Microsoft launched Live Mesh for developers on Tuesday (videos and other coverage). Microsoft says “cloud computing“, where resources and applications are stored and accessed on the internet, not a PC, will be a significant new way of interacting with the “web connected” world.
Ray Ozzie outlined three principles of Live Mesh Tuesday. Chief among those is the notion that “the Web is the hub of our social mesh and our device mesh.”
But Live Mesh is just the tip of the iceberg, says C/Net. It’s only one of the projects that 400 or so people are working on in Microsoft’s Live Platform group.
Sharing files with other users is a key element to Live Mesh. Live Mesh users can grant access to other users for sharing and collaboration on files and projects.
To manage all this, the Live Mesh desktop client provides a couple of components for viewing activity.
Any Live Mesh folder will be accompanied by a new Mesh Bar, a sidebar on the right that displays activity on files from both yourself and any collaborating users.
Another major component of Live Mesh is remote desktop access. The technology is already built into Windows Vista, but the vast array of network topologies can typically make it difficult to set up. The Live Mesh client greatly simplifies the remote desktop process, bringing this functionality to a much broader user base.
Live Mesh was announced with a short walkthrough on the Windows Experience Blog. Channel 10 has an interview with George Moromisato and Noah Edelstein of the Live Mesh team.
Other coverage is available at Blog Runner, Channel 9, the NY Times, Tech Crunch, Gigaom and Zdnet.
