MeshPack availability

2008-11-14T23:39:38Z

The recent attention around the MeshPack apps has come as a pleasant surprise to one who’s been working on them for a while. Sincerest thanks for your interest. Not trying to dodge the questions that have come my way (especially the requests for the SDK), but the CTP program is managed by the Live Framework team and I can tell you that they’re working hard. Getting the SDK into people’s hands is a major priority for the team, so stay engaged with them and sign up (if you haven’t already) to get on the list for the developer program at http://dev.live.com/liveframework/sdk/ Interested devs can also access the documentation at MSDN even before getting accepted.

As I outlined originally, the MeshPack apps are intended to exercise the capabilities of the Live Framework. They’re fun, light and, ultimately, are designed for end users. But, with any luck, will be a catalyst for your thoughts.

And, I wanted to let you know that I read and appreciate your comments and messages. While I may not get to respond to each one individually (got to keep up with the day job), I read and appreciate the comments, even if I can’t respond directly.

Announcing MeshPack

2008-10-30T22:36:00Z

Welcome. If you’re here – the Microsoft Startup Labs developer blog – chances are good that you’ve been working with Live Mesh, attended Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference and are looking for more perspective on working with Live Mesh, which is exactly what I’d like to share with you here.

My team develops prototypes and product concepts, and we’re learning a lot about new and emerging Microsoft developer technologies. We’re now working with Live Mesh, a part of the Azure Services Platform on which we built the MeshPack apps, and we’d like to tell you more about the Mesh.

Live Mesh is a unified computing environment that gives data access, device access and synchronization for all my important data and software. This means I can access anything I need from all my computers, from a web browser, and even from my smart phone. Mesh also supports sharing so that I can give someone access to a folder. It’s nicely integrated with the desktop and has a great web interface. For more information on what will ship in the first version check out www.mesh.com.

The Live Framework includes APIs that can provide the same synchronization and anywhere access to new applications. It provides all the network connectivity management, message routing, cloud storage, and a simple synchronization model via FeedSync. The entire API is exposed as a series of hyperlinked feeds that can be programmed with APP (or RSS, JSON and POX). This means that any language or tool set that can handle HTTP and Atom Pub can be used to write Mesh Aware applications. Microsoft will be providing libraries for Silverlight, .NET (Winforms or WPF) and javascript. This means I can write my application data to a consistent and familiar API and format, and Mesh will take care of making this data available anywhere that is supported by the Live Framework: the desktop (PC and Mac), the Web and mobile. On the desktop, Mesh provides a service running on localhost so that my web application can run offline with no modification. In this scenario, synchronization is key so that my program can continue to modify data and can resolve changes made by another device, or another user who is sharing an application. To run a web application from within Mesh, I can upload web client side code such as html/css/javascript or Silverlight and have my application hosted on Mesh. Not only is my application’s data available anywhere, I can also run the application from any one of my mesh enabled devices, or from a browser.

The Live Framework makes it easier for developers to build software+services that can exploit local resource and computing, and that can provide communication and collaboration on the Internet. Mesh helps developers solve a bunch of hard problems:

How do I continue to access data when I’m not connected?

How do I share information with multiple users asynchronously?

How do I take advantage of native hardware?

How do I take my desktop application and connect it to the Internet?

How do I take my web application and extend it to the desktop?

What’s next?

We’re still learning what we can build with the Live Framework. Our early experiments are very promising. Mesh makes it easy to build applications that are integrated with the connectivity of the Internet but that can break out of the browser to take advantage of native device capabilities. We’ve had a lot of fun so far, but we can’t wait to dig deeper and create compelling products and experiences that Live Mesh can enable. Stay tuned!