It was a long road, lots of research, lots of development, a private beta and two years of public beta... and now Windows Live Hotmail is officially out of beta.  I want to give a huge congrats to the team and I must say I kind of wish I could have been there.  I must admit, after having been there for the first two years of the process (and for six years total), I felt kind of sad seeing all the great pictures of the team posted on today's blog entry. 

Though I'm sad I missed the end run, I don't regret my move to Ireland one bit. Congratulations guys on a fantastic release!

Earlier this spring Leah and I sat down with a videographer to talk about Live.com  I'm such a geek and I could go on for hours talking about the stuff we do... I give a ton of credit to the editor and interviewer to be able to get something useful out of my endlessly meandering, spastic attention-span geek talk.  We talked for a long time.  It was really a ton of fun and they did some cool stuff making a virtual office with a few little bits you can click on (yep, you can find a picture of me with my mommy).

Check out the Inside site.

Check out what Nicole from the messenger team had to say about it (she has a promising career as a fact checker).

Several weeks back Ina Fried from c|net came to campus and interviewed a bunch of people. Her piece is now up on c|net news.com. It's a good read to give folks a little glimpse into the team.

Ina spent the majority of the day with people around campus and a lunch in a conference room with some of us "old folks" from Hotmail. I'm not that old... really, honest. I wasn't even "acquired" with Hotmail. I just have shown a decided lack of vision and stuck with the team for the past six years. :) Demonstrating the power of the sound-byte, I was only with her for the lunch part but ended up with my own side bar. As a result I'm now working on growing a mullet.

Hey Warhol. is this going to be deducted from my fifteen minutes?

According to Reuters, a Chinese Journalist, Li Yuanlong was charged with Subversion for sending e-mails via a Hotmail account. The indictment did not come, however, with help from Microsoft. The wife of the journalist was told by Chinese officials that her husband was arrested for e-mails sent  via a Hotmail account, but it is unclear how the Chinese officials came by the information they used to charge Yuanlong. Unlike the case where Yahoo was accused of handing over a dissident's information to Chinese officials, Microsoft and Hotmail were not the source of the information leading to the arrest.

On a related note, this freedom of speech issue keeps coming back in the news and each time the articles point out that MS closed a Space (blog) last year at the request of the Chinese government.  The reports always  fail to mention, however, that the MSN Spaces team hated that action and built a solution... Spaces now has adjusted their filtering so it is dependent on the country of the user (see MC's post for more detail), allowing them to adjust the filtering to align more closely to local standards.

More info:
The story Reuters published yesterday did not have details from Microsoft at the time of publishing.   A follow up story today clarifies the MS position with comments from a Microsoft spokesperson.  

The support team for Windows Live Mail has put up a new blog with a bunch of great information for users (and prospective users) of the Windows Live Mail Beta.  There are answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs), common problems and known issues.

Check it out, I give it a

I just posted to the team blog about upcoming improvements to the Windows Live Mail beta.  The languages we were hoping to roll out back in December should be coming out very soon.  If they're not out by the end of this month, I'll eat...

... um ...

... this tasty, fresh Twinkie snack cake (aw heck, I'm just being realistic, this is software, after all, and the wind can shift direction without warning).

At any rate, the English speakers in Canada should be happy to know that they'll soon be able to join the crowd from the UK, US and AU.  As soon as we roll out French for Canada we'll also be able to roll out English (we want to be fair, after all).

So if you're on the list, be patient, we're upgrading servers as fast as we can.  If you're not on the list, what the heck are you waiting for?  Get over to http://ideas.live.com and sign up!

And now, a picture of my dog cross-bred with a Brewer's Blackbird:

Ellie has written a great post on the Windows Live Mail team blog about the yeoman's work that has gone into the product to support older browsers.  Ellie worked with a team in China to develop a version we internally referred to as the "down-level" version of Kahuna (she basically worked U.S. hours in the office, then went home and worked some China hours on top of that... boy does she deserve a few week's rest!).  The goal of this basic implementation is to support older and non-standard browsers for accessing Windows Live Mail accounts.  The "up-level" features of Windows Live Mail such as drag and drop, spell check as you type and shift/control click require an advanced browser which supports the core technologies needed for Atlas (JavaScript, DHTML, and XMLHTTP).  This is great news... after all, what good is having roaming web-mail if you can’t get to it from everywhere?

