Microsoft's Live Mesh top innovation at the Crunchies
Last night I attended the Crunchies award ceremony, where Facebook took top honors as the best overall start-up (See the full list of Crunchies award winners). The awards are based on a popularity contest via votes cast through the Crunchies Web site and with input from the Crunchies Committee, consisting of co-hosts GigaOm, Silicon Alley Insider, TechCrunch, VentureBeat and advisors.
The most surprising winner for the evening was in the Microsoft's Live Mesh, which won in the category best technology innovation/achievement. The competition included Facebook Connect (the runner-up), Google Friend Connect, Google Chrome, Swype and Yahoo BOSS.
Given that Microsoft is often vilified by the Web 2.0, start-up community, and the stellar competition in the category, it's hard to imagine that Microsoft won without a little help from the Crunchies Committee. On the other hand, the Microsoft community is large and mighty and perceptions are slowing shifting to be more positive about the openness of the giant software company. In any case, it's a deserved award, which was accepted by Ray Ozzie, the chief software architect at Microsoft, and David Treadwell, who runs the Live Services Platform.
David Treadwell and Ray Ozzie discuss the mesh with GigaOm's Om Malik.
(Credit: Andrew Mager)Live Mesh is essential glue for synchronizing files with all the devices a user might touch, and as a kind of information bus for identity, notifications, and other Web services. Microsoft, with its huge footprint, is uniquely positioned to provide a universal, operating system- and device-agnostic syncing foundation.
Ozzie and his team are working on a complete transformation of the back end and the front end, moving from PC-centric to multi-screen, he told me during a brief conversation at the Crunchies. Microsoft's Azure cloud service is another key part of the transformation, but is lagging behind Live Mesh. "2009 is still a learning year for Azure, just as 2008 was the Mesh," Ozzie said.
The challenge for Azure is moving the massive scale Microsoft platforms like XBox Live, to the Azure cloud-services architecture. "In 2009 Azure will be more mature, you'll see some large-scale usage," Ozzie said. But it won't be until 2010 that Azure is ready for prime time.
Ozzie is mindful of the profound changes culturally and technologically among its developers that Microsoft must undergo to realize the Live Platform and Azure cloud services vision. "When we are in an environment with technological and environmental change, you have to focus on these new huge constraints, but also new opportunities for destruction or rebirth," he said during a Crunchies interview with Om Malik.
For a photo replay of the Crunchies, check out Andrew Mager's post.
Dan Farber is editor in chief of CBS Interactive News, which includes CBSNews.com and CNET News. He has more than 25 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. E-mail Dan. 
Also I love never having to sync my phone to pull pictures off of it and then copy them around to my various PCs. I've got the phone's camera output folder setup to sync and when I take a picture it's sent to all of my other PCs. Pretty damn cool.
Now all they have to do is wrap this up into a simplified front-end where Grandma can check boxes for the things she wants to sync and where she wants them sync'ed to (Sorry, granny hardly knows what a folder is; she does know what her stuff like pictures and favorites are though).
The other key is they have to keep pushing for client support. They need to support all of the major OSs and distros, get devices to embed mesh support (i.e. cameras, mp3 players, etc). They have a good start but they have to keep the momentum going. Right now this stuff is greak for geeks but they need to make it great for consumers (and IT guys who don't have a clue) too.
Perhaps yours. My grandma knows what a folder is. She spends a great deal of time in the computer world. For the most part, she stays within the realm of browser, word pressing, and email.
If I send something to her, it's not long before I get a response. And it's not monosyllabic "ok". She spends time writing a meaningful response.
(aside: My mom is a 3rd grade teacher and leaves a notebook on her desk. If the kids are busy doing something where she doesn't have to be in front or prowling as she watches to see what they are doing, she checks her email. If I really do need to know something, I'll send it to both. If I don't hear from one of them right away, the other one takes care of it.)
Browsing & word processing are for researching family history; but not just the expected genealogy sites.
She has a huge collection of family artifacts and spends time looking through photos which predate her, filling in the gaps of whom each person is, the event, perhaps people who weren't there for some reason (and ordinarily would be), blah-blah-blah. Some of her (other) relatives might be able to fill in some of the blanks, so she usually routes email through their kids or nieces/nephews.
She does take a break at some point. She walks 1-2 miles every day. If the weather isn't all that great, she rides a stationary bike for twenty miles (one ride). She was doing this before she had her knee replacements a few years ago. Her orthopod told her if everyone else was conditioned as well as she is *prior* to the surgery, PT would be non-existent.
Oh, I forgot: she turned ninety-one in November ('08). She's a retired kindergarten teacher.
She sends email to my mom every morning, telling her she made it through another night.
(My mom is sixty-eight and hasn't really considered giving up teaching yet)
Okay, I'm done bragging.
Is this just another case of lowered expectations?
If they stay on this push(which with Ray Ozzie on board is pretty much a given) and actually integrate well with all of there other cloud services(like skydrive) the possibilities are endless.
MS needs to drive project to the point where it absorbs/ integrates/enables similar MS products such as Live Share, Office Live -- I understand that synching & sharing are not the the same, but I'm not sure our hypothetical granny would be able to differentiate between them. Then there's Office Groove where does it fit
MS's positioning in this space is reminiscent of their position in image/picture/photo processing space, confused, incoherent resulting in little credibility.
Check out this URL that paints of picture of where we are on the subject to date:
http://www.justaskgemalto.com
Given the significant number of job openings at large companies:
http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/01/estimate-top-us-firms-have-over-700000.html
it is also quite heartening to see this innovation in the small to medium business realm as well...
- by ThomasWhitney January 30, 2009 2:50 PM PST
- I'm betting some of these jobs are going to be in the digital security sector. There is no way that a company of any standing can downsize that.
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