Steve Gillmor’s mind is quite a trip. You can see why on his post over on TechCrunch about Microsoft’s Mesh.
The only good excuse I’ve heard so far why Microsoft Mesh isn’t interesting is “I hate Microsoft.”
That’s a tough thing to overcome, but I thought Steve Gillmor was one of those who hated Microsoft too. After all, he bought a Mac and kept repeating on his blog “Office is dead.”
But, let’s translate Gillmor: Microsoft Mesh is fascinating. Agreed.
What do you think now that you’ve had a few days to check it out?
Heheh, I knew Twitter and FriendFeed was affecting my writing.
Scobleizer 
I’m feeling a bit sorry for Steve, given the “too many words, man!” audience at TechCrunch 🙂
And to totally derail the thread, are you not using Disqus yet? I’ve swung from loving it to dropping it to loving it again, thanks to Daniel Ha being A Smart Cookie. Surely you can use your influence to make Matt M implement it on WordPress.com? 🙂
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I’m feeling a bit sorry for Steve, given the “too many words, man!” audience at TechCrunch 🙂
And to totally derail the thread, are you not using Disqus yet? I’ve swung from loving it to dropping it to loving it again, thanks to Daniel Ha being A Smart Cookie. Surely you can use your influence to make Matt M implement it on WordPress.com? 🙂
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Scoble: I wrote my thoughts already here:
http://www.intomobile.com/2008/04/23/microsoft-mesh-is-not-about-file-sync-its-about-enabling-new-experiences-with-your-data.html
But I’ll sum it up in one sentence: Mesh solves the data portability problem and is not about file sync, but instead about new ways to visualize and manipulate your data in the same desktop metaphor people are already used to today.
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Scoble: I wrote my thoughts already here:
http://www.intomobile.com/2008/04/23/microsoft-mesh-is-not-about-file-sync-its-about-enabling-new-experiences-with-your-data.html
But I’ll sum it up in one sentence: Mesh solves the data portability problem and is not about file sync, but instead about new ways to visualize and manipulate your data in the same desktop metaphor people are already used to today.
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Some geeks hate anything that becomes a giant.
Of course, Microsoft has done some unethical things in its quarter of a century existence – but Bill Gates is trying to make up for that in this middle years of his life
How Microsoft eventually reacts to Yahoo may signal a new era of enlightenment or the same cutthroat ‘business as usual’ without Bill Gates
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Some geeks hate anything that becomes a giant.
Of course, Microsoft has done some unethical things in its quarter of a century existence – but Bill Gates is trying to make up for that in this middle years of his life
How Microsoft eventually reacts to Yahoo may signal a new era of enlightenment or the same cutthroat ‘business as usual’ without Bill Gates
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Out of context here, but responding to the weirdly named SearchEngines, I’ve to say that I’ll be more than happy to see Microsoft let go of Yahoo.
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Out of context here, but responding to the weirdly named SearchEngines, I’ve to say that I’ll be more than happy to see Microsoft let go of Yahoo.
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Gillmor’s article has been an interesting read, no doubt. Highly recommended, despite its length.
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Gillmor’s article has been an interesting read, no doubt. Highly recommended, despite its length.
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This embracing of Web 2.0 is the enterprise move that Microsoft needs to stay the leader in that space for the next 10 years. It’s the next problem they need to solve for the enterprise that had begun to look for the Web 2.0 solution and will go elsewhere for if Micrososft doesn’t start moving on their story.
Playing in the consumer space first while they figure all this out will keep this mesh announcement from all being called just plain FUD. Just working in that space and feeding and keeping the bloggers and podcasters busy will keep them relevant for a period. In the end it will sell the next version of Windows.
Once they work out the consumer mesh all of that work will be packaged with other features into a nice enterprise web 2.0 layer.
Think of what Exchange did for Microsoft. New servers, new training modules, new programming language libraries, etc. This is the kind of stuff that butters the bread inside Micrososft Eneterprise divisions and keeps the Business unit’s trains moving.
New versions of Exchange must seem relevant or they will be boycotted like Vista has in the Enterprise.
The Mesh will give Microsoft enterprise developers the hooks to keep them happy as they build on the Web 2.0 layer at the server, desktop and mobile device level.
Steve is obviously excited about the vision of Ozzie’s work of turning the ship around again and agrees if he can pull it off, there is a future for Microsoft on the road up ahead.
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This embracing of Web 2.0 is the enterprise move that Microsoft needs to stay the leader in that space for the next 10 years. It’s the next problem they need to solve for the enterprise that had begun to look for the Web 2.0 solution and will go elsewhere for if Micrososft doesn’t start moving on their story.
