While Microsoft eventually hopes its Live Mesh effort will be a way for people to share data across all of their devices, the service that launches next week will be limited in several ways, CNET News.com has learned.
Next week, Microsoft will launch a pre-beta "technology preview" open to about 10,000 testers in the U.S., according to a source familiar with the company's plans.
File synchronization is an important component of Mesh, but not its only feature, the source said. Developers will be able to write their own applications for Live Mesh, with the idea that applications written for Mesh can then be accessed by a number of different devices.
Another key aspiration for Live Mesh is that it work with more than just Microsoft products. Out of the gate it will work with "multiple browsers," the source said. Initially it will be limited to XP and Vista PCs as well as Windows Mobile phones, however Microsoft wants to add Mac support as well more types of phones and even other devices, such as MP3 players.
Live Mesh is also not just a space for linking one's own devices and information. Users will be able to invite friends to share parts of their Mesh.
Ray Ozzie first talked about Mesh in a speech at last month's Mix '08 event in Las Vegas.
"Just imagine the possibilities of unified application management across the device mesh, centralized, Web-based deployment of device-based applications," he said. "Imagine an app platform that's cognizant of all of your devices. Now, as it so happens, we've had a team at Microsoft working on this specific scenario for some time, starting with the PC and focused on the question of how we might make life so much easier for individuals if we just brought together all your PCs into a seamless mesh, for users, for developers, using the Web as a hub."
The company will have more to say at Web 2.0 Expo next week, as well as at an April 24 event, both taking place in San Francisco. A Microsoft representative said the company did not have any comment ahead of its events next week.
LAS VEGAS--While Internet Explorer 8 demos, Silverlight progress and a Monkey Boy reprise from Steve Ballmer captured much of the attention at Mix 08--it was a database announcement that could be the sleeper announcement of the show.
Dave Campbell
(Credit: Microsoft)What Microsoft announced was a database-in-the-cloud service where Web developers can store their data. Those attending the Mix show here were able to sign up for a beta test that is set to begin in three or four weeks, with a final version aimed to be launched by the end of the year, according to Dave Campbell, a technical fellow in Microsoft's SQL Server division.
"We're taking SQL Server we're pulling pieces of it apart and we're putting it back together," Campbell said in an interview. One of the challenges is taking software designed to run highly reliable servers and storage and turning it into a commodity service.
But, Campbell said, that's also where the opportunity lies. "In this world, dumb and fast rules."
"If you give up a tiny bit in terms of the degree of consistency in the architecture, you can get tremendous resiliency and scale, but you want to retain enterprise-class quality around data service," he explained. Factoring data into classes of data or tiers is one way to improve the class of service using commodity gear, he said.
What Microsoft is doing in this case with its database is also the kind of thing it makes sense to imagine the company doing with a variety of "building block" services.
"SQL Data Services is a building block for Microsoft's longer term vision of a services fabric for developing and deploying applications," Campbell said. "Imagine at some point a version of Visual Studio with a services palette in the toolbox and wiring up and composing services."
Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff said that it's important for Microsoft to be a player in this area.
"A lot of computing and storage is going to be moving online," he said. "For them not to get into this game would be suicidal at some level."
Campbell downplayed the notion that Microsoft was competing with Amazon.com's S3 service.
Haff said that there are some differences, since Amazon targets largely unstructured data and Microsoft is aimed more at structured and semi-structured data, but said it's not like the two don't overlap.
"They are targeting a somewhat different market, but everyone competes at some level," he said.
Campbell wouldn't get into how Microsoft would price the service, but said it some type of usage model that takes into account both the amount of data stored in the cloud as well as the bandwidth used in transferring information.
CNET News.com's Dan Farber contributed to this report.
LAS VEGAS--Mozilla Vice President Mike Schroepfer said Microsoft's decision to support a more standards-compliant mode by default should keep Web developers from having to waste so much time.
With the current set-up, he said that developers have a fairly easy time getting a site that renders properly in Opera, Safari, and Firefox, but often spend a lot of energy trying to get that same site to also render correctly in Internet Explorer.
"Web developers burn through a tremendous amount of time getting their sites to work with IE because of IE's special quirks," said Schroepfer, who I caught up with here at Mix '08.
He said that Microsoft's move toward greater embrace of standards with Internet Explorer 8 is a good thing.
"There are some encouraging things there and I hope to see more," he said.
In particular, it would be helpful if Microsoft gave a roadmap for which standards it planned to support down the road, that way Web developers could decide earlier to invest time. He said he would really like to see Microsoft support a new graphics standard known as scalable vector graphics.
