Back in April when we did the initial tech preview release of Live Mesh we emphasized a vision for how the offering would bring together your world of devices – a starting point to deliver on the data, devices, and people aspects of our vision. With this beta release we are making another significant step toward this goal. In particular… with this Beta we are providing limited availability of our new Mac and Windows Mobile 6 clients – providing users with a wider range of devices that can participate in their mesh. Later this week as the beta rolls out, access to the Mac client will be provided from the device ring experience at www.mesh.com. Instructions for accessing the Windows Mobile client will be made available at this blog later in the week.
This is the missing piece (well, that and a OneNote Mobile that isn’t totally lame) of my mobile data strategy. I’ve been using Live Mesh for months, first just my desktop to the web, then my desktop through the web to my netbook and back. Just like my Exchange data, I’m secure that anything I change in once place will be the same everywhere else I access it.
The freedom this gives me is hard to explain. For my Exchange data, email, calendar, contacts and tasks, it doesn’t matter if I use my desktop, my netbook or my Treo to access any of it. I’ll use whatever’s most convenient at the time. I’m writing this post on my desktop at home because I’m getting ready to podcast, but I could just as easily post it on my netbook from Chipotle (where there is, alas, no WiFi, so I have to tether to the EVDO connection on my Treo), or from Mobile PostIt on my Treo lying on the couch. My data is completely independent from the device I happen to use to access it. And now I’ll have the same freedom with editing documents, spreadsheets, syncing music and videos to my Treo that I have with my other computers.
This is gonna be big.
I don’t know if it’s a breach of netiquette to reply to one’s own post, but screw it, it’s my blog, I’ll do as I like.
A perfect example of what I’m talking about just happened. I remembered I needed to check off some tasks I did today, so I picked up the Treo, where I had easy access to them on the Today screen thanks to PocketBreeze.
After checking off the tasks on my Treo, I remembered I needed to add an appointment for tomorrow night. But instead of entering it on the Treo, I turned to my desktop and entered it in Outlook on the desktop where the larger screen afforded me a better look at my time commitments for the week.
I did both of these things without moving from my desk chair. Just accessing the same data with different tools better suited for different tasks.
Mobile Me done right! Well, that’s what I hope anyway. Looks like this is going to work for Macs as well and since I dual boot with Boot Camp into Vista, this looks like it may be more useful than Mobile Me (what a stupid name!). I do use Mobile Me and it does work for me, but it seems that Live Mesh may actually be a more viable solution. We’ll see.