Playing in the consumer space first while they figure all this out will keep this mesh announcement from all being called just plain FUD. Just working in that space and feeding and keeping the bloggers and podcasters busy will keep them relevant for a period. In the end it will sell the next version of Windows.
Once they work out the consumer mesh all of that work will be packaged with other features into a nice enterprise web 2.0 layer.
Think of what Exchange did for Microsoft. New servers, new training modules, new programming language libraries, etc. This is the kind of stuff that butters the bread inside Micrososft Eneterprise divisions and keeps the Business unit’s trains moving.
New versions of Exchange must seem relevant or they will be boycotted like Vista has in the Enterprise.
The Mesh will give Microsoft enterprise developers the hooks to keep them happy as they build on the Web 2.0 layer at the server, desktop and mobile device level.
Steve is obviously excited about the vision of Ozzie’s work of turning the ship around again and agrees if he can pull it off, there is a future for Microsoft on the road up ahead.
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Out of context here, but responding to the weirdly named SearchEngines, I’ve to say that I’ll be more than happy to see Microsoft let go of Yahoo.
Comment by Yuvi — April 28, 2008 @ 12:34 am
I happen to agree with you,yahoo is a company in decline and all this posturing on Yangs part is juts sad.
I have a distinct feeling that Microsoft’s search effort are about to ramp up and the Yahoo deal fits into this.
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Out of context here, but responding to the weirdly named SearchEngines, I’ve to say that I’ll be more than happy to see Microsoft let go of Yahoo.
Comment by Yuvi — April 28, 2008 @ 12:34 am
I happen to agree with you,yahoo is a company in decline and all this posturing on Yangs part is juts sad.
I have a distinct feeling that Microsoft’s search effort are about to ramp up and the Yahoo deal fits into this.
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i love Microsoft
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i love Microsoft
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Seems to be just simple sync (currently), or as I saw it described, a glorified .Mac. Beyond that it seems a bunch of promises, vision, or “coming in the future” features/ideas. We all know how Microsoft has done in that arena before. Over promise and under deliver so I guess only time will tell. Ain’t getting excited yet.
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Seems to be just simple sync (currently), or as I saw it described, a glorified .Mac. Beyond that it seems a bunch of promises, vision, or “coming in the future” features/ideas. We all know how Microsoft has done in that arena before. Over promise and under deliver so I guess only time will tell. Ain’t getting excited yet.
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I saw/heard the interview on ustream and chat. I am not that impressed. In the middle of Steve’s TechCrunch article, he posted some questions.
“What’s the difference between this and FolderShare. Never mind that who cares about FolderShare to begin with. What about Sharepoint? What about Groove? No wonder there’s even a little doubt that Microsoft can get traction with this, what with channel conflict left and right with its own flailing Net-grappling product lines.”
Syncing and some kind of mystery API? MS is fast out of the gates with this new plan and I can’t even tell what is in the race. FolderShare and Office Live are both new MS efforts. Sharepoint, although I enjoyed using it, it a dodo bird. I LOVED Grove. MS bought it and it just never gained traction.
What I want to know is what Mesh is compared to something like Amazon web services? I still can’t tell the difference except some claimed API layer like HAL from windows. An API on an API, geat googly moogly, what a mess.
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I saw/heard the interview on ustream and chat. I am not that impressed. In the middle of Steve’s TechCrunch article, he posted some questions.
“What’s the difference between this and FolderShare. Never mind that who cares about FolderShare to begin with. What about Sharepoint? What about Groove? No wonder there’s even a little doubt that Microsoft can get traction with this, what with channel conflict left and right with its own flailing Net-grappling product lines.”
Syncing and some kind of mystery API? MS is fast out of the gates with this new plan and I can’t even tell what is in the race. FolderShare and Office Live are both new MS efforts. Sharepoint, although I enjoyed using it, it a dodo bird. I LOVED Grove. MS bought it and it just never gained traction.
What I want to know is what Mesh is compared to something like Amazon web services? I still can’t tell the difference except some claimed API layer like HAL from windows. An API on an API, geat googly moogly, what a mess.
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Start.com was a failure
Live.com was a failure
Mesh.com is a failure
M$ on the web, a total failure
I hate M$ and will never use anything that comes from them. So what? It’s my choice. You should ask why I hate them instead of calling me names.
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Start.com was a failure
Live.com was a failure
Mesh.com is a failure
M$ on the web, a total failure
I hate M$ and will never use anything that comes from them. So what? It’s my choice. You should ask why I hate them instead of calling me names.
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I think that “mind” has been meshed (in a blender) itself, buzzword-loopy city, I mean “information bus fail-over to multiple streams”, classic. Would it ever hurt him to use the English language, and some some stream-of-consciousness lucid-dreaming Web 2.0-speak?
