Live Mesh on Windows Mobile Teaser

"Somehow" a Live Mesh client running on Windows Mobile was demonstrated at the Australia Tech Ed conference. Things have been relatively quite on the Live Mesh front and it's good to see some progress revealing itself once in a while. The Windows Mobile Live Mesh client should be available to participants in the Live Mesh beta in a couple of months or so. There's still a lot lacking in Live Mesh though.

I've always believed what's needed next is some type of intelligent device profiling that will tell Live Mesh what types of data, and in what quantities and frequency, would be best for certain kinds of devices. A Windows Mobile device might be idea for mp3 sharing unless I rarely play mp3s on that phone. Slower wireless broadband networks don't need tons of data syncing going on if that data's not going to be used much by those devices. And how about synchronizing documents and messages users have been using most recently? Sort of a "what I've been working on lately" approach to synchronization.

I've been using Groove for some projects lately and it's interesting to speculate what in Groove, Ray Ozzie's product and company acquired by Microsoft, might show up in Live Mesh, Windows 7 OS, or other elements of Microsoft software. Don't expect Groove to be replicated verbatim into Live Mesh but clearly Live Mesh is the next generation of sync technology future applications can be built upon. Groove's more of a workspace, with file sharing, messaging, calendaring and other objects. Imagine those elements embedded as part of the Windows OS rather than a separate monolithic Office productivity app. That's more how I'd expect Groove features to show up in future generations of Microsoft software, beginning of course with Live Mesh.

Will Live Mesh be more than just a shared folder synchronization tool? Given the slow roll Live Mesh seems to be on, it's hard to tell when we'll see much more. But I would think Live Mesh is still one of Ozzie's pet projects given the nature of what Live Mesh does. We'll just have to take a wait and see attitude until something more substantive emerges.

Like this? Here are some of Mitchell's recent posts.

• Podcast: Using SQL Server DS For Cloud Storage
• Given Up on Google Chrome... Already
• Chrome Just Means More Incompatible Web Sites
• 5 rules for guaranteed failure at SaaS, without even trying
• No Bluetooth APIs In Google's Android! Doh!
• iPhone 3G, The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

Check out Mitchell's companion Converging On Microsoft Podcast. And Follow Mitchell on .
Mitchell's Product Reviews:

• Xobni Outlook plugin
• Microsoft Live Mesh
• Google App Engine
• LiveNewsCameras.com

Mitchell's Book Recommendations:

• Here Comes Everbody
• Seth Godin's: the dip
• The Big Switch
• Zero Day Attack
• Clear Blogging

Also visit Mitchell's other blogs and podcasts:












Visit Microsoft Subnet for more news, blogs, opinion from around the Web. Sign up for the bi-weekly Microsoft newsletter. (Click on News/Microsoft News Alert.)