You may be wondering, what is "up-level" for the Windows Live Mail beta?  For now "up-level" means IE 6 and 7.

I am now sitting here picturing the sparkle that has just come to the eye of all the Microsoft haters and conspiracy aficionados reading this.  I'm picturing them clapping gleefully as they hop from foot to foot, pointing accusingly: "I knew it!  You're just trying to force us to use IE!  This is just another glaring example of Microsoft forcing its software down our throats!  You're all evil footservants of the great lord of darkness, Bill Gates!  [exceedingly long string of expletives removed for the sake of brevity, let’s just say that Lenny Bruce would have blushed]"

Yes, Sherlock, you caught us... red handed.  That's right Kojak, you nabbed us focusing our early development efforts on a single browser to speed initial development.  Congratulations Barney Fife, you found us cutting a corner to get our latest product into the hands of customers as early as possible so our beta testers could help us mold the future of the application.  We're guilty of that age old sin of limiting the number of variables when approaching a difficult problem.  You may now read us our rights.

Yes, Windows Live Mail beta has all the fancy features only available for IE 6 and 7, for now.  Read what you like into that. ;-)

Oh, by the way... if you are using IE 6 on the beta and want to see what the other version looks like, check out Ellie's space... she has the method for changing the URL so you’ll get the basic UI in IE 6 or 7.

Mike, I don’t want to hear that it's impossible to clap and point at the same time.  It's called imagery, look into it you hack. :-p

The latest update to Windows Live Mail beta was released to the world today.  There are lots of great improvements including performance, in-line spell checking and the introduction of the "down-level" experience (the non-AJAX version for older browsers).  The best place for a quick summary is Steve's post and the best place for lots of details is Imran's post to the mailcall blog (be sure to also check out the video on spell checking).

I'm hoping we'll also hear from Ellie soon too... she led the effort to develop the downlevel client.  Working with a development team in China (both from here in Mountain View, California and by flying out to Shanghai) as well as developers here Ellie got the first downlevel version ready to ship.  As with the first Kahuna betas, this isn't complete yet... but it will evolve as well.

Some spell check video trivia for you:

• Steve was the camera man
• The little flash you see at the end is a glimpse of baby clothes... Imran's going to have twins!

I get this question a lot: "how do I get on the beta?"  I get it almost as much as "could you please send me an invite?"

Well, we've taken the human element out getting on the beta (and that's good news for you).  Now, instead of prostrating yourself on every Windows Live Mail blog you can find, you can simply go to http://ideas.live.com.  On Windows Live Ideas you'll find out how to get on the waiting list of the Windows Live Mail beta as well as several other cool betas we have in the works. 

I don't think I can understate how cool this feature is:  spell check as you type.

Ever since I first saw this feature in Word I've been wanting it in every application I have (including DasBlog, you listening Omar? :)).  Well, now we finally have it in Windows Live Mail beta.  The way it works is pretty slick too, the client-side code on the browser actually starts handing words and groups of words up to the server to be checked for errors.  When errors are detected the misspellings are indicated on the client with familiar red squiggly lines. 

The best way to get a feeling for this is to see it in action.  Since we haven't released the feature yet you can't, unfortunately, try it out... but you can have Imran give you a demo. Check out the Video that Imran, Vikram, Brian and Zeek made, it gives a great run down of the design, development and testing of the feature.

For those of you on the beta and wondering when you'll see this... I'm predicting you'll see it before the year is up (but I don't make any guarantees ;)).

I appreciate the enthusiasm folks have for becoming part of the mail beta, but I don't, unfortunately, have any invites to give out at this time.  When I do have some invites to give out I'll be sure to make an announcement here.

Thanks,
Reeves

By Internet time-scale this is very old news: the Hotmail team is working on a new product, some people have already gotten a glimpse via the mail beta. 

"Mail beta," you say, "what's that?"

It’s quite simple… it’s a beta of a new mail product.  True to Microsoft form we’ve given our new baby a name that tells exactly what it is (think: "Word", "Project" or "Streets & Trips").  We leave it to those renegades on the Mac team to come up with names like “Entourage”.

A while ago (Imran can tell you just how big of a while) we decided we needed to start fresh.  Hotmail was built to scale to hundreds of millions of two megabyte e-mail accounts, and it does that very, very well.  Hotmail is also built to work with web browsers most geeks would consider dinosaurs.  We realized the landscape was changing and we decided to do something about it. 

