Microsoft's Live Mesh is here, opening new horizons beyond the Windows operating systems and into the cloud, offering a new completely cross-platform perspective and user experience. Essentially, Live Mesh has been designed as a 'software-plus-services' platform set up to span across a wide variety of devices from PCs, laptops, media devices, mobile phones, game consoles, and even Mac computers. The key concept behind Live Mesh is synchronization across an ever increasing universe of devices. Microsoft aims to not only mesh different devices together but also taking the connection to the Internet, enabling users to create, manage, collaborate on, access and share content across devices and over the Internet. Formerly code-named Horizon, Live Mesh went live via a Limited Technical Preview and as such, it is not yet accessible to the public.

"Our design goals for Live Mesh are to have your devices work together, your data and applications available from anywhere, the people you need to connect with just a few clicks away for sharing and collaborating and the information you need to stay up-to-date and always be available. We're achieving these design goals by combining the power of 'cloud services,' with the convenience and rich experience of your many devices," explained Amit Mital, General Manager of Live Mesh.

Microsoft has a set of four princes that it is using in order to develop Live Mesh. According to Mital, the Redmond company considers services as the core of the platform, while delivering the same application programing interfaces both to the clients and in the cloud. In addition, the company has worked to offer an open, extendable data model as well as a flexible application model. This means that through the Live Mesh API access will be permitted to core services such as storage, sync, newsfeed, membership and peer-to-peer (P2P) communications. At the same time, developers will be able to benefit from a common programing model across not only the devices but also the could, with the same basic data model.

"This is a limited Technology Preview and we're seeking your feedback. There's some pent-up demand, so we appreciate your patience and understanding as we scale the system. We'll do our best to scale as quickly as possible, but we also want to make sure the system is reliable and responsive. Second, initially the user interface will be English only and we are hosting the service from our United States data center; this may have impact on some users. We're working on this, and will announce broader availability in the coming months. Third, this Technology Preview initially supports Windows (Vista & XP) machines but our vision of your device mesh extends far beyond this. In the near future, we'll add support for the Mac and mobile devices, and then we'll build upon that foundation," Mital added.


Hands on with Live Mesh