Mesh is the new Net

[And now in my myriad chameleon phases, I am now operating temporarily as a Tech blogger. I promise this will terminate at the end of this post.]

Those who know me know that I don't normally rave about a product that Microsoft produces, unless it's very very good. I have high standards for technology, not least in the area of look and feel, and so it's very seldom that I come across a product that meets all requirements in form and functionality.

With that context, I'd like to momentarily rave about Live Mesh. The technology and concept isn't new, leveraging peer-to-peer download technology, Live Mesh allows the multiple computers and devices that everyone these days tend to own (the laptop at home, a mobile phone, the desktop at work) to talk to each other and share files. It also comes with the ability to allow remote desktop access, to extend the user's reach into the interface of computers and devices not immediately at your desk. All these brought together with and by a virtual desktop called Live Desktop, that allows you to sync with a virtually hosted 5GB+ of online storage. All that... and synchronizing across mobile devices as well as Macs. Beauty.

I may be using Live Mesh beyond what it was touted to do, which was allow seamless integration across the same platforms for similar files. What I found it did enable:

• One click back-up onto the virtual desktop of key folders in Documents through the synchronization function
• Remote Desktop'ing allowing me to now completely treat my laptop as well as the personal one at home as merely virtual terminals into a seamless workspace
• If my laptop crashes tomorrow, well, the one I use most frequently anyway, I will not cry, because there is literally nothing on it that doesn't have a sync copy somewhere else

Mesh is that fabric of a safety net to catch me when I fall, with hopefully less holes than will let an elephant through. Am loving the interface and speed so far - will have to see if this ends up becoming a paid and potentially slower service as more users start cottoning on to the idea.

"Hi, I'm a Mac..." "Yeah, but I'm the coffee table!"

Remember that super cool Minority Report interface that Tom Cruise was playing around with? Microsoft today has announced Surface, a coffee table with a Minority Report interface that is nothing like I've seen in real life to date.

So here's the thing, you control the interface using your fingers, using natural hand gestures and touch, as though your fingers (mostly the right index finger) were a mouse pointer. You can drag, drop, select, tap... pretty much do what you do with a mouse except you don't need one.

At the same time, the coffee table (as I'm going to call it from now on) recognizes actual physical objects that you put on it. Place a phone on it, the table reads and recognizes your phone and highlights it with a circle. It now becomes something you can interact with. Drag pictures to the phone's circle to sync pictures, music... whatever with it.

A tech'y run through of how it works can be found in this 3 page article: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html

I suppose from an industry perspective, what this means is that if widely accepted into mainstream technology in 3-5 years time, there will be an increased demand for human interface designers and interior designers who can integrate the hardware/software required to make this work into our homes, shops, supermarkets, public transportation systems, restaurants, nearly everything you can think of.

I suppose psychologically, staring down at a table keeping quiet becomes widely socially acceptable and no longer a sign of antisocial, loner at the bar behaviour. It also means that if you are truly alone with a drink at the bar, you can probably have a pseudo-social interaction (internet chat site or... something else) with your table. You can probably also train your dog to start a report, download your news and blog feeds and cook dinner just by putting paws on the table. The possibilities are endless.

At $5,000 - $10,000 a piece, this little baby is one for the house when I can get my hands on it. And no, you can't put your feet up on the coffee table anymore.