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err ‘not’
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I think that “mind” has been meshed (in a blender) itself, buzzword-loopy city, I mean “information bus fail-over to multiple streams”, classic. Would it ever hurt him to use the English language, and some some stream-of-consciousness lucid-dreaming Web 2.0-speak?
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err ‘not’
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What happened to my earlier comment?
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What happened to my earlier comment?
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Harold it was held in moderation until i approved it. From now on you won’t get held up, sorry about that. I do that to prevent spam from taking over here.
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Harold it was held in moderation until i approved it. From now on you won’t get held up, sorry about that. I do that to prevent spam from taking over here.
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There’s more reason to not use it than “I Hate Microsoft”; those of us who hold Microsoft in contempt do so for a *REASON*. It’s not religious, it’s a simple question of self-preservation.
Mesh doesn’t work on Linux or Mac or BSD. It’s of zero value to most geeks, who are the only ones who would ever use such a service. Even when/if they make a half-broken port to the Mac, that doesn’t solve putting it on a server (no, Windows is not a suitable server) to produce bigger services. Meanwhile, there are other, better solutions available NOW that are cross-platform. That makes it dead on arrival.
Second, there’s Microsoft’s history. They introduce these services not to compete, but to poison the well for others. Every single time they’ve done anything with the ‘Net, it’s been to follow and destroy competition; they dumped MSIE to kill cross-platform Netscape, then let it rot for 6 years because the ‘Net is the enemy of their desktop empire. MSN was going to be their Yahoo-killer. Total failure; at some point it’ll be turned off. MSN Search was going to be their Google-killer; it’s one of the worst search services ever made. MSN Music was going to kill iTunes; they just turned off the DRM servers, and have shafted everyone who bought music from them. Hailstorm, Live.com, Sidewalk, there’s an endless stream of disasters from MS.
So now they have another thing to make Sharepoint obsolete, because Google Apps and AWS and Yahoo Pipes have scared them. Why would anyone be dumb enough to tie themselves to this? It’ll just get killed as soon as the marketing team moves on to attacking another company.
It’s the same story as Silverfish, er, Silverlight. Flash ate their lunch, and AJAX in browsers is reaching rich application level. They can see their death in this, so they release a mediocre copy. But nobody’s stupid enough to use Silverlight. Even MS’s own people can’t find outside developers willing to waste their time learning it.
Those who do not study history are doomed to repeatedly buy stupid technologies from Microsoft. Only a fool ties himself to a MS technology.
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There’s more reason to not use it than “I Hate Microsoft”; those of us who hold Microsoft in contempt do so for a *REASON*. It’s not religious, it’s a simple question of self-preservation.
Mesh doesn’t work on Linux or Mac or BSD. It’s of zero value to most geeks, who are the only ones who would ever use such a service. Even when/if they make a half-broken port to the Mac, that doesn’t solve putting it on a server (no, Windows is not a suitable server) to produce bigger services. Meanwhile, there are other, better solutions available NOW that are cross-platform. That makes it dead on arrival.
Second, there’s Microsoft’s history. They introduce these services not to compete, but to poison the well for others. Every single time they’ve done anything with the ‘Net, it’s been to follow and destroy competition; they dumped MSIE to kill cross-platform Netscape, then let it rot for 6 years because the ‘Net is the enemy of their desktop empire. MSN was going to be their Yahoo-killer. Total failure; at some point it’ll be turned off. MSN Search was going to be their Google-killer; it’s one of the worst search services ever made. MSN Music was going to kill iTunes; they just turned off the DRM servers, and have shafted everyone who bought music from them. Hailstorm, Live.com, Sidewalk, there’s an endless stream of disasters from MS.
So now they have another thing to make Sharepoint obsolete, because Google Apps and AWS and Yahoo Pipes have scared them. Why would anyone be dumb enough to tie themselves to this? It’ll just get killed as soon as the marketing team moves on to attacking another company.
It’s the same story as Silverfish, er, Silverlight. Flash ate their lunch, and AJAX in browsers is reaching rich application level. They can see their death in this, so they release a mediocre copy. But nobody’s stupid enough to use Silverlight. Even MS’s own people can’t find outside developers willing to waste their time learning it.
Those who do not study history are doomed to repeatedly buy stupid technologies from Microsoft. Only a fool ties himself to a MS technology.
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Mark: Mesh will work on Macs within a couple of months.
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Mark: Mesh will work on Macs within a couple of months.
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Robert: That’s not accurate. MS *says* that Mesh will work on Macs in a couple months.
Translated to English from MS-PR-speak, they may release a half-working version in Q3 or Q4 2008, maybe 2009. It will never have parity or full compatibility with the Windows version.
Silverlight, Entourage, MSIE for Mac, etc. all show how this really works. Office for Mac is a totally separate product from Windows Office, and isn’t fully compatible even now.
