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I've been an avid Foldershare user for a while now and really like it. That being said I hate their few but niggling limitations (the 10,000 files per share being the biggest one for me).

I just installed Live Mesh and have to say that I think it's rather slick but we'll see if it lives up to the hype.

The service seems to share more than a passing resemblance to Foldershare so I decided to see if others have found this to be the case and to find out what the differences really are.

I found this article: Skydrive, Foldershare, and Live Mesh - hendrikch.com - Hendrik Christian Blog on Daily Life and got to thinking about it. So here's my response to Hendrikch (which I will also email to him):

Hi Hendrikch,

Great summary of these disparate yet related services. I worked for MS for several years and I think the reason MS has so many disjointed offerings is that no one really is a "master of ceremonies" in the way Steve Jobs rules Apple with an iron fist. It really is a company with too many VPs, too many Directors, and too many General Managers to have a coherent strategy. Now, they've bucked this trend before (see: Xbox), but there are still too many examples of these approaches that each get customers 80% of what they need and overlap about 75% but none get us completely there.

Now that these things are out there, I believe everything will coalesce around Live Mesh (I really have no idea since I'm no longer a Microsoftie) which will integrate foldershare & skydrive.

Here's my dream service:
-- No file count limits (foldershare limits you to 10,000 files)
-- No file size limits (I think one or more of the services limit you to 2GB)
-- "Smart" live desktop that watches what I use on the PC and uploads those files and things that seem related. For example: if I listen to a song a lot, it would find all of the playlists that song is in and upload the songs "near" that one in the playlists (or the entire playlist if it is small enough).
-- Unified sharing center. "Share this folder with..." one email addy, one email domain, multiple addies, everyone, facebook friends, etc. Also a really nice UI for those that choose to browse photos on live mesh rather than other services.
-- "Super Sync" - "Mirror this folder structure to..." facebook, myspace, flickr, windows live, smugmug, photobucket, kodak, etc. AND keep them in sync (e.g. if I upload something to flickr, notice this and mirror everywhere else.)
-- Remote Desktop of course (Live mesh has this, but I use logmein still)
-- Browse other machines without sync (Foldershare has this)
-- Full, unlimited backup in the cloud for $5/month (I use Mozy for this now).

So I would do pricing like this:
Free unlimited syncing (foldershare)
Free remote desktop (logmein)
$5/month unlimited backup (mozy)
$5/month unlimited sharing(sky drive)/super sync/unified sharing center

So you see, we're about 80% of the way there on each of the services...just need to snap together the bits of each together into one big service. I'm actually in the processing of writing my own super sync service for all platforms that will keep my gazillions of photos and home videos sync'd to flickr and other services (since flickr is blocked in China and my wife's family is there and needs to use other services to access our photos).

Well, they certainly don't make it easy to find, but luckily it has been found! Upgrade now and bask in the slightly more stable and tiny bit faster-iness of Vista SP1

Download details: Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Five Language Standalone (KB936330)

Well, it looks like the move away from the desktop is in full swing. I remember theorizing about the Google/Microsoft endgame scenario which went something like this:

Google would litter the Earth with GoogleOS CDs much in the same way that AOL has littered the Earth with their "1000 free hours" CDs. People would pop these into their PCs and they would be able to boot up, get online, and do stuff. Word processing, no problem. Photo editing, no problem. Email, no problem. It'd all point at Google and their partners and it'd all have no out of pocket costs for the user. And like that...Microsoft would would be in deep trouble. Not that they're not already in deep trouble, but the GoogleOS CD would really accelerate the decline of the lumbering giant (troll?).

Then I see this $200 Walmart PC that gets entry level users online and functional in a non-Microsoft world. Whoa. Way back when, people would start their truly productive computing lives on a Microsoft OS when they started work. I think they must have mistaken their productivity to be as a result of using Windows rather than as a function of their sheer need to get stuff done in order to keep their jobs.

But I digress...the $200 buck PC with linux and links to the web is a great way to go. I wonder if the MSNTV users would be interested in this?

"Flip 3D!! Flip 3D!!"
Oh yeah? What else can it do?
"Ummm... Shiny, see through!!!"
Ok, but what's really new?
"Ummm.... Annoying user account controls, yay!!"

Just how brand spanking new is Vista anyway? I know there is so much shiny gobbledigook everywhere in Windows Vista that it makes everyone believe that Vista is all new through and through, but the other day I ran into a glaring bug that makes me wonder just how much of Vista's source code is the same old stuff from Windows XP (or older even).

