We’re now just a few short weeks away from PDC, which promises to yield a bumper crop of announcements. Aside from the Oslo/Dublin stuff that regular readers of my blog know I follow closely, there will also be cloud-related announcements. One thing I would expect is that Live Mesh will either get more features/capabilities, or that it may become part of something larger. Either way, I’m a big fan of the existing offering, and am eagerly waiting to see where this leads.
Here’s a few things I’ve done lately that I think are pretty cool use-cases for Live Mesh:
Share, REALLY share
I started a new project recently, and I was given a client machine to work with (for security reasons, we cannot plug our laptops in to the network). The first thing I did was set up a folder on my desktop that I would use as a place to archive documents. Then, I synched it with my Live Mesh desktop. Next, I shared it locally (inside the network, a conventional folder share) with my fellow team members so they could also access it, so a colleague could drop a file in there, and it would propagate to my Live Mesh desktop-in-the-cloud. Lastly, from my Live Mesh desktop, I invited my colleagues and gave them rights to the folder so that they could also access the content from remote locations. Now,you may be wondering…. we already have MOSS and a project portal set up for collaboration. In addition, we also run Groove, so I could have used that to replicate content. So, why did I do this? Because it was a geeky way to test the functionality. I could also share the Live Mesh folder with anyone, even people who may not have Groove, or may not have rights to our MOSS portal. All in all, it was really cool, and quick to set up.
Almost like being there…
I have been in pretty intense travel mode for most of the year (when I go home now I call it a “visit”). This poses some interesting life logistic challenges, such as something arrives in the postal mail at home when I’m on the other side of the planet. So… using Live Mesh, I took my “public scans” folder and synched it with my Live Mesh desktop. I then synched that to a folder on my notebook. Now when something comes in the mail, I can tell my wife to put it on the scanner, and then using Live Mesh’s remote desktop functionality, take control of my machine at home and scan the document. Once it has been scanned, it replicates up to my desktop and then to my notebook. Very cool!
And now, mobile….
Lastly, I discovered that there’s a mobile Live Mesh experience (http://m.mesh.com). So, using my Windows Mobile phone, I can get to my Live Mesh desktop, navigate to my “public scans” folder (or, of course, any other folder in my Live Mesh desktop), and see the PDF that was scanned and replicated above.
Clearly, I’m having far too much fun with Live Mesh, and I am eagerly awaiting whatever comes out of PDC around this…