Microsoft Ships Mesh
Mike Zintel just published a great blog post on Mesh, the project he’s been working on at Microsoft the last few years with Dave Treadwell. Now I know why they couldn’t tell me anything about work, other than cryptic stuff like, "It’s going to be cool," and, "it’s pretty hectic", and "I’ll buy you lunch".
I’ve only read a little on it. I like what I see so far. Pub/sub is great, and anything that makes synch better is good. The key will be to make it truly cross-platform and not too exclusively tied to the cruddy stuff that old-guard Microsoft loves to push: Live IDs (remember Passport, anyone?), Windows, and .NET. Lip service to cross-platform won’t cut it.
In any case, this is going to stir up some much-needed excitement in the MS development community. The PDC this year will surely rock.
I wonder how long until we see the first Mesh iPhone app?
Congratulations to the Mesh team.
P.S. I’d like to take it for a spin, but I decided it’ll have to wait. I lost interest and ran out of time somewhere around 10 minutes into the registration process. Let me guess: nobody on the team has actually tried public signup? It’s a nightmare. To begin with you need a Live ID, which means signing up to MSN, which no developer in their right mind wants to do. (And when will "Live" replace MSN? Sigh.) Then you get hit with the "Please join our waiting list" Mesh page. Then you get dumped on the Microsoft Connection Directory page, whatever the heck that is. No thanks. I need a nap.
Guess I’ll wait for the open beta.
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Gavin Terrill said,
April 23, 2008 @ 1:33 pm
This does seem pretty cool. I agree - the key will be how well they play with others and not try to do the old guard lock in thing. Smoothspan did an interesting comparison with this versus how Google launched AppEngine.
Alex Mallet said,
April 23, 2008 @ 4:40 pm
Osh - Just sent you an invite. Might end up in your spam mail folder — we’re still straightening out some issues with our invites being flagged as spam.