mail account' and now you can set to any email address you want. And you can unckeck 'Keep a copy of forwarded messages in your Windows Live Hotmail inbox' if you do not want to maintain two copies of the same emails.
3. MOST IMPORTANT go back to 'Mobile alerts for new messages' and select 'None - Never send me mobile Alerts' (So you will not get charged for anything)

Thats it, seem like the forward remain intact and working, I have had this running for over 2 months on someone account and its works fine. I still would advise that you switchover totally but this buys you some time to cleanup and accounts you have tied to hotmail.

Please also read my post 'Setup Hotmail on your iPhone or any other Email Client' for more detailed instructions, you can insert this hack into those steps so it does not cost you anything.

Looking for a new all in one IM Client?

MOTIVATION: I use several IM service providers and don't want to run 4-5 clients for each service. By the way this is not by choice, but friends all use different services! I have used GAIM (now Pidgin) but never liked it. I used Trillian for years and that worked just great. Although I had to get the Pro version in order to use Jabber. I then started playing around on a MAC and found an all in one IM client called Adium and that was really really good, so it got me looking around for a Trillian replacement.

Along this search I came across Digsby which is still in beta, but I thought I would give it a shot. What can I say its very cool, it's more then just an IM client. With ever growing popularity of social networking sites, Digby has cottoned on to that and included connections to Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. So you can connect to a ton of IM services, plus your social networking websites. It also lets you connect to a number of Email service providers, so you got multi IM, social networking updates and an email previewer/notifier. Updates are provider in popup which looks a lot like Growl notifications on the Mac, again very cool. Take a look at the screenshots for yourself.

DOWNSIDES: No video, audio or chatroom support yet. Although these are going to be coming in future releases. If you can live without those I would suggest giving Digsby a try, i doubt you'll regret it.

I have been running Digsby for a couple of months, no crashes, stable and works well, can't wait for more features to come along, I am hoping for cross service chatroom support that would be cool.

Lastly, I still think Trillian is very good, but I just got bored after using it for years :-) Maybe one day I will switch back.

FOR MAC USERS: Adium is the way to go, its not as detailed in its coverage of Social Networking or Email, but its a darn good client, love it to bits and Adium was the reason I had to find something new for my PC, so you could say this is the guilty party, and by the looks of their logo I would say they agree.