"That would be a great win for the Web," he said.
Meanwhile, Schroepfer also talked up the benefits of Firefox 3, which is just hitting its fourth beta and is edging closer to a final release. In particular, he pointed to the browser's "Awesome bar" that remembers not only specific Web addresses that have been visited but also other information from the page. For example typing in "televisions" might bring up a recent TV search on Amazon, even though television wasn't in the address.
"Once you use it you actually can't use any other browser," he said. Also on tap are improved speed and antimalware features, he said.
LAS VEGAS--On one score, Yahoo has been extremely receptive to an offer from Microsoft.
With its Yahoo Messenger for Vista, the Internet company has been one of the few consumer software companies to come out with a Windows Vista-specific product.
Yahoo's updated messenger program for Vista adds voice dialing as well as eye candy known as "Voice Visualizations."
(Credit: Yahoo)The instant messenger program doesn't have a lot of extra features (in some cases it has fewer than the generic Windows version). What it does have is an extremely pleasant look and feel. Using the Windows Presentation Foundation graphics engine built into Vista, the program smoothly resizes Windows and moves buddy icons around based on the screen real estate available.
The product, which has taken longer than expected, has been available in a text messaging-only "preview" version since December. Yahoo plans to announce on Friday that a beta version, due out sometime in the second quarter, will add voice messaging (PC-to-PC and PC-to-phone) as well as the ability to send SMS messages.
I had a chance to check out the software on Thursday thanks to product manager Josh Jacobson, who is attending the Mix 08 trade show here. Among the eye candy added to the latest version is something Yahoo calls "voice visualizations." Think of the visualizations in iTunes or another jukebox and you have the basic idea.
It's not a killer feature, but like the program as a whole, it just makes me think that people would find Vista a whole lot more compelling if things like Yahoo Messenger for Vista were the rule rather than the exception.
Yahoo itself has no immediate plans to offer additional Vista applications, saying it prefers to learn its lessons with the Messenger program and wait for the install base to grow. Vista-specific applications get more interesting when the operating system passes Windows XP in terms of active users. Jacobson pointed to an IDC report that says that won't happen until the second half of next year.
"It's a little ways away," he said.
Speaking of which, does Microsoft even have a major consumer application that is Vista-only and takes advantage of Windows Presentation Foundation? Will Microsoft have to buy Yahoo to get one? I'm sure I'm overlooking something and my inbox will tell me what I am missing.
LAS VEGAS--With the acquisition of Danger and the proposed bid for Yahoo, Microsoft is looking at taking on a whole lot of non-Windows technology.
Danger's Sidekick device uses a Java operating system, while Yahoo is known for its extensive use of open-source software to power its services.
Speaking at the Mix '08 conference, Ballmer said that Microsoft would likely take on some of the open-source PHP applications that Yahoo relies on for its services, again assuming Yahoo ever starts returning Microsoft's phone calls.
"We should not have two of everything," Ballmer said. "We'll have to sort some of that through."
He said that undoubtedly Microsoft will choose to go with Microsoft-developed services in some areas and Yahoo-developed ones in other areas, meaning that Microsoft will have open source-powered services for some time.
"I'm sure a bunch of them will be running at high scale and in production for a long time to come," he said.
On Danger, Ballmer said that Microsoft was attracted to the way the Sidekick gets applications and data to its users as well as the consumer interface and appeal. However, he made clear that he believed those things could be brought over to the Windows Mobile operating system and still preserved.
"The Danger acquisition is really about building up an application and service aspect on top of our Windows Mobile platform," he said. "Danger is really a service application experience and we want to make sure we get that in market on a great set of phones."
Ballmer addressed a ton of other topics, some of which I'll also try and get to here. Asked by an audience member "What about Adobe?" Ballmer replied "What about Adobe?" before going on to say that Microsoft will interoperate in some areas and compete in others, but made clear that Microsoft wants to win a greater share of developers' attention.
"We're going to try to give you exciting choices and encourage you in ways that make sense to pick the Microsoft alternative," he said. Asked about the browser market, Ballmer reiterated past comments that the company made a mistake in trying to tie too many products to Longhorn, a move that hurt the company in the browser area among many others.
"That was a painfully long gap," he said. "You won't see those kinds of gaps on Windows." He also said that Microsoft has learned how to incubate new browser features apart from Windows releases and then bring them back into the next version of the operating system. "We're now having to hustle as hard as we've had to hustle to drive browser innovation."
At Mix '08, Ballmer was asked to reprise his famed 'Monkey Boy' dance, this time touting Web developers. He complied.
