Above The Cloud

Straight to the point: if you haven’t signed up for the Mesh beta, go do it now!

So what is Mesh?

Think of Mesh (for now) as a synchronization platform. In Mesh you define folders, and you can sync those folders on 0 or more devices (such as computers, phones, etc). I say “0 or more” because you can just use the web interface if you desire, giving you access to your folders from anywhere.

I don’t want to go into what Mesh is and how to use it, so I’ll refer you to some links:

• Wikipedia Entry – Live Mesh
• Live Services Blog
• Live Mesh Blog

So why am I here?

What I really want to talk about is what’s coming next. You may or may not be aware, but there are in fact two Mesh’ (Mesh’s? Meshes? Mesheses?). Live Mesh Beta is available for anyone to use, however there is also a Live Mesh CTP. The latter is a completely separate Mesh (you cannot share folders across both). This second Mesh represents the ongoing development around Mesh. Users can still get practical usage out of the existing Mesh Beta without risk of the new development effort impacting them.

So what’s different?

Well for starters, access. The Beta is available for all, however you have to apply for a ‘token’ to get access to the CTP (invitations are managed through Microsoft Connect).

Functionally, they work much the same. There is a web desktop, and a client to download locally. Something of interest: the Mesh CTP client is actually called ‘Live Framework Client’. I won’t speculate as to what this might mean going forward (ok a little: the client will be more than just folder sync I’m sure, as we’ll see in a minute). The Mesh is referred to as the Live Framework Sandbox in the CTP version.

The functionality that you are familiar with is the folder sync, the ‘News’, and the ability to remote control to your various devices. In the CTP version, folder sync and remote access is disabled. I’m unsure how long this will last, but for now you can do these things in the Mesh Beta so its not a big concern.

So what’s the point?

This:

Applications! Notice the difference in the top bar from the other screen shot above of Mesh Beta? The ‘Apps’ tab lets you add applications to your Mesh desktop. In this case I’ve added an instance of ‘Corkboard’ and an instance of ‘MeshLists’ to my desktop.

This is what a lot of people have been expecting for a while now. Fully fledged applications running inside Mesh. And the best thing is that its not just constrained to the Web Desktop. When my Live Framework Client syncs, I get an icon on my Vista desktop. This icon is suspiciously named the same as the application I added to my Web desktop.
When I double click it:

The same application is now running on my desktop. And in fact, the same application now runs on my laptop as well, because it also has the Live Framework Client.

If you have access to the Mesh CTP, you may or may not be aware that the latest Azure SDK has a bunch of tutorials around Live Services, including the new Mesh CTP. It demonstrates using Live Delegation Consent to get access to a requesting user’s personal data in Live (such as messenger contacts, Mesh News, etc). Go check it out!

Summary

That’s a brief overview of the Mesh CTP. You should apply for a token now and check it out, then let me know what cool apps you’ve built for it! I can’t wait until they let the folder sync happen so that we can start doing interesting things with our apps around shared data.

This is going to be a very interesting year.