Get the Mesh Video Player

Brian Gorbett has a good post about how he built a Meshified video player.  What’s especially cool about this is that Brian also posted a screen cast video of him Meshifying the app, a link to the source code, AND a link to install the Meshified video player into your Mesh (CTP – developer version, not the Beta version) without having to touch the source code.  Since the CTP-developer version of Mesh is still not widely available, I thought I’d post a couple screenshots of what adding an app to your Mesh actually looks like as you go through the process. 

First, you have to allow access for the app into your Mesh.

Then, you get the Mesh Apps Screen.  Notice that the first time you do this, you see the app but is says “You have zero instances” – you have to create an instance of the app (you can have multiple if you like).

Next, you name your instance of the Mesh Video Player, which I just called “First Mesh Video Player” here.

And, voila, you have your Mesh Video Player!  A couple things to note – there’s a mesh news feed that acts as a log of your activities – what you added, new instances created, etc.  Also, there’s a big orange button to browse for other apps.  We’ll come back to that in a second.

Now that you have the Mesh Video Player in installed in your Mesh, you might want to run it.  When you click the “First Mesh Video Player” Link, you get some information about the app, a filtered news feed about what you’ve done with the app, and a list of the permissions it has – what it can read and update via the Live Framework.  As you can see, this app reads my Windows Live Profile, list of devices in Mesh, can read and update contacts, and has full rights to the news feed.  After checking this out, you open the app by clicking “Open application”. 

It loads into your Mesh, and you can see it on your Mesh desktop!  (You need to supply your own video.) 

One last thing – remember I mentioned the big orange button that lets you browse for other apps?  Here’s what you get if you go there.  

At this point in the CTP, the list includes some cool – and functional – little sample apps… a collaborative crossword, a shared list system, a way to leave notes for people, and CrowdVote – a simple utility for collaborative decision making.  You can learn more about these at www.MicrosoftMeshPack.com.