Microsoft Live Mesh Overview
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Connection, network, file synchronization. These words may be the most important ones in the near future. We passed the days when having many devices was a luxury possible only for a few select people. Having many devices can be both a blessing and a curse. Probably the main challenge with such devices is synchronizing your data across all of them. Many solutions for this issue will arise eventually, but one of the first is Microsoft’s Live Mesh.
Unless you are really young, you probably remember when buying a PC cost a fortune and owning one was a privilege only for a few, mainly big companies. However, technologies evolved, and systems became better day by day. Prices dropped, the Internet emerged, and PC ownership became affordable for almost everyone, which brings us to the current state we all know.
Our life is migrating step by step to the online world and we are arming ourselves with a multitude of devices so we can keep up with the fast world in which we live. Currently the vast majority of us have a couple of portable devices (laptop, smart phone) and at least one if not a few systems (Mac, PC); media players (Zune, iPod) also became very popular.
Having so many devices could make it a real hassle to synchronize all of them. Microsoft Live Mesh promises to resolve this issue. I'm sure that if you fit the scenario I described in the previous paragraph, you've already wondered why you need to perform the same application installing task for each one of those devices. Why do you have to waste hours configuring a network, or even worse, to create a synchronized group?
Fear not. The programmers at Microsoft have thought about you, and after announcing in March 2008 that they are working on it, in April they launched the first beta for a small group of people -- to be exact, for Microsoft this means 10,000. The first clues about how this machinery will work were pointed out in some keynotes by the head of the team working on this: Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie's. On April 22 the beta was launched, giving us some tips as to how the end result will work and on what technology it is based.
Ozzie is well-known for his experience with network-related problems. He worked for Iris Associates, where he created and led the development of Lotus Notes. Before Iris, he contributed to the development of Lotus Symphony and Software Arts' TK!Solver and VisiCalc, and was involved in early distributed operating systems development at Data General Corp. In 2005 Microsoft acquired Groove Networks, a company formed by Ozzie in 1997, and with it the popular Groove.
Throughout this article I'll present first the concept the Live Mesh, what it is, how it works, and also point out some information we know about it that might be of interest to developers. First I will cover the theoretical part, which is probably more crucial for developers, and follow up from the perspective of a user. Empower yourself with courage and patience, and read the next page.
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