Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Preview
Live Mesh: An 'Open Platform' for Developers
4/28/2008
Amit Mital, general manager of Microsoft's Live Mesh group, had a message for developers attending the Web 2.0 Expo April 22-25 in San Francisco: Think open platform.
His group's newly unveiled Web service for synchronizing data and connecting multiple devices is language and platform neutral. It will allow developers to use any tools, languages, formats, or protocols to connect their applications to the "mesh" environment, as Microsoft calls it.
"As a developer, you chose how you interact with Live Mesh," Mital said. "Whether it's Atom and JSON, POTS and RSS, or XML and WXML…. It's a platform that provides open access to the data model and APIs."
Microsoft announced Live Mesh earlier in the day at the San Francisco-based event. However, Mital's presentation there was the first public demonstration of the technology, which is still in beta. His team was formed two years ago, he said, and began looking into the relationships among a host of digital devices, from laptops to mobile phones, cameras to digital picture frames. All of these devices were "Internet connected at birth," but not to each other.
Live Mesh uses "the magic of software" to bring all of these devices together into a user's "personal mesh." It's both a platform and a service that models users' digital relationships. Microsoft describes it as a map of devices, data, applications and people the user cares about.
"With appropriate permission from the user," Mital explained, "developers can read information out of the Mesh to personalize their apps to the user, use the Mesh to communicate with and configure the user's devices, and to write data into the Mesh that will be available to the user on any of their devices."
It provides a number of "cloud" services, including storage, pub-sub and communication relays that developers can use to connect their applications and services with a user's "personal mesh." All of Live Mesh's services and runtime use a RESTful protocol, Mital said, to expose resources, and it uses the Atompub protocol to manage those resources.
This platform/service emerged from the work of Microsoft's Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, explained industry analyst Neil Macehiter. Ozzie developed distributed, synchronized environments for Lotus Notes and his own Groove products before joining Microsoft.
"In a nutshell, Live Mesh allows individuals, their devices, and their data to become aware of one other, and establish networks to permit file synchronization across all of it," Macehiter explained. "This is [Microsoft's] 'Software Plus Services' applied to the file management and collaboration you're familiar with on the desktop. You can think of Live Mesh as enabling your desktop to access cloud-based resources -- Live Mesh Explorer, if you like."
Macehiter sees Live Mesh as primarily a consumer play that allows Microsoft to build a bridge from where the world is today -- desktop/laptop/server -- to where the world is moving -- cloud-based services.
Recommended Reading
- Cedarville U Sets Up SonicWall Firewalls
Cedarville University in southwestern Ohio has implemented SonicWALL firewalls to provide high-speed gateway firewall protection for its 3,000 students.
- Data Breach Strikes U North Dakota Alumni Association
The alumni association for the University of North Dakota has gone public with a data breach that occurred when a laptop belonging to a software vendor was stolen from a vehicle. The computer contained the names of 84,000 university alumni, donors, and others, according to coverage by the Grand Forks Herald.
- Data Breach Strikes U North Dakota Alumni Association
The alumni association for the University of North Dakota has gone public with a data breach that occurred when a laptop belonging to a software vendor was stolen from a vehicle. The computer contained the names of 84,000 university alumni, donors, and others, according to coverage by the Grand Forks Herald.
- Tips for Selecting a Campus CRM tool
As competition for students increases, colleges and universities are looking more and more to customer (or constituent) relationship management software for help in remaining competitive.
- Intercast Networks Goes into Beta with Kazam Video Service at Internet2 Universities
Intercast Networks has redesigned Kazam, its student Internet TV and video service based on the company's VideoXpress platform. Following a spring semester alpha trial at Columbia and Purdue University, the company redesigned Kazam's interface based on student feedback and added additional content that caters to a student audience.
- Michigan State Managing MRI Images from Africa with Acuo Tech DICOM Services Grid
Doctors at Michigan State University have begun using the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) Services Grid from Acuo Technologies to transport and manage magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) results from a hospital in Malawi, Africa in order to monitor the impact of malaria on children.
