Using Azure Services Platform, a Microsoft “motoring guy” links his Porsche to GPS, music, Internet and more. MeshMobile is the result of Ori Amiga’s work, principal group program manager of Microsoft’s Live Mesh, which allows you to synchronize all of a person’s information—photos, music, documents, and more – among PCs, notebooks, and soon, mobile phones.
With the Live Services and Live Mesh components of the Azure Services Platform, software developers now have a tool to find new and useful ways to link people, data, and digital gadgets. Or, in this case, a very analog Porsche.
At PDC, Live Mesh served as a prime example of what Microsoft’s approach to cloud computing – called software-plus-services – can offer. With Live Mesh, Amiga says, he can connect the four pillars of his digital lifestyle: data; devices; applications; and, through the social interactions software now provides, people. Live Mesh and Live Services offer the pipeline through which information flows to devices, friends, and coworkers. It’s an idea that’s simultaneously simple and powerful, Amiga said: The ability to be in complete control of your information anywhere, on any device.
Amiga spent a month on the hardware design, solving problems such as sunlight readability, voltage regulations, and space constraints (“my car is pretty small,” he says). He needed an interface that would be easy to use and see, in order to avoid any Mesh-related accidents on the road. It took a lot of fabrication, but the MeshMobile looks as if it shipped from Porsche’s factory with the Live Mesh touch screen already installed.
The software, though, is where the excitement is. At his fingertips, Amiga has instant access to his huge and growing music collection. If he adds an album at home, it’s available in his car the next time he starts the ignition. The MeshMobile is GPS-equipped, and when in motion it’s “dropping GPS tracks into the Mesh” so that his friends can find where he is on Virtual Earth. Amiga also can quickly check the weather and—when stuck in traffic, of course—open Internet Explorer and do some browsing. If traffic on Highway 520 (a busy freeway near the Redmond Microsoft campus) is actually moving, an audio synthesizer will read his e-mail to him over the speakers.
“Live Mesh (and Live Services) provide so many opportunities,” Amiga says. “Really, it all boils down to data. Data, data, data. You have devices that produce data and devices that consume data. You take a photo with your digital camera, and you want to render it on your mom’s digital picture frame halfway across the world.” Microsoft’s new cloud applications let you do that. The help break down what Amiga calls “digital islands.” From anywhere, on an array of devices, you can access anything you want.
Even when you’re in the driver’s seat, instead of on your sofa.
Here’s Ori talking about his love about Azure and expensive cars.
[videofile]http://mschnlnine.vo.llnwd.net/d1/ch9/1/5/5/4/3/4/OriAmigaMeshMobile_ch9.mp4[/videofile]
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