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Can someone explain what Foley is talking about here:

>>A collaboration and sync platform definitely has a place in the corporate world -- a fact Microsoft archrival IBM already has proven by putting REST interfaces on MQ, CICS, DB2 and various Lotus products and exposing the resulting data feeds to customers.

If that weren't proof enough that there are business uses for the services Live Mesh will deliver, an entirely different business unit at Microsoft has been building yet another sync platform -- the Microsoft Synchronization Framework -- which is 100 percent business-focused. (Why Microsoft didn't use the Sync Framework as the foundation for Live Mesh, instead of building the Live Mesh platform from scratch, is beyond me.) <<

redmondmag.com/.../article.asp

Ocean,

Do you have a specific question?

Mary Jo's article is long on buzzwords but doesn't hold together that well and is a bit confused so a specific area you find confusing might be easier than a rewrite.

A simple answer to the basic question of the article is "what is the difference between Sync Platform and FeedSync?" (The rest is pretty confused and uses some terms in ways that don't make a lot of sense and seem to think they're identical product targeting different audiences which is wrong.)

That basic question was answered by Richard Chung from the Live Mesh team on a Microsoft forum at forums.community.microsoft.com/.../613371a2-bfe1-4467-868c-dfb898d4ba13 so I'll let his answer clarify things.

-------------------------------

Live Mesh uses FeedSync integrated as part of its end-to-end S+S platform.  FeedSync and the Sync Framework are very complimentary and work well together to provide a comprehensive sync platform.  In terms of understanding which should be used when, there is a simple way to think about it.  If the synchronization scenario primarily revolves around variety of web feeds (RSS, ATOM etc) then FeedSync is the obvious choice.  On the other hand, when the scenario involves variety of custom data types other than feeds then the Sync Framework provides a flexible approach for building custom sync solutions.  So overall these two approaches are very complementary and provide a comprehensive sync platform from Microsoft.

I've been using Live Mesh for a month now and I have to agree with you Paul, I love it. Not only is the future of this platform bright and exciting, in its current state, its also incredibly usefully. Here's to the future, where things will only get better

Interframe

All I can say is wait until the PDC in October when you can use the platform rather than just the sample app.

:-)

We keep hearing this "platform" word.

Is it anything more than just a buzzword?  Mesh is greatly implemented, but its not a new idea.  Not by a long shot.

Are you talking about the same thing Mary is?  You're talking FeddSync, which she didn't even mention.

Oh, and by the way...the latest sales numbers show that the 360 sold less than the number 2 handheld --> the PSP.  Nintendo won this generation...they've got the top two in hardware sales.  

July NPD Hardware Sales

   * DS - 608,400

   * Wii - 555,000

   * PS3 - 224,900

   * PSP - 221,700

   * Xbox 360 - 204,800

   * PS2 - 155,500

I got it Mike...here's the answer to my question:

>>Mesh is based of the feedsync technology, which you can read about at dev.live.com/.../.<<

Now why the two exist?  Thats a different question...we'll wait and see what MS does with them.

Ocean,

I'd answer your real questions about Live Mesh as a platform and FeedSync and where you know less than Mary Jo Foley but not after you bombed the list with a meaningless off-topic flamebait.

I don't think there are any answers.  Time will tell...

Ozzie has his toy...now it's up to MS to come up with a way to recoup the cost of developing, deploying and maintaining it.

I noticed on an XP machine the Mesh updated required a re-boot. On my Vista Enterprise, no re-boot.

"Oh, and by the way...the latest sales numbers show that the 360 sold less than the number 2 handheld --> the PSP.  Nintendo won this generation...they've got the top two in hardware sales.  "

Thanks for the info, Ocean. That definitely makes me feel better about Live Mesh.

@shark LOL!  

Live Mesh is cool, even on a Mac:)  Can you share it with another user?  As in let my wife access my cloud contents via her own account?

Hardware sales? This is ridiculous. Paul, please, we need an ignore feature... or at least do something about this non stop off topic flooding / flaming / trolling.

"Can you share it with another user?  As in let my wife access my cloud contents via her own account?"

Yes we can*. Click on "Members" after you open the folder either on your desktop or on the online desktop and then click on 'Add'.

*Si se puede.

I love Live Mesh too. It has been very convenient.

Ok.  I promise, no fingers twisted behind my back, not to post any more OT items in the comment threads.  I might even stop posting.

There's a happy three-day weekend gift for you guys.

I have been using Mesh for a bit now, and absolutely love it. After Paul's description of his use on SyncToy in conjunction, I am considering doing the same type of thing. I am eager to see the OS X client for Mesh, too. Right now, I am manually saving a few test items from OS X to the cloud and making sure that they sync up to the other PC's that have the client and Live Desktop.

@Ocean - Like I said yesterday...get your own blog; please. I am betting that you might get 3 readers...if you count your parents and yourself.

