mesh

Windows Live Mesh goes mobile; Mac version soon

Late last week Microsoft quietly released an update to its Live Mesh product to support mobile access. From your phone's Web browser you can access the service via m.mesh.com. If you're on a Windows Mobile device, or any other phone that supports file system access you can upload files over the Web to your Live Mesh storage--something that's helpful for things like photos taken from your phone's digital camera.

In addition to the file browser, the mobile version of Mesh includes the same news feed functionality that lets you track all the changes to … Read more

Microsoft opens up Live Mesh

It just got a little easier to get into Ray Ozzie's cloud.

Microsoft has opened up its Live Mesh service to anyone who has (or signs up for) a Windows Live ID. The service, announced in April, lets people share data among multiple Windows computers, as well as over the Web.

The vision for Live Mesh is broader--envisioning people sharing data among Macs, PCs, and various devices, as well as opening up the possibility for desktop applications to add online components, and Web apps to add offline components. For now, though, it's largely about file sync.

Microsoft … Read more

Mark Lucovsky visits the Gillmor Gang

This week's Friday Gillmor Gang podcast featured Mark Lucovsky, currently head of Google's search APIs and formerly a top technologist at Microsoft (reportedly Steve Ballmer threw a chair across the room upon being informed that Lucovsky was getting hitched to Google).

Lucovsky talked about making Google's APIs available to developers. The APIs include high-speed access to Google search via Javascript and RESTful protocols, peer APIs about accessing APIs, language APIs for detecting languages and translations, and hosting of third-party open Javascript libraries, such as Mootools.

"We are opening up all of Google bit-by-bit programmatically," Lucovsky … Read more

Meraki is offering free Wi-Fi to San Francisco. Why?

There is no business model behind it, but mesh Wi-Fi company Meraki is offering free Wi-Fi access to San Francisco, one neighborhood at a time, as I discovered when I passed by the company's folksy demo table at my local farmers' market last month (see report from local newspaper). But Meraki is not in the business of just blasting money out the door, which it appears to be doing in San Francisco, and there is a method to this program.

Meraki's business is actually quite straightforward: it sells wide-area Wi-Fi network hardware, and provides the management consoles to … Read more

From Live Mesh to the Open Mesh

My friend Marc Canter has written a series of blog posts outlining the issues, constructs, technologies, and standards required to build out an "open mesh," as he put it. It's a kind of unified field theory for the Web.

Canter has been an evangelist for a Web without walled gardens. He also has a financial stake in the open mesh. He runs a company called Broadband Mechanics that has developed a white label social network and Web site creation service that depends on open standards.

The open mesh is not Microsoft's Live Mesh. The open mesh … Read more

Microsoft, openness, and oxymorons

Microsoft claims to have learned from history, and the primary lesson of its history - at least the Groove Networks history - is that openness is critical. Of course, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions....

If it isn't open and easy to connect to, it isn't useful, Moromisato [Microsoft software designer who joined Microsoft through its acquisition of Groove] says. "One of the lessons we learned when working on collaboration at Groove, is that if you try to force people to use all the same technology, they won't have it, and then nobody … Read more

Site created to share Live Mesh invites

After getting into the limited beta for Microsoft's Live Mesh, blogger Long Zheng wanted to find a way to share the opportunity.

It turns out that each person who gets added to the beta gets to invite a few others, by sharing files with them.

"As soon as I got my own invite, I started thinking of the original 'Gmail invite sharing' Web site and began to build one for Live Mesh," Zheng said on his Istartedsomething blog. "Thus, www.sharemesh.com was born. If you would like a Live Mesh invite or have one to … Read more

Live Meshing on the Gillmor Gang

David Treadwell is the special guest on the Gillmor Gang this week (check out the podcast of the show here). He is the corporate vice president of Microsoft's Live Platform Services, which includes the recently introduced Live Mesh. Treadwell works directly for Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, who has been working to put the Web, rather than the PC, at the center of Microsoft's computing universe.

Live Mesh is trying to solve a key user problem--how to mesh the desktop, mobile, and the Web for consumers and developers. For example, Live Mesh can provide core underlying infrastructure for … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 709: We're gonna need a bigger cloud

We explain Live Mesh, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tries to explain why customs can search your laptop without any reason at all, and eBay (yawn) sues Craigslist over some (yawn) stock stuff. Also, Apple buys a chipmaker and that story leads to wild speculation about chips and such. No, really. It's a tech show. Haven't you heard this show before? Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 709

Live Mesh: The version you can understand http://mashable.com/2008/04/23/live-mesh-simplified/ http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9925747-2.html http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9926229-56.html… Read more