Microsoft watchers are all abuzz about an announcement the company is scheduled to make at the Web 2.0 Expo next week. It’s believed that the event will be where
launches (link redirects to boring login). A mysterious project believed to tie together a number of different technologies acquired in recent years – the best guess is that Live Mesh will let users sync files on multiple computers and mobile devices via the web.
Collaboration on documents may be a part of the product as well. It’s expected to be a simple, but powerful, service. A number of questions remain, however.
Top Microsoft Live watchdog blog LiveSide has covered and analyzed the would-be product extensively and promises in depth nitty gritty as details unfold. Mary Jo Foley will undoubtedly cover the announcement expertly as well; see her interview with a Mesh-component FolderShare expat and founder of newly launched GoogleDocs-incorporating Syncplicity today.
Ray Ozzie offered thinly veiled foreshadowing of Mesh at the Mix08 conference and described a product that offered the following:
“Just imagine the possibilities enabled by centralized configuration and personalization and remote control of all your devices from just about anywhere. Just imagine the convenience of unified data management, the transparent synchronization of files, folders, documents, and media. The bi-directional synchronization of arbitrary feeds of all kinds across your devices and the Web, a kind of universal file synch.”
Questions Remaining
Performance seems to be the biggest question around Live Mesh. The technology itself doesn’t seem terribly unique, but if the program is able to deal with file editing conflicts and lost network connections, that will be good.
Storage size and allocation is another question that remains. It’s assumed that SkyDrive will be central to the offering, but that program’s 5MB 5 GB (Ha! typo) storage limit will need to change. Even double that will not likely be enough storage.
Finally, some magic previously unimagined would be nice. When Ozzie says, “Just imagine the possibilities enabled…” I can imagine that he’s imagined some we haven’t. What’s up their sleeve?
Cross-platform functionality outside of the Windows environment may be a pipe-dream, but even so – Mesh could be a game changer for the majority of the world using said environment.
What would you like to see out of Live Mesh?
