Live Mesh – it’s here

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I can’t tell you how hard it has been to stay quiet about this over the last couple of months. From MIX08 onwards I have had the pleasure of testing Live Mesh and it’s truly fantastic. It’s going to take a few posts this week to explain what it’s really all about but right up front let me reinforce one thing:

 

Live Mesh is a platform. What you’ll hear most people talk about is the application we announced today as Tech Preview but think about the platform aspect of the announcement. I think it’s quite profound as Microsoft announcements go.

 

That said, the Live Mesh application is a brilliant use of the platform. It allows you do to the following

  • Seamlessly share information (files, folders etc) across the devices in your mesh
    • at the moment PC only devices but soon mobile phones and Mac’s
  • Seamlessly share your mesh files and folders with friends
  • Access your files anywhere from any browser
  • Remotely connect you the devices in your Mesh from any browser or PC

That all sounds quite trivial in black and white but it’s not until you see how simple this is that you realise the power. It’s literally a right click to share your files with your other devices and your friends. If you’ve chosen to sync that file or folder to other devices is your mesh, it magically appears on the other device almost immediately. Make a change on either and the synchronises the changes. 

Last week when using Live Mesh something struck me that - what I really like about Live Mesh is its elegance. People have (rightly) lambasted Microsoft in the past of user experiences and user interfaces that are far from elegant. Live Mesh continues to impress me with the attention to detail the team has paid to the experience. Even more than that is their approach internally during the best test. They were nothing short of astonishing. More on that in a future post.

Right now, I’ll leave you with link to a few places where you can find out more but keep checking back today and during the week as we share more information.

For me, this is a pivotal moment in the Software plus Services era and the Ray Ozzie Microsoft era. Let’s see what the blogosphere thinks….what do you think?