For the past year my job has been primarily one of a project manager.  I attended meetings, tracked dependencies and watched documents grow and shrink.  While this is a simplification of what I did (and in no way a slam on the role) it wasn’t what I enjoy most: working on the application interface.  Starting in mid-July Omar took over the project management duties (working with dev and others he’s put together a pretty slick combination of SCRUM and traditional processes… he’s putting us into overdrive) and I got the chance to return to the customer-facing side of the world.

That brings me back to the start of this post: the mail beta.  To go along with this mail beta we created a team space to keep interested parties abreast of our goings-on.  Hop on over there and check it out. 

For those of you who came to my blog from the team space… perhaps you weren’t looking for my blog… you were looking for my space.

There are times when you need to get a file out of your Hotmail account but the server has flagged the file as dangerous and won’t let you at it.  This can happen if the file is infected with an incurable virus or if a noob friend sent you an uncompressed EXE (we’ll get into ways to pay your friend for the trouble in some other post).

While Hotmail has locked the file away (likely for your protection, see disclaimer later in this post) you can still get the file.  An important note: you can really hose your computer if you bypass security, any security, so be sure you are ready to pay the consequences.  By following the instructions below you are agreeing to take full responsibility for your actions.

Okay, now that part one of the paranoia is out of the way, here’s what you do: 

1. Enable advanced headers (click Options->Mail->Mail Display Settings->Message Headers=Advanced)
   
2. Open the e-mail message with the attachment, in the header there will be a link to "View E-mail Message Source", click the link and a new window will open.
3. The message source will be divided into sections or "parts".  Look for the part with your attachment, it will be a square block of text that just looks like garbage (I've pasted an example below).  Select just the block of text and copy it.
4. Open up notepad or some text editor (in Windows you can go to Start->Run, type in "notepad" and hit enter).  Paste the text block into your text editor.
5. Save the text file but change the extension to match the transfer encoding (in most cases it will be base64, so the extension should be "b64").  Make sure you change the drop-down for "Save as type" from "Text Documents" to "All files".  In the example below you would save it as "potogold.b64"
   
6. The saved file can now be decoded by WinZip or your favorite zip handling program.

Some important notes:

• Dealing with dangerous files is... well... dangerous.  These instructions are provided for advanced users who are certain they are not going to do damage to their computers by circumventing the protections Hotmail has put in place to help protect users.  Please, if you are at all nervous about messing up your computer, let an expert do this (either that or a teenager).
• There are a variety of encodings other than base64, if a different encoding is used .b64 is not the extension you want to add to your saved file.
• I didn’t go into a ton of depth on the instructions or screen shots for a specific reason: I don’t want to encourage people to use this method without thinking hard about what they are doing.  I tried to be clear, but not easy.
• These instructions are written assuming a Windows user.  Please don’t accuse me of hating the Mac or trying to crush LINUX.  I have a special place in my heart for the Mac and am not nearly intelligent enough to use the command line.  That said I couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to do this on another platform.
• There is no substitute for having up to date antivirus (AV) software installed on your desktop.  AV software is like car insurance.  You need insurance to drive and you need AV software to be on the web.  Get used to it.

Now, the necessary disclaimers: files downloaded using this method will not have been scanned by any anti-virus software, I cannot be held responsible for any damage or loss of time that occurs as a result of downloading an infected file.  Additionally this help is provided by me, Reeves, and not Microsoft or Hotmail... there is no warranty expressed or implied.  I feel bad for anyone with a busted machine... but you’re on your own.

==========================
Example Encoded Attachment
==========================

------=_NextPart_000_0009_01C53F37.CCE02540
Content-Type: application/x-zip-compressed;
	name="potogold.zip"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment;
	filename="potogold.zip"
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B+t/XAu+XJM9DRmToZRQ/wAqS7H8joiNcDRbHTDUiDFi2mhg/9k=

------=_NextPart_000_0009_01C53F37.CCE02540--

Did I mention that if you do this and things go bad that neither I nor Microsoft can be held responsible? Yes? Good.

Omar pointed out today that Wikipedia has a good article on Hotmail.  Lots of interesting facts including the origin of the service's name, "Hotmail".

From Bengt, the original Hotmail logo:

Aditya and Omar only made it 10ft from the conference room before they felt the need to start working again... they worked a bit then walked the next 10ft to their offices.

No, I don't know how Aditya keeps the laptop there... I suspect the legs of his jeans are covered with rosin.