I wonder because when I was trying to copy Divx files from my ReadyNAS to my Epson P-3000, I ran into a funky error message that said something akin to "Insufficient resources to complete this operation". First off, I thought Vista was supposed to be friendlier than bad old Windows XP...seemingly this is not so. Secondly when I Googled this error, it seems that it's a known bug in Windows XP. Hmmm...I wonder how that nasty old Windows XP bug made it over to Windows Vista? Isn't Vista supposed to be brand spanking new?

So it seems that maybe Vista has some new parts cobbled together with some old parts. I'm not saying this is bad or anything, because nothing is ever really 100% brand new any more, but the problem is that I keep running into quirks of all sorts in Vista that are basically the same or slight tangents off of Windows XP.

I never understood the logic behind the idea of a Microsoft and Yahoo! merger. I mean, what does each bring to the table?

Microsoft brings a few cash cows, buckets of cash, and an ailing online service. Yahoo on the other hand, brings over a lot of eyeballs, some cool bits like flickr, delicious, and others, and a lot of duplicated services (WL Mail = Y! Mail, WL Messenger = Y! Messenger, WL Search = Y! Search, WL Maps = Y! Maps, etc). Anyway, it's an interest idea that they could merge, but I'm not sure what it would do to slow down Google. If anything, it'll slow down the newly joined-at-the hip "Yahoosoft!" I mean, let's take two very large bureaucratic companies with overlapping services, mash them together, and watch the ensuing politcal firefight ensue.

Anyway, I hope these two giants will take a good look at why Google is winning. It's certainly not the breadth of services or the even the reliability of them as I've experienced first hand. No, they are winning for two simple reasons:

1) Search: accurate. They've built the better mouse trap
2) Syndication: They allow you to make a few (or quite a few) bucks on your own blog running on your own server that you can do whatever you want with.

That's it folks. Those are the two reasons that Google is winning. Smashing Microsoft and Yahoo together will NOT get you these two things. The only two things that Microsoft, Yahoo, or Yahoosoft (or Microhoo, or Mihoo!, or Moohoo, or...I can go on for days) can do to beat Google are:

1) Search: make it more accurate than Google.
2) Syndication: get off your "walled garden" wall and let people syndicate your ads on their own site with their own servers that they can do whatever they want with. Yahoo figured this out eventually, but it is most likely too late. The other way to do it is to offer more cash than Google is willing pay. That should win you some converts (until Google ups their payout too, of course).

There you have it folks...no fuss, no political war with clashing cultures ensuing. Just a way to really win over Google. The question isn't if they can merge, because we know they can. The questions really are: does it matter? and will it help? The answer is most likely: no.

Big ups to Ars Technica for sparking this rant: Yahoo-Microsoft merger talk resurfaces

It seems that all of our travel reservations have gone up in smoke. Well, the reservations are still there, but the email confirmations have disappeared. I think gmail really doesn't want us to travel this summer so it has gone and deleted all of the email that had anything to do with us paying for our plane tickets. 3 or 4 in all.

It happened when I labeled them "Travel Reservations" figuring it'd be a good idea to have a quick way to take a look at them. The next morning I went to look something up and they were gone. Hmmm...curious. I decided to search for them using the much touted "search" feature in gmail. Nada. Hmmm, how about the trash folder? Nope, try again. SPAM folder? Nope, not their either.

"WTF?" I'm thinking to myself at this point. I start trying to remember the places I bought tickets from. American Airlines for the Dublin to LAX flight, Northwest (I think) for the LAX to Amsterdam flight, and Aer Lingus (maybe) for the Athens to Dublin flight. Without the confirmation numbers though I'm screwed. Then I remembered spending a while to debug problems with our networked printer at home and had printed everything so we were saved.

Phew...and being the obsessive backup-er that I am, I keep Windows Live Mail Desktop (yes that's the name of the app...and yes, I hate the name) running on my desktop PC at home at all times, quietly sucking down all of my Gmail all day and night. When I got home yesterday, I found that I had not only a hard copy (mental note: print EVERYTHING out), but also a copy of all of the emails sitting in WLMD (not to be confused with the president's WMDs). I could not have imagined a day when Microsoft saved my ass from a bungle over at Google. The world has truly turned upside down.

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