Liveside.net and Mary Jo Foley are reporting that rumors of Live Mesh’s death are greatly exaggerated. That’s excellent, as far as I’m concerned. Mesh is a good product, and it would be a huge pain if I had to switch to something else were Redmond to kill it.
Meanwhile, I continue to find it fascinating how many sync standards Microsoft has across its product set. Here’s a list of them (excluding Live Sync and Live Mesh), and I’m betting it’s not comprehensive. Can you think of others?:
- ActiveSync (for Windows Mobile over USB and BlueTooth)
- Exchange Active Sync (used over the Internet, including 3G services)
- Windows Offline Folders
- Windows Media Player sync
- Zune sync
- Sync Framework and ADO.NET Sync Services (for database synchronization)
- SQL Server Replication
- Access/Jet database replication and JRO (Jet Replication Objects)
- SharePoint/Outlook list/library synchronization
- OneNote shared notebook synchronization
- Live Messenger Sharing Folders
I formulated a similar list almost two years ago, when I wrote a post on my first impressions of Live Mesh. But things here are not getting better, and they need to. I’d like to see a common sync facility that every Microsoft product needing such services could build upon. Just (please) don’t base it on the Entity Framework!