Headline from the Onion:

Gmail User Pities Hotmail User

A quote:

"I feel so bad for you, needing to squeeze into 250 MB of storage space,"

I love it!   Read the full story.

Here's some Hotmail trivia to impress your friends:

• Hotmail is used in more than 220 countries and territories – more than the number recognized by the United Nations.
• If MSN Hotmail’s 190M active accounts were citizens of a single country, it would be the world’s 5th largest country. 

No. 5, MSN Hotmail, 190mm
No. 6, Brazil 184mm
No. 7, Pakistan, 159mm
No. 8, Russia, 144mm
No. 9, Bangladesh, 141mm

• If connected hand-to-hand, the 190 million MSN Hotmail members would circle the Earth at the equator over five and a half times. 
• MSN Hotmail e-mail service members number more than the combined population of the world’s 20 largest cities.
• If all MSN Hotmail members were standing in single file, they would line the length of the Great Wall of China or the Nile River (the longest river in the world) over 17 times.
• The MSN Hotmail user base has grown more than 18 times since January 1998, which is more than the world population has grown in the last fifty years.
• Since 1997, MSN® Hotmail® has grown nearly 20 times from 10 million to 190 million subscribers.
• In 2001 and 2003 MSN Hotmail was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest free Web-based e-mail service provider. 

There's a quick and easy step you can take: turn your junk e-mail filter from "Low" to "Enhanced".  At the lowest level Hotmail will delete the known junk e-mail before it even lands in your account.  There are, however, clever filters that deal with junk e-mail we haven't heard of yet... when you switch from "Low" to "Enhanced" you get the added benefit of Hotmail moving the mail we're not quite sure about into the junk e-mail folder for you to examine later.

To help protect yourself from junk e-mail:

Turn your junk e-mail filter to "Enhanced"

Cranking it up from low is the difference between "we know this is junk" and "we think this is junk." Hotmail gets rid of the things we know are junk... the things we think are junk we move to the junk e-mail folder... but only if your filter is set to "Enhanced."

Add your friends' e-mail addresses to your address book

You can import, use the contacts builder feature on the contacts page or simply check the box on the sent mail confirmation page.

Add other addresses to your safe list

Adding amazon.com addresses to your safe list but not your address book keeps your address book tidy but makes sure you receive your e-mails from Amazon.

When you receive junk e-mail in your inbox, select the junk e-mail and click the "junk" button

When you report the junk we missed the junk e-mail automatically goes into a system which trains our filters to be better in the future (be patient, though, it does take some time for the filters to learn, you won't see an immediate effect, but like exercise, it works over time).

Check your e-mail every day

This sound funny but it is really more of a psychological trick than anything else. If you check your Hotmail account every day you'll find that the amount of junk in your inbox is quite small and easy to deal with. When you take the task in small bites it's easier to stomach (and frankly, quite painless).

To turn your junk e-mail filter from 1 to 11:

1. Sign into Hotmail
2. Click the "Mail" tab
3. Click the "Options" link (it's at the top right, near "Help")
4. Click the "Junk E-Mail Protection" link
5. Click the "Junk E-Mail Filter" link
6. Select the "Enhanced" level
7. Click the "OK" button
8. Get less spam in your inbox

Too many steps? Try my direct link to your Junk E-Mail Filter Options.

Hotmail is a really big service - servers measured in the thousands, active users measured in the hundreds of millions, incoming mail measured in the billions.  It's not cheap to run (yeah, we're Microsoft, cry you a river).  To keep our costs down we don't make it easy to e-mail a human directly to get technical support and as a result users get (understandably) frustrated.

Enter Reeves, fearless, rogue cowboy PM, roaming the uncharted wastelands of the net searching for Hotmail users in need.  I spend tireless hours combing the dark corners of the net looking for...

OK, I don't even believe myself.  What I do is set up Google alerts to drop me an e-mail once daily when news reports mention Hotmail.  My primary interest is to find out what reporters are saying about Hotmail but I occasionally find gripes mixed in with the news.  Last week, for example, I came across a pro-wrestling reporter who had to re-write his weekly article because he was unable to get into his Hotmail account.

Since I'm not in support the only ways for me to be able to help people with Hotmail is to post info on my blog, free-lance by tracking down gripes on the web or (crazy thought here) to proactively design new features for Hotmail which make it easier to use <gasp>.

