Entries tagged with live mesh - Channel 10

Sneak Peek at Live Mesh for Mobile

sarahintampa — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:52:00 GMT

At the Microsoft TechEd Australia 2008 conference keynote this morning, Dr. Neil and Amit Mital showed a quick preview of the Live Mesh application running on a Windows Palm Treo Pro. Long Zeng has the screenshots on his blog. In the demo, they showed how quickly a mobile photo could be synced to all the other devices on the Mesh. When will we see the mobile Mesh client app? “In the coming months,” they say.

In the meantime, it’s not like you have to do without – the Mobile Mesh web page is available at m.mesh.com from your mobile phone. It works OK on my Blackberry Pearl (for viewing at least) and you can view your files from an iPhone, too. However, a native mobile app for my Blackberry would be even better. Hopefully, the Live Mesh for Windows Mobile client will be the first step towards that goal.

Mesh Your Bookmarks!

sarahintampa — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:11:00 GMT

One of the most useful things you can do with Live Mesh, beyond just syncing files and folders, is syncing your bookmarks. This is as simple as right-clicking on your Favorites folder and adding it to the Mesh. (Doug has more detailed instructions on this here). When you do this on all your machines, you’ll end up with a merged directory of all your Favorites so you can manage your bookmarks from in one location, no matter how many machines you have. How handy is that? You can even access them from any other computer that has internet access just by logging into your Live Desktop. And don’t forget that Live Mesh lets you invite others to share a folder, so, if you wanted to share your bookmarks, for example, with a team at work so everyone could contribute, you could that, too.

Live Mesh Expands To More Countries

sarahintampa — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 04:43:00 GMT

Today, the Live Mesh team announced the expansion of their service into other markets. Now the list of countries that will allow sign-up without a wait list for the Live Mesh Tech Preview includes Canada, India, and Ireland. This is in addition to USA, UK, Australia, and New Zealand, for whom Live Mesh has already been made available. The announcement was posted today to the Live Mesh blog, where they also pointed us to other Live Mesh resources, including these Channel 9 videos and the link to the Community Forums, which is where you can send in Live Mesh feedback.

Live Mesh For Mac Is Here

sarahintampa — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:57:00 GMT

Windows Live Mesh, the new S+S (software plus services) platform for data synchronization has received a lot of attention this month. First, it opened up its private beta to all of the U.S. (and others who were willing to edit their regional settings), next they released their mobile version, and then the rumors of the Mac version were revealed to be true when LiveSide discovered the Mac client. But today, Mac users don’t have to wait any longer to try Live Mesh - the Mac version has finally been officially released.

According to this page on Microsoft’s Live Mesh site, the Mac version is now ready for download. It reads that with the Live Mesh Mac extender, you can

Add your Mac to your Live Mesh - it will appear with your other devices on www.mesh.com and throughout the Live Mesh UI.

Synchronize files between your Mac, your other computers, and your Live Desktop.

Synchronize folder contents between your Mac and other folder members.

Easily access Live Mesh news, your Live Desktop, and manage your devices from the Live Mesh menu bar item.

Receive notifications through Live Mesh when updates are available and easily update the Live Mesh extender for Mac.

But, be warned, the Mac version is still under development, so there may be issues with it. Please use it at your own risk.

Now that you’ve been warned, go get it.

Live Mesh Updated

sarahintampa — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:34:00 GMT

The next big update for Live Mesh has arrived and with it several new features have been added thanks to popular demand. One of the biggest new features is the ability to sync Live Mesh folders peer-to-peer only, excluding your Live Desktop. This means you can sync files across your devices but bypass the Live Mesh cloud storage service where you’re currently limited to only 5 GB of storage space.

This is great news for me because I maxed out my Live Desktop long ago - now at least I’m no longer prevented from Mesh’ing up everything I want – I just won’t be able to access those additional files online from other computers that aren’t my own.

Additionally, the new version of Live Mesh lets you manage file conflicts on the Live Desktop and it adds new “News Events” for when you add or delete folders from Live Mesh. A few more bug fixes and performance improvements round out this release.

Now, I’m off to Mesh up (hmm, that sounds wrong…) every folder I have.

Live Mesh Goes Mobile

sarahintampa — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:50:00 GMT

Yesterday, the Live Mesh team surprised everyone by m.mesh.com to your mesh, which can then be used to move your mobile content to – for example, images and videos you took with your mobile phone. There’s also a homepage link that can be used to create a Mobile Pictures folder for you. To see a bunch of screenshots of the mobilized version of Mesh, check out LiveSide, who broke the news (img courtesy of LiveSide)

It’s Official – Live Mesh Now Open to All of U.S.

sarahintampa — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:11:00 GMT

Before we even had an official announcement, LiveSide was reporting last night that folks were able to sign up for Windows Live Mesh if they were located in the U.S. This morning, they confirmed this to be the case. The official announcement was made in the Live Mesh Forum. It read:

Live Mesh is now openly available to anyone in the U.S.

