Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"We want to let you know what's next for FolderShare, and to make you aware of some important upcoming changes. In December, we will release a new product called Windows Live Sync. You can think of it as FolderShare 2.0...A huge part of Sync's success story depends on FolderShare users like you. When Sync releases, FolderShare goes into retirement. That means your FolderShare software will stop working and will ask you to upgrade to Sync. Once you do, Sync will automatically rebuild your personal folders. We expect a lot of new users when Sync is released, so if you can't sign in right away, please give it a little time."

Well, we knew this was coming, but I was hoping for something a bit more interesting with this all-new version now dubbed Live Sync. Here are the features they listed:

• More folders and files - sync up to 20 folders with 20,000 files each.
• Integration with Windows Live ID - no more extra sign-in stuff to remember.
• Integration with the Recyle Bin - no more separate Trash folder to fiddle with.
• New client versions for both Windows and Mac.
• Unicode support - sync files in other languages.

Moving to Windows Live ID is nice, and the integration with the Recycle Bin is also very slick - but because I was already a professional user (migrated over from the Byte Taxi days) I already had the 20,000 files per library limit. This is huge news for all the people who were previously limited to 10,000 files. So what am I complaining about? Well, I have just over 21,000 files in my Pictures folder, and I've been using FolderShare to sync that folder. You'd think it wouldn't have worked once I broke past 20K, but it did...and now I'm rather scared that it will stop working. I was really hoping that by the time they launched this new service they'd have a professional offering ready to go - because this is certainly something I'm willing to pay for.

There's also the prevailing question of Live Mesh - how long can the Windows Live team have two products that are nearly identical?

"Apparently the shroud of secrecy that surrounds Windows Live and Wave 3 doesn't extend to help files, as our friend Picturepan2 at LiveSino.net discovered as he was snooping around doing some investigative reporting. While Microsoft has maintained that FolderShare would continue on, even in the face of what seems to be redundancy with Live Mesh, those outside the company have been wondering what would become of FolderShare. FolderShare was acquired when Microsoft bought ByteTaxi in 2005, and offers file and folder synchronization between computers with a web interface component. Folder synchronization between Windows and Mac computers is possible. However it does not offer "in the cloud" storage, or work on the FeedSync RSS underpinnings that power Live Mesh (at least in its current configuration)."

Live Sync? Meh. I'm not feeling that name - FolderShare is a descriptive name that Joe Average can understand - it's something that allows you to "share folders". Sync is a geek work that has virtually no meaning in the realm of non-geeks. Names aside, what I really care about is whether or not FolderShare is going to continue to survive. As Live Mesh improves faster and faster, and FolderShare seemingly stays the same, I worry that FolderShare isn't going to be allowed to survive much longer. Of course, if Live Mesh reaches feature parity with FolderShare, it might not matter.

Microsoft has opened up their Live Mesh service to the general public in the form of a "tech preview" which is a nicer way of saying "mostly still beta". I've been using Live Mesh for a couple of months now, and it's a pretty cool service. You set a folder to be "Live Meshed" and not only will it be kept in sync between multiple computers, the contents of the folder will be kept in the cloud (where you have 5 GB of storage). I think there's a lot of potential here, especially since they've stated they'll be targeting mobile devices. I've been dreaming of having my FlexWallet file be pushed to my device when there's a change in it, because connecting my device with my desktop computer is something I just don't do anymore. I was hoping for years that the FolderShare team would release a Windows Mobile client, but they're still struggling to get the service stable, so no joy there. If you have a desktop and a laptop, and haven't checked out Live Mesh yet, you should.

"Live Mesh is trying to solve a key user problem--how to mesh the desktop, mobile, and the Web for consumers and developers. For example, Live Mesh can provide core underlying infrastructure for synchronization, collaboration, and other services. "This does represent a pretty significant advance for Microsoft, bringing the Web to Windows and Windows to the Web and connecting them super-well," Treadwell said. I asked Treadwell if Live Mesh is designed as a core and pervasive layer for the Web, as Windows is for the desktop. "I don't think Live Mesh should be a required piece of technology, but we do view it as something that would enhance the user experience, with protocols that make it easy to connect with other services, such as Twitter." He went on to say that Live Mesh will enable a broad variety of usage scenarios, taking advantage of the standard Internet protocols."



Live Mesh fascinates me - but what fascinates me the most is how Microsoft can have a service in place such as FolderShare, yet still go ahead with developing Live Mesh. Although it's certainly obvious that Live Mesh is broader and deeper than FolderShare - or so I hear, because they're not giving out beta invites to anyone outside the USA (sheesh!). Live Mesh seems to touch on all aspects of sync - device to device, device to cloud, cloud to device, etc. If all the pieces come together, this could be an impressive solution.

"So at 5 minutes after 9pm, I navigated to www.mesh.com, logged in with my Windows Live ID, and was off and running. First order of business (after accepting the terms), was to add a couple of devices and synch some folders. The download was 1.57mb and installed in less than 2 minutes, by unofficial count. After adding a laptop, I created a folder and, by right clicking on it, transformed it into a Live Mesh folder...Note that once the folder is a Live Mesh Folder, it turns blue (the Live Mesh guys like blue!) So now on to the laptop, where again, I added it to the mesh, and synched the folder I created."



I heard a little bit about Mesh at the recent MVP Summit, but I didn't realize it was going to be going to a limited public beta so quickly - this article has some of the basics. Where does Mesh begin and FolderShare end? I haven't the foggiest idea - they seem like overlapping technologies in many ways. I guess we'll see! There's lots of great speculation in this article as well.