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).

MSN Spaces

Ever get stuck in MSN Spaces for a different language? Click the link above to get back to US English spaces.

Dare Obasanjo of the Spaces team just dropped some good science on Posting to MSN Spaces from Flickr.

I'm still trying to get the menalto gallery folks to provide an option to use Flickr as a backend to their gallery software (so I don't have to keep paying ever so much more for hosting space)...slow going, but hopefully someone will pick up the torch.

There's been a lot of flack about MSN's Filter blogs that act as content aggregators (similar to Boing Boing). I'm not sure where they're going with this, but I do know that the blogs are a little text heavy and the layout is weird for some reason. I can't quite put my figure on it, but it's "uncomfortable" to read. At any rate, I recommend stopping by the MSN Filters now again to see what's going on.

They really should pimp their spaces like I did. I would help some and possibly make it a nicer place to visit. They may also want to make it more collaborative rather than just one person (at least I think it's just one person for each filter). It's like the backstreet boys effect...you just mix different kinds of people together and you'll get a good mix of fans. As of right now though the blogs seem to be quiet (barely any comments), but isn't that always how it is in the beginning? Oh wait...my blog is like that...

While MSN Spaces has taken off like a rocketship, there are still features which are lacking. Luckily, the Spaces team has their ears to the ethernet and have answered with the release of MSN Spaces PowerToys. The most interesting one is called "Tweak UI" in a tip of the hat to the original Windows Tweak UI that helped you to bling out your Windows XP install way back when. Now get over to MSN Spaces, sign up, and drop it like it's hot.

See for Yourself.