--tayme

O/T:

"mikegalos@msn.com said:

@tayme

OK

Obama will pick Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius

McCain will pick Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman"

Wrong again! :-)

Sorry, had to bring that up.

@shark47

Yep. Got 0 for 2 on that one. Guess that makes me qualified to be a TV Political Analyst!

(Hey, but I did predict a Female Governor would be a VP candidate. Just the wrong one for the wrong party. Darn. That means I'm probably overqualified for that TV job.)

OT:

Paul, hope things aren't too serious with your father and he has a speedy recovery.

Any one know how to add a group of files all at once? I have 104 files in my protocol folder and don't wish to add them one at a time.

Paul, I said a prayer for your dad. Hope he gets better soon.

DRWAM

Is there a reason you aren't just sharing the protocol folder?

Now that I'm back on the web 24/7 and our new wireless network is active, I'm thinking about how I can practially use Live Mesh. I'm kind of in Internet overload, because I've just recently regained full home access. At the same time I'm a full time dad and I have friends too, so I want to step out of the house and enjoy some fresh air.

Off topic slightly:

Biden: Foreign policy expert. Good pick.

Palin: More unknown. Undermines GOP ticket.

Having a candidate who is computer literate: Priceless.

Back on topic: I'll have to talk with some people to see what we can do with Live Mesh practially. To me research and preparation is everything.

Peace.

O/T - slightly more:

"Off topic slightly:

Biden: Foreign policy expert. Good pick.

Palin: More unknown. Undermines GOP ticket."

Palin is a bold and risky choice from McCain. It worked in his advantage that no one was talking about the democratic convention after about 10AM ET yesterday. Everyone wanted to know who this Palin was. Anyway, my point is, Palin is a risky pick, but we will know if she really undermines the GOP ticket over the next few days.

To me, it almost looks like the Republicans and Democrats have roles reversed.

I'm too embarrassed to tell what I did wrong. It works well. Drag and Drop coming soon, but right click is just as easy. Any way, why would someone pay for MobileMe with free Live Mesh available as well as Windows calender or Google, and their associated email. Even if you have an iPhone, isn't less expensive to upgrade Hotmail to work on the iPhone, than the cost of MobileMe [if you did not want to use the free forwarding service from Hotmail to iPhone]. BTW, how much is the Hotmail upgrade?

I apologize for the O/T post or if this is construed as flamebait, but this is a pretty good article on CNN:

www.cnn.com/.../index.html

@shark47,

My Rebuttal (Sorry, O/T but I had to respond.)

Palin is currently under ethics investigation in her state. Attempting to fire a state trooper for potentially personal reasons isn't the professionalism of any governor. Plus she also taxed the oil companies, that will not sit well with conservatives who railed against the windfall profits tax that a democrat proposed. It was a cheap pander to women and actually drops my respect for McCain. The electoral map isn't there for McCain and this pick didn't do him any favors.

Peace.

Back on the topic: The reviews of Mesh are quite promising. I'm still trying to figure out how I'd use it practially.

Paul, I think like the TweakGuides site, perhaps this forum could use moderated forums instead of it being so open ended. And if we had off topic discussions, we could do that there instead of here. Just a thought.

Actually Sub, the article is purely anecdotal. There are no stats to prove anything that anyone has said there and the Journalist totaly LIED [:)], as Nullriver states right at their website that Apple indeed did respond to emails, but Nullriver's email filtered them out. All the Journalist had to do was read the same page where he could have gotten the info, but he obviously never checked at all, which totally destroys his credibility forever:)

Here's the proof which you can see was posted on 8/4/08

http://www.nullriver.com/

It's funny how my iPhone hasn't had a single problem or dropped call, and my hard drives aren't crashing in my Macs, but did in my PC's, but neither Apple, MS , Dell or any other computer reseller actually makes their own hard drive. In fact, I've never seen any of Dell RAID 1 config's ever work in numerous friends. Hmmm, strange complaint isolated to Stevo [I heard that he died]. Also, my friends constantly complain about their Dell products, but keep ordering from them. I would say that it fits to this 'unconditional' loyality that the author is suggesting may be unique to Apple [ but even I agree with him on this:)  ]

Any way, back OT. Mesh is great and can be used just with the browser and without the software. Live Mesh software adds more functionality. Just  right click on a file or folder after it's installed on your jaw may drop. Let it sync and go to another computer and logon and baddabing, complete access, even without the software installed, even on a Mac. I have not tried to edit, but you can still add [UL] to your folders, from a Mac too. Comcast had a file locker which is buggy, now just called storage. But MS made it much easier...and it's still beta! I will use it for storing documents to view when my techs need the protocols [although they are all printed in a book at the offices, which tends to get misplaced. Also, other files for work will be synced to my folders. This is just too sweet. Again, why pay for MobileMe? I mean, Live Mesh beta seems to work better than MobileMe retail, given what I've read that is.

