Hands on with Live Mesh | Nic Fillingham | Channel 10

Hands on with Live Mesh | Nic Fillingham | Channel 10


Have you ever had to email yourself a file or found that you had four different versions of the same document on four different PC's? Wouldn't it be awesome if you had a synchronized copy of all your important files on each of your devices and access to them at any time via nothing more than a web browser?
Live Mesh is a new piece of technology from Microsoft that allows you to do all this and more including a 5GB Live Desktop 'in the cloud'.
George Moromisato and Noah Edelstein from the Live Mesh team came into the Channel 10 studios and gave us a demo of the Live Mesh Technical Preview that goes live today at www.mesh.com

Confused by Mesh? It’s Simple: Microsoft Just Changed the Game | sarahintampa

Confused by Mesh? It’s Simple: Microsoft Just Changed the Game | sarahintampa: "here’s a lot of Live Mesh talk going on tonight, and I think I’ve just read just about every blog post about it so far. People are posting introductions, analysis, screenshots, videos, demos, opinions and so much more. But Live Mesh is really too big of a concept to get boiled down to one measly post. To really wrap your head around what Live Mesh is and why it’s important, you’ll have to read them all.

But in case you can’t do that, I’m hitting the highlights here."

Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger

Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger: "Microsoft’s fans are delivered to the promised land.

For three years now I’ve wondered “what is Ray Ozzie up to?” And with this announcement you see just why he’s Microsoft’s CTO. Yeah, there are about 100 smart people working on Microsoft’s new “Live Mesh” which was turned on tonight, but this is Ray’s coming out party, as much as anything.

It also gives key insights into how Microsoft is going to keep Windows relevant and keep us all from sliding into a Web that doesn’t rely much on the underlying operating system. Will Microsoft succeed in that? Well, they better otherwise we’re all very close to washing Microsoft out of our hair: forever."

Ray Ozzie to Google: “Stay off my lawn” � Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger

Ray Ozzie to Google: “Stay off my lawn” � Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger: "Wow, my head is swimming — Microsoft’s Mesh is much bigger than I expected. I just got a look at Microsoft’s Mesh, but had to agree not to talk about it until 9 p.m. tonight. You’ll want to check in tonight. I hear Channel 9 will have a bunch of videos up about it. More to say at 9 p.m. Pacific Time tonight."

Ray Ozzie bringing 'syncromesh' to the Web | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

Ray Ozzie bringing 'syncromesh' to the Web | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com: "Ray Ozzie has a history of trying to break through software and usability barriers. With Lotus Notes, he and his team spent years creating the underlying client/server collaboration technology to enable synchronization, or replication of e-mail online and offline."

Ray Ozzie is synchronizing Microsoft's software strategy.

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)

His second major initiative, Groove Networks, took the synchronization and collaboration concept into the peer-to-peer realm, allowing individual PCs to communicate directly with one another.

Groove Networks was sold to Microsoft in March 2005, and Ozzie began his next major iteration on a much bigger stage, as Microsoft's chief software architect.

Ozzie teased the next evolution of his decades-long exploration of synchronization and collaboration, which he referred to as a "seamless mesh"--or what I'll call "syncromesh"--in his Mix '08 keynote in Las Vegas:

Just imagine the possibilities of unified application management across the device mesh, centralized, Web-based deployment of device-based applications. Imagine an app platform that's cognizant of all of your devices. Now, as it so happens, we've had a team at Microsoft working on this specific scenario for some time, starting with the PC and focused on the question of how we might make life so much easier for individuals if we just brought together all your PCs into a seamless mesh, for users, for developers, using the Web as a hub.

Microsoft to deliver first Live Mesh beta in late April | Mary Jo Foley | ZDNet.com

Microsoft to deliver first Live Mesh beta in late April | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com: "Right now, the best way to understand where Microsoft is going with mesh is via what it’s doing with Windows Live FolderShare. FolderShare, which is based on technology Microsoft acquired when it bought FolderShare from ByteTaxi in 2005, is designed to allow users to keep their files in sync across their computers, share folders with associates and access files from any computer (or, ultimately, device).

Recently, Tom Kleinpeter, one of the founders of FolderShare — as well as one of the Live Mesh team members — left Microsoft. Kleinpeter didn’t respond to an e-mail I sent to him, asking him in search of more information on how FolderShare fits in with Microsoft’s mesh strategy.

After months of silence, Microsoft released an updated FolderShare beta in early March. A number of testers complained about compatibility problems following the beta release. Some testers also reported frustration over the failure of FolderShare to use Microsoft’s Windows Live ID authentication scheme, as well as the fact that FolderShare is not synchronized with Windows Live SkyDrive, Microsoft’s cloud-storage service, which also is in beta.

According to sources, Windows Live Mesh will be an amalgamation of FolderShare and SkyDrive and possibly unify those two services, which would provide users with a way to keep their local and cloud-based data in sync.

PC World - Business Center: Microsoft's Ozzie Talks Open Source, Mesh

PC World - Business Center: Microsoft's Ozzie Talks Open Source, Mesh: "The software industry 'used to be so supply constrained,' he said. 'You could build almost anything and there'd be an audience waiting for it.' Today, however, there's an abundance of software and services that users can choose from. That means Microsoft's challenge is to better understand what users want in order to best target their needs, he said."

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.