Still in the craze-ness of Web 2.0 Expo, Microsoft has introduced their premature Live Mesh web service. It’s an ambitious move by Microsoft to fight back Google dominance in web service market, and also to compete as well with Adobe. Live Mesh uses Microsoft’s SilverLight engine and apps, giving it the edge it needs to stay up-to-date with nowadays web service offerings: widget.
You’ll find widgets inside the Live Desktop, which can be use as quick access to settings & tools for building up your mesh networks. But this is not Live Mesh main attraction, its most notable feature is to share directories & along the way sync with your PC / laptop. This means it’ll become an on-line backup when you’ve uploaded important files into Live Mesh account, or simply stream media files from it.
Is that all? Well, as to live up to its name “mesh”; you’ll also able to share the uploaded files with other people that you’ve given access. No further info whether others should have Live Mesh account first to access yours or not. It would be great though, if Microsoft able to implement their Windows based security into Live Mesh. Like you can give a certain person who accessed you files to just enable to read them, but not able to modify or even delete them. This would become a huge network, where the whole people in the world as the clients.
Another useful feature from Live Mesh is that Microsoft has integrated Windows’ built-in Remote Desktop function to it, so you can access your computer from remote areas or to access other people’s computers (who have give you the permission to do so). So you may even access your computer at home with your Treo/Centro while on the go, Microsoft's definetely going to add Windows Mobile as one of the supported platforms in the future.
In the spirit of “open-platform”, and to show the world that Microsoft can be better than Google; Live Mesh reportedly will be free of charge web service offering. Plus you’ll get 5GB web-based storage account of Live Mesh. But Microsoft still hasn’t added Mac support (and iPhone too!) to Live Mesh, hmmm…. I wonder why?
It all sounds interesting, and I can see you’ve drooled already to jump start using Live Mesh. Alas, this web service from Microsoft is not yet ready for public. But according to Rafe Needleman (Webware), Live Mesh is still buggy & it dragged his computer performance pretty badly. Read on his full review here, and while you’re here at PA you can watch the video demo below.
[blogged with my Treo 750v]