The Live Mesh team is pleased to announce that anyone in the U.S. can now use Live Mesh just by signing in to www.mesh.com with a valid Windows Live ID. No sign up needed to participate!

International Customers

With Live Mesh open to anyone in the US, our international friends can join in the fun early as well - with one caveat: you must be willing to change your Windows operating system region and language setting to EN-US. Once you do this you will be able to immediately sign in to Live Mesh with a valid Windows Live ID. Please be aware that this may cause other applications that specifically require your native country region and language settings to encounter problems.

Feedback

Once you've begun using Live Mesh, we'd love to hear from you! We are working hard to create the best experience and appreciate any feedback you have. Please send us feedback using our online form. You can also submit (and view others') feedback and bugs here on the Microsoft Connect website.

Thank you,
The Live Mesh team

About Live Mesh

If you haven’t checked out Mesh yet, you should. This software+services data synchronization platform isn't built with proprietary code, but rather with open protocols like HTTP, RSS, REST, ATOM and JSON. Although Mesh's FeedSync is somewhat new, it is an XML protocol based on ATOM and RSS.

With Mesh running on your computers, you can simply right-click any folder and choose "Add to Mesh." By doing so, that folder and all the files it contains are synchronized with all of your other computers you've added to your personal Mesh. It also syncs those files to the Live Mesh Desktop, which is Mesh's "cloud" - an online web site you can access from any computer. At the moment, the online storage is limited to 5 GB, but that could change in the future. However, Mesh's recent update allows you to set folders to sync via peer-to-peer, bypassing Live Desktop. When folders are Mesh-enabled, a small panel appears to the right of the folder in explorer which catalogs any changes to the folder (file adds/moves/deletions) as well as notes and comments left by any of the folder's members.

Live Mesh also lets you access all your “meshified” computers remotely, so if you have software that is installed only on one PC, you can use Live Mesh to access that computer as interact with it as if you were sitting in front of it.

Although today’s release doesn’t include a Mac version, we know that it’s under development and should be available soon.

Vídeo: Atualização no Live Mesh permite assistir os vídeos armazenados na Web

Galileu — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:56:00 GMT

Estava lendo uns emails quando vi que um colega na empresa tinha reparado uma pequena, porém importante, novidade no Live Mesh. Já é possível assistir vídeos dentro do Mesh Desktop. Para lembrar a todos, o Live Mesh é uma plataforma que conecta dispositvos, serviços e arquivos visando um mundo onde todas as nossas informações importantes sempre estarão ao nosso alcance. Você pode ver um exemplo bem claro nesse vídeo aqui.

No Live Mesh o usuário tem um área de trabalho na Web chamada Web Desktop. Nessa área você pode acessar os seus arquivos de qualquer computador ou navegador Web, graças ao Silverlight. E agora você consegue não só baixar esses arquivos mas também visualizar suas fotos, ouvir suas músicas e, a novidade, ver os seus vídeos. O Ray Ozzie disse antes do lançamento do Live Mesh que será possível licenciar conteúdo uma só vez e assitir em qualquer dispositivo ou na Web. Assista a demonstração que gravei em vídeo e você verá que esse momento não está longe.

Live Mesh Screencasts & Videos

sarahintampa — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:28:00 GMT

Steve Clayton just found some great links for those interested in Live Mesh - screencasts! Available from the "Learn More" section of the Mesh homepage, these screencasts show you how certain aspects of Live Mesh work:

In addition to screencasts, you can also find videos on Channels 9 and here on 10 about Mesh:

More on Mesh: Running the Cloud

sarahintampa — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:14:00 GMT

Now that I'm learning more about Mesh, I'm surprised at what a big undertaking it is. For example, this recent post on the Live Mesh blog talks about how they run the cloud services, which offers some interesting insights into how Mesh's "services" part of their "Software + Services" works.

In Mesh, writes Alex Mallet, a dev lead on the Live Mesh team, cloud services can be grouped into four areas:

Feed & Data Sync
Authentication & Authorization
Maintaining & Fanning out the Transient State
Connectivity Services for Sync and Remote Desktop Access

Mesh's front-end services are accessible only via HTTPS. Back-end services use HTTPS and custom protocols layered on TCP. Most services are written in C# and all services sit on top of a common runtime library.

What's really interesting though (and funny!) is when Mallet describes building the full-scale datacenter deployment and management system: he says they "chose the lazy smart route" to do so. The Mesh team used the the Autopilot framework, which is currently used by the Windows Live Search team to manage tens of thousands of datacenter machines. Mesh isn't there yet, but hopes to be!