(Credit: Ina Fried/News.com )LAS VEGAS--If the jabs from venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki weren't enough, Steve Ballmer took a bunch of no-holds-barred queries from the audience at Mix '08.
He was asked whether, given Apple's iPhone announcement, Microsoft was trying to get Silverlight on the Apple phone.
"Silverlight for the iPhone is, of course, interesting," he said. "I can't say there's been extensive discussion with Guy's old boss."
He also said it was unclear whether Apple's business model, which takes 30 percent of iPhone application revenue, would allow for royalty-free distribution of Silverlight. (Apple has said it will allow free applications.) He also noted that Apple might be taking too large a slice, grabbing "30 percent of every bit of revenue."
"It's a good business, if you can make it," Ballmer said.
Later on, he was asked about Apple's license of the ActiveSync protocol that connects mobile devices to Microsoft's Exchange Server.
Ballmer brings back the Monkey Boy dance.
(Credit: Ina Fried/News.com )"We've licensed ActiveSync for a while. That's been an option that's been available to Apple," Ballmer said. The company has already licensed the technology to other rivals, including Palm and Nokia. "It was certainly an option we knew Apple might take advantage of."
Ballmer was also asked to reprise his Monkey Boy dance, this time touting Web developers. He complied. (Watch the video here.)
The session concluded with Kawasaki saying he knew Ballmer really wanted a MacBook Air. "If you ever want a discount, I have friends," he said.
LAS VEGAS--At Microsoft's Mix conference here Thursday, CEO Steve Ballmer said online advertising is "the next superbig thing" but admitted that the company is well behind Google.
"Despite the fact you could say we are not where we'd like to be, and we could have gotten started a little bit (earlier)," Ballmer said, "we are very committed. We have a long way to go, and (acquiring) Yahoo seems to be a way to accelerate that."
At the Mix trade show in Las Vegas, venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki skewers Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (in a light-hearted manner) with pointed questions and comments about the Yahoo bid, Google competition, EU fines, and Vista struggles.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News.com)Asked by venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki in an onstage question-and-answer forum where things stand on the Yahoo front, Ballmer replied, "We've made an offer," and then he shrugged and paused. "We made an offer. It's out there, baby."
Ballmer said that while Microsoft is trailing Google, it is like the Little Engine that Could.
"I think we have worked really hard to make it clear that we have real commitment, real aspiration, and real tenacity about being a very serious player in the world of search and advertising," Ballmer said. "Advertising on the Internet is a big thing and will be the next superbig thing. There is no question about that. Search is, in some senses, the killer app of advertising."
Asked whether Ballmer had a dartboard with a picture of Sergey Brin and Larry Page on it, Ballmer said he's not very good at darts. But, he said, Google is clearly in his line of vision.
"We have to have a strong position in online search and online advertising," Ballmer said. "In a sense, it's a zero-sum game. There's (a fixed number of) searches per day, and I want a larger number of those searches."
"It may be my last breath at Microsoft, but we are going to be there," Ballmer said. Kawasaki was quite pointed with Ballmer, starting out by asking about Yahoo and imploring him not to throw a chair. (A former Microsoft executive said in a deposition that when he told Ballmer of plans to go to Google, Ballmer threw a chair. Ballmer has denied he ever did such a thing.)
"Don't go monkey on me, either," Kawasaki said, a reference to Ballmer's infamous "Developers, Developers, Developers" speech.
Ballmer grabs Kawasaki's MacBook Air out of an envelope.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News.com)He asked Ballmer whether Apple was like a little chihuahua that Microsoft kicks around. Ballmer didn't take the bait. Kawasaki is a former Apple fellow.
"Apple does a pretty good job," Ballmer said. "I'm not going to take anything away from them. "At the end of the day, we have a much bigger footprint."
Kawasaki alluded to the fact that the Mac is gaining share on Windows.
"The last time I checked, there were still a lot of governments that said we have a very high market share," Ballmer said.
"Like the EU," Kawasaki interjected.
"No comment," Ballmer said.
Kawasaki kept the barbs coming. "What's the deal with Vista? Seriously."
Ballmer noted that it is the second most popular operating system in the world. Kawasaki pointed out that most people don't have a choice and get it when they buy a PC. Ballmer then reached and grabbed Kawasaki's MacBook Air out of an envelope.
"Is this running Vista?" he asked.
Kawasaki said that it wasn't. The two then debated the merits of the machine.
"Don't you want a machine this light?" Kawasaki asked, with Ballmer saying his Toshiba laptop weighs less.
"That thing is missing half the features," Ballmer said, referring to the MacBook. "Where's the DVD drive?"