@subzero

My rebuttal to your rebuttal (Still wildly OT)

The insanity of the Palin choice (assuming it was actually meant to improve the McCain ticket chances in November) is not the ethics investigation. That's bad but it'll be spun as "going a little over the line to defend your family is the kind of ethics we should reward rather than attack"

The insanity is that undecided women voters who formerly supported Senator Clinton will jump ship to back:

A woman who feels the role of government is to aid the oil companies

A woman who is on the radical fringe in favor of federal government intervention in reproductive choices

A woman whose response to drowning polar bears is to sue the DFW to have polar bears taken off the endangered species list.

A woman whose major experience consists of governing a town smaller than most apartment complexes and a partial term as governor of a state with less people than a medium size city. (Alaska has less than 650,000 people)

A woman who was only known to McCain by one short phone call before she was short-listed.

A woman who openly lied about her position on "the Bridge to Nowhere" in her first national campaign event. (Apparently she didn't realize that with the Internets people could read her inteview with the Anchorage paper from 2006 where she praised the congressional team for getting Alaska the project and called for more use of earmarks while they still had power to do it)

So, the investigation's the least of the RNC's worries with her.

On the other hand:

She probably will move Alaska's 3 electoral votes from "swing" to "solid R"

She'll be effective in getting last ditch funding for the RNC war chest from the extreme right wing of their base which can be used for congressional campaigns and held for 2012

She'll be usable to keep Biden toned down in the VP debate so it doesn't look like he's "picking on a girl"

We now return you from politics to something rational like whether the "I'm a Mac" commercials are funny.

Shark47

"no one was talking about the democratic convention after about 10AM ET yesterday."

True, managing the news cycle is important but I'm not sure muffled laughter is really what the RNC wanted.

Of course, today the topic of conversation no matter who the pick had been will switch over to the evacuation of New Orleans before Hurricane Gustav (which was just upgraded to Category 4) makes landfall.

And the topic of conversation during the Republican convention is whether the new levees hold under an expected 15-18' storm surge while everybody's minds slip back to the national horor and disgrace of 3 years ago.

Mike, you're just as good and probably better than most on CCN and Larry King Live. I watch and get nauseated at how an answer to Larry question just gets dodged and becomes a political ad, mostly full of rhetorical BS. You should submit a /résumé.

Also, Hotmail premium for $20 with Live mesh and the calender beats the price of MobileMe at $99. That's 5 years vs one yr subscription, and that's if you just want to use the mail app on the iPhone like any other email service, otherwise it's free.

I'm kinda laughing at how ironic it is that this topic is littered with OT posts.  :)

Ocean

Perhaps it would help if you looked up the definition of the word irony.

I do not think it means what you think it means.

>>an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected. <<

dictionary.reference.com/.../irony

Example: Complaints of >>meaningless off-topic<< material in a thread ostensibly dedicated to Live Mesh...

...and then the following action:

>>The insanity of the Palin choice...<<

Would you prefer this word:  http://tinyurl.com/nycl4  ?

Good night.  :)

Ocean

See. That wasn't hard but your example was ironic in that it showed why it wasn't ironic when trying to show it was.

Any thread where someone complains things have gone off topic is one where things have gone off topic so it isn't contradictory, it's definitional. Exactly the opposite.

As the old saying goes, "That isn't ironic, it's sarcastic. But it's ironic that you didn't know the difference."

I'll give you points for a valiant, but failed, rebuttal.

This is EXACTLY why I am at this site. I learn so much about things that I would never know about if I did not read here. Live Mesh will be so useful to me that other methods can be backups to the Live Mesh service, such as when we could lose internet access at our office or the hospital. You guys got me to fully use Exchange's features, install Vista, etc...

Thanks,

Doc

DRWAM, I agree.

I learn a lot here. On very rare occassion, from the petty bickering. But the articles, blogs, and responses can be useful. I still say though Mr. Ghazi's article and website are pretty handy as well. I just wish we were could disagree in here without being so disagreeable in her. Not you Doc, its been fun debating with you in here.

Peace.

That's coll sub,I'm outnumbered at my own home where my 3 daughters [7,7 and 8] and true Windows fangirls. They laughed at the Apple logo at startup, pointing and saying someone took a bite from an Apple. They search for IE when using it, and actually found IE 5, which transfered over from the migration asst, which transfers everything, even the desktop icons in the same place. It sorta takes the fun out of doing it yourself. We still use IE on our PC's. I just feel more secure with MS products than 3rd party [FF], and IE worked better with Flash addons.

Peace Bro.

>>We still use IE on our PC's. I just feel more secure with MS products than 3rd party [FF]<<

That's an interesting sentiment.