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Everything is gearing towards that catch phrase.

The functional-minimalistic views the Japanese have on living are now translated to a lot of areas. When I was in college, minimalism was the secret for avoiding too much cost when staging plays for the class or the university in general. These days, even household implements, office spaces and what have you have caught up on  — I can’t say fad, for it has stuck somehow — that.

The cellular phones of the 80s have been transformed to third generation (3G) of mobile phone standards that can fit in your pocket with all the added features as video and music players, mini-TV feeds, radio broadcast, a camera, a bluetooth device, online accessibility, global system, and other wide and wireless spectral efficiency, where most data can be downloaded to a computer unit and vice versa.

Cellular phone technology really made life easier for it reduced a lot of what goes inside your bag before you leave for work. It has also empowered you, somehow, to gain access to any information you need by scrolling down on your phone’s features. All in a singular gadget.

Similarly, the internet made life easier. It has provided a lot of ways by which we can update relatives, friends, co-workers and social networks of anything we want to share, and which we can access anywhere by cellphone, laptop or the usual desktop computer — without lifting the telephone or doing legwork to the post office.

I just signed in to my hotmail account to check if it is still active, as I don’t really use it that much. I think I sign in every three months. Well, as I navigated through the new features hotmail provides, I finally got to smile.

Like Yahoo!, they have adapted a new look in their mail features. Except that they do not provide stationery features yet. But unlike Yahoo! it has less of the nuisance ads that keep popping out on the right side (if you are using the new mail feature). Gmail also has those “related” ads that appear when you open your mail. It does not provide a chat service within your mail, unlike the other two. But it has the Spaces, a version of Yahoo! 360 or Google’s blogspot (?). Now it is in to social networking, as well.

It also has for you a personalized page, like My Yahoo! or the iGoogle type.

What made me smile was the Skydrive. It is an online storage system adjacent to your mail. I have seen other storage sites before, but what makes hotmail’s special is that it is on the same site, on a different tab, where you find your mails. Yahoo! and Google’s bloated mail storage size is different, even if you can store files in your email. It is still email.

Skydrive is not in the mail. It is a different tab you can access from your mail page and therefore can store video, music, document files, and even your bookmarks under a different page. It is up to you if you want to keep it, share it with friends, or make it public for all the world to see. An all-in-one thing. It initially provides 5GB storage space for all that. That is enough for an office to fit in all its files. If not, then create another hotmail account.

What’s the catch? We all know that all files stored online are NOT secure no matter how much the developers or site owners say. It is for the user to choose what files he or she wants to store or upload that she can access later. It is really the portability that sells sites like this. For highly critical files, do not even save them in your My Documents folder that Windows created in the C drive. Save them in a different (NOT C) drive!

Hotmail has other features to offer, check it yourself!