Standalone Outlook users suffer a little when it comes to getting their calendars and contacts into the cloud. Google offers a synchronisation tool for its Calendar, but the software is (at least in my experience) far too unstable to use. Now Microsoft itself has entered the fray, launching a beta version of release 12.1 of its Outlook Office Connector, which lets you sync information from Outlook into Live (Hotmail). Microsoft has offered this service before, but used to charge for it; now it’s on offer for free. Beta is very much the word; we had trouble getting anything to sync at all. If you’ve had more success, let us know your experiences in the comments. [Microsoft via Official Outlook Team Blog]