If learning more about the services part of Mesh is the sort of thing that interests you, go ask your question in the comments section of his post.

Playing with Live Mesh: First Experiences

sarahintampa — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:17:00 GMT

Since I got invited to Live Mesh earlier this week, I've been playing around with the settings, adding devices, and sharing folders. It's pretty impressive how easy Mesh was to install and set up. I just downloaded and installed a small software app that runs in my system tray and then, on www.mesh.com, I added the computer I was using to Mesh.

On each PC, I picked a few folders (Documents, Downloads, and Pictures) and right-clicked on them, choosing "Add Folder to Your Live Mesh." It was that easy, I swear.

What's really cool about Mesh is that I could finally sync up my documents, photos, etc. from all my PCs to essentially merge together and become one, big, "meshed" folder. It didn't get all confused that I was syncing up a folder called Documents to another folder called Documents. It just knew what I wanted to do. After syncing, I was surprised at how much duplicate content I had, probably from having to move files to and from PCs the old fashioned way - email, USB drives, via the network, etc.

When conflicts arose, I had the option of viewing both files and choosing which one to keep. But what was really great is that the conflicts weren't displayed as annoying pop-up messages while in the middle of syncing, thank goodness - they were just items in a list that I could review at my leisure.

I'd like the option to keep both copies of some files, but, at the moment, you have to pick one to keep or just leave the conflict be. The only problem with this is that Windows Live Messenger chat logs for the same contact had the same name on different machines and I wanted to keep both logs. Other than that, I could rename documents and photos to resolve the duplicately named, but different, files, but I'm still hoping for a "keep both files" button in a future release.

When viewing a Mesh-enabled folder, a pop-up window appears next to the Windows Explorer window, showing the history of your interactions with the folder (Sarah added this, Sarah deleted that), conflicts, members, and synchronized devices.

Although Mesh is going to do much more than just this syncing in the future, for now, it's providing a great way to keep my files in sync as I move from computer to computer.

I also discovered that I could invite some friends to Mesh by sharing a folder with them, something that could be done from either a PC or my Live Mesh online desktop. If you have Live Mesh and haven't shared your invites, please do so! I know some people who are *dying* for them.

If you want to learn more about Mesh and its future, I found the article and interview by Steve Gillmor, speaking with Microsoft Mesh lead David Treadwell (who should really start blogging again) absolutely fascinating. Be warned though, this isn't the kind of article you should skim quickly. Save it for when you have some time to grab a cup of coffee, sit down, read, re-read, and really take it all in. It's worth it, I promise. If that sounds like something you would like to do in that alternative universe where you can actually sit down and read things, well then, just go get the podcast and listen to it on your commute instead.

Vídeo: Entendendo o Live Mesh como Plataforma

Galileu — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:23:00 GMT

Locutor de rádio eu não sou, mas vale a pena ver o vídeo de 5 minutos onde narro uma demonstração real da capacidade do Live Mesh como plataforma. A demonstração mostra como algumas fotos podem ser geradas de diferentes dispositivos e mesmo assim estarem presentes em todos os dispositivos (e a Web) que fazem parte da Mesh (lembrem que Mesh é rede em inglês). Ah, essa demonstração conta com a ilustre presença de:
Live Mesh (Web), Windows Vista, Facebook, Mac OSX e seu Photobooth, HTC Touch, Windows Media Center e um Samsung UMPC.

O vídeo na sua íntegra está no Channel 9, nosso site irmão, aqui nesse link. O vídeo é altamente recomendado para os que entendem de programação.

Para quem não viu o anúncio, leia aqui sobre o Live Mesh.

Do you really get Live Mesh?

Larry — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:52:00 GMT

An "Elevator Pitch" is the art of being able to explain your product in the time it takes to ride up an elevator with someone. In the world of 30 second ad spots and 160 character limits, brevity has become a necessity.

But how do you explain something as utterly complex as Live Mesh in that short of time? Well, you don't really, which is why there are some who think Live Mesh is a souped up FolderShare or 'just another service'. Live Mesh is a platform, one that spans devices and operating systems. To really get a sense of what Live Mesh is, you should watch this incredible video Charles Torre shot with Ori Amiga, Group PM of the Live Developer Platform. If you don't have time to watch the whole thing, at least watch the second half.

And let us know if you have any questions we can help answer.

Hands on with Live Mesh

Nic — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:20:00 GMT

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
Watch the video to see Live Mesh in action and then let us know what you think in the comments section below.
More Live Mesh Coverage:
- Jon Udell chats with Ray Ozzie about Live Mesh
- Charles Torre talks to Abolade Gbadegesin about the Live Mesh Architecture
- Max talks Live Mesh and Students over on Channel 8