About Me

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Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
I am a full time computer consultant for a small firm, focusing on the small to medium business sector. I am also a student completing a Double Degree in Business and an Information Technology at Queensland University of Technology. This has created a hectic schedule and, as a result I am always busy working on something.

I do however have interests that are outside of work and University, including active involvement in the scouting movement and regular games of indoor soccer at Brisbane City Indoor Sports. My passion however, has always been in computing. This is shown by my active participation in the computer club at high school. I joined the school computer club in grade eight and continued right through to grade twelve. I was also a member of the computer club executive from grade ten.

I intend to use this blog to discuss a variety web 2.0 applications and how they relate to the web 2.0 patterns. I encourage you to read my posts and make comments below.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Software above the level of a single device

More and more everyday users are accessing services and their data from multiple devices. Tim O’reilly’s What is web2.0 blog post discusses how uses are no longer restricted to using the PC platform. An individual user is likely to have a regular computer as well as a portable device. This had created the need for a new category of web applications and has lead to the development of applications which use the 5th Web 2.0 pattern. This software allows users access to services above the level of a single device.

The presence of multiple devices in the life of a user has lead to the requirement for users to be able to access their data from any of their devices at any time. Previously, users had to manually put a copy of each file they required onto each of their devices. Web 2.0 applications such as Windows Live Mesh and Dropbox use a web platform to automate this process. In this blog post, I am going focus on the approach Microsoft took with their live mesh product.



Window Live Mesh is provided to users free of charge as part of the Microsoft live suite of applications and integrates with Microsoft sky drive. Live Mesh provides users with several features, the most important of which include:

  • Data synchronisation between devices;
  • Program settings synchronisation;
  • Data accessibility from any internet connected devices
  • Remote access to your devices; and
  • Offsite backup


To use the Live Mesh service a user must register for a windows live account and install the Live Mesh software on each device they would like to sync to. They can then select folders and sync these folders to each of their computers. Live Mesh also provides its users with a web desktop which they can sync 5GB of files to. This provides users with offsite storage and the ability to access their personal files from any one of their computers. From this web desktop, a user can also remotely connect to and control their computers.

The limitation of Windows Live Mesh is that it currently only supports syncing between Windows PCs and Apple OSX based machines. Mobile devices such as android based devices and iPhones cannot currently be synced to Windows Live Mesh. Drop Box however does not support all these features but does support more devices than Windows Live Mesh.


References


Tim O'Reilly - What is web 2.0, http://oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=4
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