The two eventually got back to Vista. Ballmer said that while there have been some negative comments from users, Vista has done well for the consumer market.
"I think we'll start to see more uptake in the business market," Ballmer said.
Kawasaki was hard-hitting in his questions, touching on nearly all the software maker's sore spots--regulatory troubles, the resurgence of the Mac and its tough time competing with Google. But the jabs were delivered and taken with a smile, making it one of the most enjoyable sessions I can remember.
The one question Ballmer refused to comment on was his reported interest in the Seattle Supersonics. "I'm not talking about that today," he said.
After performing a remixed "Monkeyboy" dance, Ballmer quipped to the person who asked him to do it, "If your buddy behind you just gave you a buck, I want 50 cents."
LAS VEGAS--I was in the Mix '08 press room Thursday chatting with Directions on Microsoft analyst Greg DeMichillie, and somehow the subject came around to the MacBook Air.
It turns out we've had the exact same reaction to Apple's waif-like laptop. Every time we see or touch the MacBook Air we decide it's the perfect laptop for us.
Then, with its seductive thinness more distant, we think about its specifications: its slower processor, small hard drive, and lack of connection ports.
"It's a left-brain, right-brain thing," DeMichillie said. It wouldn't have to be perfect to win us over, but maybe just a little faster or a little cheaper. I think a price cut or the addition of a couple of ports in the next revision would probably be enough to push either of us over the edge.
"The iPhone's flawed but I bought one of those," DeMichillie noted.
On that front, my reasons for not buying an iPhone also got shorter on Thursday as Microsoft added Exchange Server support for the device.
Incidentally, there are many more Macs here at Mix than a typical Microsoft conference, although a fair number I saw were booted into one or another flavor of Windows.
Updated at 2:30 p.m. PST.
LAS VEGAS--Although anyone can now download the Internet Explorer 8 browser, Microsoft is gearing this release for Web developers. However, a second beta, slated to arrive this summer, is aimed at a wider audience, Microsoft's top browser executive told CNET News.com.
"It's public," general manager Dean Hachamovitch said of the Beta 1 released Wednesday. "It's out on Microsoft.com somewhere. Anyone can download it."
Although features like Web Slices may appeal to consumers, Hachamovitch said that "the (current) beta really is for developers."
Microsoft isn't saying when the final version of the browser will be released. Hachamovitch also declined to say whether it will be released at the same time as Windows 7, the next version of Microsoft's operating system. He did note that Microsoft released IE 7 for XP ahead of Windows Vista, so it is technically possible to do so.
As was the case with the IE 7 betas, those installing the test version of IE 8 will have to replace their current browser.
The IE 8 beta will run on both 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows Vista SP1 as well as Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2003 and 2008.
In designing the browser, Hachamovitch said, Microsoft is trying to find ways to both be more compatible and add features. On that latter front, he pointed to a consumer feature known as activities, which allows users to select a block of text and have it, say, looked up on Dictionary.com or mapped with Microsoft or Google's services.
"Right now, the Web for a lot of people is 'some assembly required,'" he said. "This integrates the services you use with the sites you visit."
LAS VEGAS--Microsoft is looking to position its Silverlight Web technology as the coolest kid in school--one that is both popular and gets along with everyone.
The Hard Rock Cafe arrived at Mix 08 to show how it is using Silverlight to show its 70,000 pieces of rock and roll history online.
(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)At the Mix '08 show here, the company talked about its Mac, Linux, and mobile-phone compatibility and brought out customers like Hard Rock Cafe, NBC, and AOL to talk about how they are using the technology. It also showed Silverlight running on the newest compatible device--Nokia's smartphones.
Microsoft's Scott Guthrie also alluded to support for Apple's iPhone, saying Microsoft wants Silverlight running on "anything that has an SDK (software development kit)."
In the Hard Rock Cafe example, the restaurant and hotel chain used the technology to showcase its massive, 70,000-piece collection of rock artifacts. "This is 2 billion pixels," said a representative of the company who built the site for the Hard Rock.
AOL showed off a new version of AOL Mail, while NBC touted its plans to use Silverlight to bring more than 2,200 hours of video both live and on-demand.
The Hard Rock Cafe catalogued over 2 billion pixels' worth of images as it took its rock gear collection online with Silverlight.
(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)It's all part of Microsoft's aggressive pitch to Web developers, a clear acknowledgment that Microsoft faces a tough battle to win the hearts and minds of those who build Web sites and applications.
"I know today you have many amazing technology choices," Ray Ozzie said in his introductory comments. "But I'd like you to bet on us because I think together we can create extraordinary experiences.
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