Believing anything MS PR says is a great way to ruin your business.
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Robert: That’s not accurate. MS *says* that Mesh will work on Macs in a couple months.
Translated to English from MS-PR-speak, they may release a half-working version in Q3 or Q4 2008, maybe 2009. It will never have parity or full compatibility with the Windows version.
Silverlight, Entourage, MSIE for Mac, etc. all show how this really works. Office for Mac is a totally separate product from Windows Office, and isn’t fully compatible even now.
Believing anything MS PR says is a great way to ruin your business.
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Mark: Microsoft already showed me the Mesh working on a Mac. And, anyway, it works in a Web browser at some level as well.
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Mark: Microsoft already showed me the Mesh working on a Mac. And, anyway, it works in a Web browser at some level as well.
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In my initial few days with Mesh I am impressed with the potential. I wrote about it here:
http://timbauer.bauerfive.com/2008/04/26/live-mesh-goodbye-facebook-friendfeed/
In short, in my view, it has the potential to switch social infrastructure from a centralized model to a peer to peer one. Facebook, Friendfeed could still exist but as a backend where all the stuff (blogs, tweets, pictures, etc) are data snippets that are synch’d between devices … not between aggregation sites.
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In my initial few days with Mesh I am impressed with the potential. I wrote about it here:
http://timbauer.bauerfive.com/2008/04/26/live-mesh-goodbye-facebook-friendfeed/
In short, in my view, it has the potential to switch social infrastructure from a centralized model to a peer to peer one. Facebook, Friendfeed could still exist but as a backend where all the stuff (blogs, tweets, pictures, etc) are data snippets that are synch’d between devices … not between aggregation sites.
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Nah, I’m sorry. If it doesn’t sync with just about everything that the people out there are likely to own then it’s “.mac for windows” at best.
Can I sync to my zune? My symbian phone? My mac laptop? My windows mobile phone? My iPod touch? No? Then it’s irrelevant to anyone outside of Microsoft isn’t it?
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Nah, I’m sorry. If it doesn’t sync with just about everything that the people out there are likely to own then it’s “.mac for windows” at best.
Can I sync to my zune? My symbian phone? My mac laptop? My windows mobile phone? My iPod touch? No? Then it’s irrelevant to anyone outside of Microsoft isn’t it?
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Have any of you guys who are complaining about Mesh actually looked at it under the covers?
The core functionality is feed push / feed pull, and the feed format of choice is Atom (aka RFC 4287) with AtomPub (RFC 5023) with a bit of FeedSync extension to make the sync magic happen.
You can talk this stuff at the mesh cloud service without giving a damn what platform you’re running on.
Sure, the fancy user-interface pieces and the local runtime aren’t on Linux or other devices yet, but it won’t be long before an open-source project duplicates the functionality of the MOE, and builds the client folder-share stuff.
At the end of the day, people aren’t getting excited because of a folder sharing product. Folder sharing is boring. It’s the architecture underneath that’s interesting!
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Have any of you guys who are complaining about Mesh actually looked at it under the covers?
The core functionality is feed push / feed pull, and the feed format of choice is Atom (aka RFC 4287) with AtomPub (RFC 5023) with a bit of FeedSync extension to make the sync magic happen.
You can talk this stuff at the mesh cloud service without giving a damn what platform you’re running on.
Sure, the fancy user-interface pieces and the local runtime aren’t on Linux or other devices yet, but it won’t be long before an open-source project duplicates the functionality of the MOE, and builds the client folder-share stuff.
At the end of the day, people aren’t getting excited because of a folder sharing product. Folder sharing is boring. It’s the architecture underneath that’s interesting!
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“Have any of you guys who are complaining about Mesh actually looked at it under the covers?”
Yes. And to the majority of the people making up the world who aren’t geeks like us, how neat it is under the covers is on the list of things that are irrelevant.
What actually matters is does it actually solve anyone’s problem? Post-it notes and pencils that solve an actual problem are more valuable than the most coolest technology in the world ever OMG that doesn’t actually do anything for people.
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“Have any of you guys who are complaining about Mesh actually looked at it under the covers?”
Yes. And to the majority of the people making up the world who aren’t geeks like us, how neat it is under the covers is on the list of things that are irrelevant.
What actually matters is does it actually solve anyone’s problem? Post-it notes and pencils that solve an actual problem are more valuable than the most coolest technology in the world ever OMG that doesn’t actually do anything for people.
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What if they made it painful to use and just not very useful.
We’ve all seen what a mess they made of the Zune!
I guess the jury is still out…
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What if they made it painful to use and just not very useful.
We’ve all seen what a mess they made of the Zune!
I guess the jury is still out…
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