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 is expected to add more features by its Professional Developer Conference in October.

In any case, Microsoft had been limiting Live Mesh sign-ups to those with an invitation, but now it's open to anyone who wants to see it in its early stages.

The change was noted by Microsoft in its Live Mesh forums and spotted by Windows Live enthusiast site Liveside.Net.

"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," Microsoft said.

Oddly, it also told international users they could get into the act by spoofing their systems into appearing to be U.S. machines and then gave instructions on how to do so. That seems an odd choice to me. But hey, there you have it.

"Please be aware that this may cause other applications that specifically require your native country region and language settings to encounter problems," Microsoft cautioned.

[JCPayne]

All 2 users should be happy. *smirk*

[Simplicius]

@JCPayne: actually, I can guarantee that there are more than 2 users. I know all 4 of them ;)

[livecrunch]

Hope it will not be buggy as Windows Vista lol

[CNET editors' note: ad link deleted].

[Kev Orng]

The servers that support the mesh... are they located in a country that is not subject to the whimsy of the "Patriot" act?

[Penguinisto]

Of course, if someone were to compromise a Live user account, that user is now screwed across multiple machines... yuck.

[Vegaman_Dan]

The same is true of MobileMe and Google, I'm afraid. Putting all your data in a highly exposed location like this is just begging for it to be exploited.

[Penguinisto]

Depends on the mechanism, but yes, that would be correct.

[Vegaman_Dan]

How does this differ from MobileMe or any of the other cloud offers?

I'm concerned that we are rushing to put everything online to make it easier to share across different computers and systems, but that also puts all your personal information and data now at much greater risk for data theft, identity theft, etc. We've seen breaches from all the big companies at times and I'm not quite sure I really trust their security measures to put my trusted data there. Not yet, at least.

[manodud]

mac support - coming soon
5 gig space is good.. free is good..

isnt as elegant..
mobile support - coming soon
upload multiple files - coming soon
drag and drop files - coming soon
........
feeling of insecurity... baked in!

[alegr]

Finally, a pet project of the Chief Architecture Astronaut Ray Ozzie (see http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/05/01.html) is coming to life. But does anybody care?

[someguy999]

I've used mesh for a while and I was super excited about it. Until I worked on a 30 page proposal with a bunch of collegues, I encouraged all of my co-workers to frugly send invites only to other co-workers who were working on the proposal, it turned into a 70 page proposal becuase I would reopen and find that it was reverting back to previous versions or versions weren't saving out properly back up to the mesh and I was more often than not forced to re-write huge portions becuase of it not saving properly... it was an utter disaster and I vowed not to use again until it was more widely adopted and further along.

I like the idea, but it initially caused me huge pain!

[pqAZ]

I have been using Live Mesh for a few months and it works fine. I am not so careless as to put sensitive information into the cloud at this point. No one should be doing that with any of the cloud-based products out there. This is not a finished product and you have to treat it that way.

Just because this is a Microsoft product doesn't make it worse than the others (DropBox, Syncplicity, etc.). Take it for what it is and use with care. I *never* keep original important documents only on a cloud server from any company. Maybe one day, I'll be able to trust it completely but not yet.

I am going to keep using it. It serves me quite well.

[Imalittleteapot]

We just use a shared FTP host/folder. We've been doing this for years. Or a personal one for personal files. I just map it. Maybe not all the bells and whistles, but I still don't get it people.

[DrtyDogg]

there are a lot of people in my office that when you say "FTP" their eyes glaze over and there head just starts to nod no matter what you say. Live mesh is intuitive and easy for some of them to use.

[Imalittleteapot]

I don't think FTP is all that hard to use, but I think you're absolutely right now that I think about the users POV instead of the programmers. I think the best way to look at it is FTP is hard to setup. Not because it is really hard, but because the average joe doesn't understand because nobody told them and there is no installer holding their hand. Once setup I think most office users wouldn't have any problem. The nice installer is probably the key to all this. Like you said making it more intuitive. What I don't get is why MS didn't push a pretty UI on FTP a long time ago instead of waiting all this time to reinvent the wheel. I know they're going to add stuff latter, but it seems kind of silly for just the online sync and file access to becoming down to the average joe in 08. Seems like it should have happened in 98 to me. For the user I get it. It's the developers I think that over thought it, but not really. FTP is basically decentralized. Is Live Mesh? I don't know if it's P2P or what exactly, but this way Microsoft would hold all your cloud data correct? That may be their major incentive which sucks, but it's just good business sense I guess. I'm gonna try this Live Mesh thing out anyway just to see what the deal is.

[Imalittleteapot]

Ok, maybe it's just a web app. I don't know how this thing works. Sorry, read about it a lot on here, but never used it. Like I said. I just FTP it. I'll play with it a while.