Hotmail upgrade hindered by technical troubles

Microsoft delayed a planned upgrade to the Hotmail site amid unspecified technical problems.

The site was meant to go live on Tuesday evening but it was delayed approximately 24 hours.

The company has not detailed the causes of the technical glitches which caused the rollout of a new version of its massively popular web-based mail service to be delayed.

However, pundits have speculated that Microsoft may have had trouble optimising the service for its user authentication management technology, Passport.

Hotmail occupies a key place in Microsoft's strategy as the first of a series of net-based applications that the company plans to use as the basis of its future strategy, .Net.

Any problems with the Passport application would be particularly serious as passport is intended to provide access to all .Net applications.

Questions have repeatedly been raised about whether Passport is, or could ever be, completely secure - and by extension, whether it is wise to consolidate data with a single gateway in the way that Microsoft is proposing.

Microsoft has now completed the deployment of an updated version of the site, with a new user interface, enhanced spam-filtering software and support for two new languages, Dutch and Swedish.