Live Mesh To Push Microsoft's Synchronization Strategy - Microsoft Blog - InformationWeek

Live Mesh To Push Microsoft's Synchronization Strategy - Microsoft Blog - InformationWeek: "Other than its blue and white circular logo, the only thing we can be sure of about Live Mesh is that it's something that has significant support from top executives like Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie, who fleshed out some tantalizing hints about Microsoft's synchronization strategy last month that were surrounded by more than a dozen mentions of a 'mesh' and synchronization.

Other than its blue and white circular logo, the only thing we can be sure of about Live Mesh is that it's something that has significant support from top executives like Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie, who fleshed out some tantalizing hints about Microsoft's synchronization strategy last month that were surrounded by more than a dozen mentions of a "mesh" and synchronization.

However, it's not too hard to make some educated guesses about what Live Mesh is all about. Microsoft has a number of public synchronization projects in place, including FeedSync, the Sync Framework, SQL Server Data Services and ADO.NET Data Services (formerly Project Astoria), as well as Windows Live FolderShare and Windows Live SkyDrive. Plus, Ozzie's remarks, which previewed a "bi-directional synchronization of arbitrary feeds of all kinds," give us a clue as to how to put the puzzle together.

FeedSync (which was developed by Ray Ozzie himself) uses the XML-based Atom format to synchronize information such as feeds of photos. The Sync Framework is a full-on data synchronization platform for developers. SQL Server Data Services and ADO.Net (ActiveX Data Objects.Net) Data Services are online data stores and query processing services that can potentially be leveraged for synchronization. Live SkyDrive and Live FolderShare are essentially online storage services for consumers.

Each of these elements could be used by Microsoft to create a polished service that could allow users to choose what data they want to be synchronized with the help of the Internet and always have the most current version of content whenever they access it, regardless of device or location. These elements also could potentially be used by developers and consumers who wish to extend Live Mesh to meet their needs, though I'm not sure how that might look.