Live Mesh and the new Microsoft [Live Mesh and the new Microsoft]

northerngeek — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:22:07 GMT

Quick yes or no question:

Does anybody think MS will make a big success out of LiveMesh? They have other brilliant offerings such as Silverlight (and yes Rome wasn't built in a day) but adoption is still mainly limited to the technically literate. At present LiveMesh doesn't serve a gret deal of purpose to a very large proportion of the population, and this is what MS is using to stay relevant. Don't misinterpret my words, I think the idea is great, it's just I question the timing:

At present not many people need the basic feature
By the time developers have made tools is it possible that somebody else will have arrived with a truely multi-platform solution?
I can see one of the most promising things for a technology like Live Mesh is the new lines of UMPCs and other road warrior second PCs- however at present they don't run on Linux or Mac, yes Mac support is planned, but Linux and devices like the EePC won't run this whilst MS hasn't really broken mainstream consciousness yet with the UMPC- personally I think the form factor still needs some changes.
Will this sort of thing be in the next Windws release? If not I can see something else doing the same and getting all the attention.

Just some concerns, I can understand the numerous reasons for not supporting Linux including the fact that many would turn their noses at any MS product for some reason, but I can't help feel I am not the only one who thinks this like many great MS products could get wrongfully overshadowed by a Google App for instance and this is the thing that is praised as keeping MS relevant!

Other examples:

MS Live image search- best UI out there by a long way, barely known about
MS Live Video- great preview funcionality nobody paid any attention to
MS Vitual Earth- a brilliant GUI and fantastically useful features- rarely used by anybody I know

MS is very good at building on past successes but I don't see much that will definitely keep them relevant in the near future, I hope I am wrong but I think many people rarely see the brilliance of this company and it saddens me.

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Live Mesh and the new Microsoft [Live Mesh and the new Microsoft]