We Got Served

I recently put up a post to let everyone know that Microsoft had made Live Mesh available to a wider audience over at www.mesh.com.  I have been playing with it a bit and will withhold judgement a bit longer, but I have enjoyed perusing the comments and seeing what you guys think of it.  To that end, I wanted to follow up on some of those comments and highlight a couple of things on the Internet related to Live Mesh that have caught my eye over the last couple of days.

The Live Mesh team had indicated on their forums that this wider release was specifically for US users, but that international users could participate by changing their Windows region and language settings to EN-US.  Mick pointed out in the comments that he was able to sign up from the UK.  He did not mention whether he had to change the language and region settings, but at least it is confirmation from someone we know that international customers can indeed join in.

Ken asked the question I’m sure came immediately to mind for a lot of us: So when can we expect to get Live Mesh to work with my Windows Home Server?  The obvious answer is: Who knows., but there is a long sticky post on the Live Mesh forums for feature requests.  I haven’t read all sixteen pages yet, but I would imagine someone has asked a similar question there.  I do recommend anyone interested in the future of Live Mesh try reading through at least part of the list.  There are some neat ideas in there and enough consensus on some requests that Microsoft will almost certainly take heed.

Colin Walker was the first to comment the other day, lamenting the lack of mobile support.  Not being much of a mobile phone user, I have no idea how useful it is, but LiveSide was tipped off that the mobile portal for Live Mesh has gone live over at http://m.mesh.com.  You still can’t add mobile devices to the Live Mesh desktop or the client-side software and there is no mobile client software yet, but it seems to be a start in the right direction. 

Finally, there was a bit of discussion in the comments about how to accomplish specific tasks with Live Mesh, such as synching folders between devices directly, without passing through the cloud.  For anyone interested in tutorials on specific Live Mesh applications, I would suggest checking out Redmond Pie’s Live Mesh Scenarios Directory.  There’s not much there yet, but I suspect it will become a valuable resource in the future.  If any of our readers decide to post a tutorial there, be sure to drop us line and let us know.

As I mentioned, I am withholding judgement on Live Mesh until I can play with it a bit more.  Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that this is a technical preview, so I am sure that things will change a great deal in the future, but Live Mesh is shaping up to be an important component in Microsoft’s Windows Live strategy.