The MSDN Flash (signup) team in Australia let me write the editorial this month, below is what got sent:

Angus Logan here! Finula has asked me to be Guest Editor of this MSDN Flash to share my insights on Live Mesh. I look after technical product management for the Live Platform in Redmond. It’s great to be back in Australia, hanging out and working Tech.Ed! Because Amit Mital did the Tech.Ed Keynote earlier today on software +services, I wanted to share some details on Live Mesh from a dev’s perspective.

Angus Logan's device meshWhat is it?
Company line: A software+services platform, an open platform and a platform experience.

Angus’ view: You may use lots of devices every day: mobile phone, home/work PC(s) or Mac(s), digital photo frame, Qantas Club internet kiosk, Foxtel iQ, or Nabaztag. You like using these devices, but accessing the programs and files you want on each device is hard (watch Ray’s introduction).

The first application (the tip of the iceberg) built on the Live Mesh platform is available at www.mesh.com. It provides a way for you to add devices to your mesh and connect to them remotely; you can easily share files and folders across devices or with friends and stay up to date with the latest news/activities from across your mesh. For more info watch the video tour and sign up for the tech preview to help us scale the platform!

I’m a dev – what’s in it for me? There is a ton of plumbing (video tour)! You could build it yourself (we did) but you don’t need to. Focus on your app, not the underlying infrastructure.

Our mantra: Comprehensive, Simple, Open
We haven’t released an SDK for Live Mesh yet (join waitlist) but here is a heads-up on the core components of Live Mesh: the Mesh Operating Environment, the resource model, and an app delivery/deployment.

The Mesh Operating Environment (MOE) runs on the local computer (PC, future Windows Mobile and Mac and other device types). And it also runs in Microsoft’s datacenters. You can code against it with the same syntax for cloud or client, online or offline, fast or lightning-fast. Under the hood, MOE sync’s the data between devices (p2p) and people using FeedSync.

The resource model consists of enclosures inside data entries wrapped up in a feed which may live in a feed of feeds – you will be able to program the mesh using .NET object model, or RESTful API and ATOM(PUB), RSS, JSON or POX. You can do things like serialize .NET objects into data entries and then LINQ across them, when updated they’ll be sync’d to all necessary devices (and people).

A Mesh Application is a special app, it can be accessed online (via the Live Desktop) and offline access (via machine w/ the MOE installed). The code (Silverlight or JavaScript) and the application data is stored and deployed in the Mesh to each device.

For more information check out the Live Mesh Blog and forum, and don’t forget to sign up to the Live Mesh technical preview today!