Do You Want In On Live Mesh?

April 26th, 2008 | Published in Microsoft

Live Mesh is just about the hottest thing the tech world has seen in a long time. The product represents Microsoft’s vision for cloud computing, designed to blur the line between data stored on a computer and data stored in the cloud. This game-changing "software plus services" platform promises to synchronize devices, enable collaboration, unify management of devices and applications, and much more.

Right now, select people have been invited to the tech preview of Live Mesh. This preview is only the smallest hint of what’s to come, but even still, it’s pretty amazing. The Mesh preview lets you install Mesh to your PCs and synchronize your files to Live Mesh, using up to 5 GB of online storage.

Five Mesh Invites

What I just discovered today is that I have the power to invite five people to Mesh. Given the scarcity of invites (some people at Microsoft can’t even get in!), I decided that I don’t want to hand these out haphazardly. I’m not interested in giving out invites to people who just want to have a look-see. I want to give out invites to people who are genuinely interested in this technology and who can benefit from using it. I know how insanely excited I was to get invited and I’m looking for people who feel the same.

Who Should Get Mesh

After thinking about it for a bit today, I decided that the best way to find those people might be to hold a contest of sorts. Basically, the rules are as follows: just convince me that you’re a good candidate for Mesh.

I don’t care how you want to go about this. You can write one sentence or record a whole video. As long as I’m convinced, you’re in. The deadline is going to be midnight on Tuesday. I know that’s kind of soon, but hey, it’s not like I’m holding Mahalo Idol here. I’ll post the winning entries, whatever they are, right here on the blog.

Just a Few Requests

I do have a few requirements though. I can’t hold you to them or verify them (it’s honor system time!) - they are just things I hope you will bring to the table.

You need to run Windows. Although Mesh will be supported on Macs and mobiles (and who knows what else) in the future, right now it’s PC-only. Mac/Linux users shouldn’t bother applying.
You should have more than one computer. The best thing about Mesh right now is the syncing. Why would you want Mesh if you only have one PC? For online storage? Just go use SkyDrive instead.
You should be a blogger or technology participant in some way. The reason I say this is because, ideally, I would like to see someone who’s interested in providing feedback about Mesh. Whether you want to blog about, promise to provide feedback to the Live Mesh team, or whatever, I don’t care. I just want to give the invites to someone who’s involved.

Get Started!

So that’s it. Hopefully you don’t think I’m going overboard with this whole invite contest thing. I just need a way to be picky but fair. I am looking forward to seeing what you come up.