So, as always, if you have a gripe about Hotmail, e-mail me.  I love to hear compliments about our product but hearing complaints is the next best thing.  Coming up with brand new stuff is hard... fixing stuff we broke is easy, if we know it's broke(n).

P.S. it appears Hotmail is becoming a regular topic in the industry news... I wonder if I'll get a chance to meet The Rock.

Receiving mail from friends shouldn’t involve searching through a bunch of potency ads in your junk e-mail folder.  If you want to make sure you receive these messages you need to tell the Hotmail server who your friends are (only you can decide if you want to receive mail from your friends).  There are a few lists provided in Hotmail to help you “safe list” mail you’d like to receive: your contact list, safe list and mailing lists list (say that three times fast).

Why so many lists?  Here’s a good way to view the lists:

Contacts : These are people to whom you send e-mail.

Hotmail’s contact manager stores the same type of information you keep in your PDA, little black book or in the pile of wadded up business cards you haven’t quite gotten around to organizing.  You can enter address info, phone numbers and, most importantly for this topic, an e-mail address.  Any e-mail address you enter into your Hotmail contacts will be treated as a friend… Hotmail will avoid junking the mail from your friends.

To add contacts: Sign into Hotmail and click the "Contacts" tab at the top of the page.
Extra tip:  Look in the left-hand column under "Tools" for some ways to quickly build your contact list.

Safe list : These are addresses from which you receive e-mail but to which you rarely (if ever) send e-mail.

The safe list is the perfect place for you to enter the e-mail addresses or domains of companies from whom you’d like to receive e-mail but to whom you don’t send mail.  Why fill up your contact list with extra items when you don’t send mail to them?  It makes it harder to find contacts when you need to.

To add to your safe list:  Sign into Hotmail and click the “Contacts” tab at the top of the page.  Look in the left-hand column for “Safe List”.  Click the “Safe List” link then enter e-mail addresses clicking the “Add” button after each address.
Extra tip:  If you receive a lot of mail from one domain (e.g. all your co-workers send mail from [worker]@microsoft.com) you may enter a domain in the safe to cover all addresses from the domain.

Mailing lists: These are addresses where the sender changes often but the recipient doesn’t (and the recipient isn’t your address)

If you subscribe to an e-mail mailing list you’ll find using one of the first two lists is unlikely to work well.  The problem occurs most with discussion lists since the mail will always come from some random subscriber and go to the list.  Since you don’t want to maintain a list of all the people subscribed you can, in this case, indicate that mail to the list is safe.  Hotmail will look at incoming mail and avoid junking it if the mail is addressed to an address on your mailing lists.

To add to your mailing lists list: Sign into Hotmail and click “Options” (the link is near the top right, next to “Help”).  In the left-hand column click “Mail” then click “Junk E-Mail Protection” in the main (white colored) section.  The mailing lists link will take you to the entry form.  The form accepts only e-mail addresses, it won’t accept simply a domain.
Advanced user tip:  If you have an old account which forwards mail to your Hotmail account Hotmail will junk the e-mail because it’s not to your Hotmail account (it’s to your old account).  If you list your old account address as a mailing list Hotmail will accept the incoming mail.

Exciting news was announced at the end of last week, I am now the Lead Program Manager for the Hotmail feature team!  Yay me!  I'm really excited about the new challenges coming up (and a little nervous too as it's going to be a whole new type of work).  It's going to be a ton of fun and I already know I enjoy working with the other two front door leads, Denise (business) and Omar (infrastructure).  Making this whole thing a lot less frightening: I am inheriting an awesome team, In order for me to fail I would to work at it (I don't plan on failing :)).

While I'm excited to take on this new challenge it does come with one disappointing aspect: my previous manager, Jen, has decided to take a new role up in Redmond.  Her new team is gaining a tremendous resource, I'm jealous.

A couple big changes this week involving the guys from the Mac team (I used to test PWS, IMN, OE and Entourage for the Mac team):

Tantek Çelik has decided to leave the MS fold and strike out into the world.  Tantek was a key player in the IE browser for Mac and is well known for his CSS contributions.  He also worked to get his teams' excellent rendering engine into one of our set top boxes, unfortunately without success.  He has a great summary of his MS work in his open farewell letter.  He has yet to announce his next project.

Also related to Microsoft Set top boxes, Dick Craddock has come on board with Hotmail as the Front Door Development manager (we call the servers which host all the chrome and features for Hotmail the “Front Door” machines because users enter through the front door).  Back in 1998 when Microsoft bought Hotmail the Mac Internet client team (IE and OE) in San Jose was kind of cut in two as many people went “downstairs” to work on the newly acquired service.  Dick took the reigns and I had the pleasure of reporting to him for a time.  Dick moved buildings along with the Mac IE team and went to work on Ultimate TV and then onto other MS TV products.  Now, almost six years later, I get a chance to work with him again.  Dick's migration is 100% upside for Hotmail.

I moved from the Mac group to Hotmail in '98.  Kristin, who used to report to me as a tester, joined later.  Omar, who first came to MS as an intern in my team, is now a lead here.  Dick, to whom I used to report, is now a dev manager here.  Hey, the world does revolve around me!

While I was only joking about selling addresses (see comments) it appears the AOL workers are a little less loyal to their users.

A snippet of the whole article from Reuters:

US Charges AOL Worker Sold Customer List for Spam
Wed Jun 23, 2004 07:07 PM ET

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. investigators said on Wednesday they had arrested an America Online employee and a Las Vegas marketer for stealing the Internet provider's customer list and selling it to a purveyor of "spam" e-mail.

AOL members were flooded with millions of unwanted messages because of the scheme, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. district court in New York.

Jason Smathers of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, was charged with stealing a list of 92 million AOL customer screen names and selling them to Internet marketer Sean Dunaway of Las Vegas.

[snip...]

The official press release is now available on MS Press Pass.  Enjoy!

In related news, Omar is also stoked about the change. :)

Yep, it looks like the articles are starting to roll off the presses, even before any press releases are out from MS Press Pass.  How do they do it? :)

Here's what's important: we're not trying to have a "storage war" as some would say, we're tying to make storage not be "the issue".  We're putting in a lot of effort to make sure we have the features users really want and need.  In the rush to announce the storage bump the articles gloss over that we'll be doing things like improving security by changing the anti virus cleaning to be free for all users (we have had free anti virus scanning for all users for over five years).

I guess the basic thing is this: I want people to know that we love making cool software, we'll continue to do that.

Related news:

• Hotmail to offer 250MB of free storage
• Microsoft to boost Hotmail storage capacity
• Microsoft to increase Hotmail storage, add virus protection
• Microsoft Boosts Storage Capacity in Email War

When talking to strangers about Hotmail the most frequent complaint tends to be about Spam.  This is often followed by the complaint that their block list is full and they can't block any more Spammers.

Know what?  The block list is terrible for blocking Spammers.  Know why?  Because each time a Spammer sends out a new piece of junk e-mail they change their address so you can't easily block them.  The block list does work, but it really just works for that annoying ex-friend who won't stop sending you the latest e-mail humor (which happened to be the latest e-mail humor three years ago and you've already seen it, oh... about a bazillion times).

The best thing you can do to stem the flow of junk is turn on Hotmail's Junk E-Mail filter.  You won't stop junk e-mail entirely, but you will slow it down (I'll tell you later how to totally stop it, but the solution is not for everyone).  To turn on the junk e-mail filter for your Hotmail account you can take one of two paths...

The quick way:
From the Hotmail Home page (the first page you see when you sign in) click on the red “Junk E-Mail folder:” link.
If you have the Junk E-Mail filter turned off, you'll get the prompt to turn on the filter.  Set the filter to “Enhanced” then click the OK button. Why is there no “Off” you ask?  Perhaps I'll get into that some other time.
The slow way
No, clicking on that one link on the home page is not the only way to access the Junk E-Mail settings.  You'll find, in fact, that once the filter is on, clicking that link simply drops you into the Junk E-Mail folder.  To turn on the filter in options, or to adjust it at a later date, you need to start by going to options (the link's at the top right of your Hotmail page).
Make sure you're on the Mail options page by clicking the “Mail” in the left hand column.
Click Junk E-Mail Protection.
Click Junk E-Mail Filter.
Tired of clicking yet?  Don't worry, almost done.  Now, just as in the first section, set your filter to Enhanced and click the OK button to save.

One final tip: add your friend's e-mail addresses to your address book to tell Hotmail you always want to get their mail.  Hotmail will rarely (if I say never I'm sure I'll be proven wrong :)) put mail from a friend in the Junk E-Mail folder.

I'll be happy to get into more details later... but I think I've already tried everyone's patience enough with 7 pictures in one blog entry. :)