November 18th, 2009

So where's Microsoft's Live Mesh?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 9:38 am

Categories: Azure, Code names, Corporate strategy, Live Mesh, PDC 2009, Utility/cloud computing, Windows Live, Windows Mobile, Zune

Tags: Microsoft Azure, Ray Ozzie, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Web Site Development, Benefits, Channel Management, Operating Systems, Software, Internet

One noticeable no-show at this week’s Microsoft Professional Developers Conference is Live Mesh.

Live Mesh, Microsoft’s synchronization service that is the pet project of Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, was one of the main attractions at previous Microsoft developers’ conferences. When Microsoft first described the service, it was billed as a way to prove to consumers that Microsoft’s Azure cloud would have something of interest to them and not just business customers and developers.

Earlier this year, as part of one of the company’s many reorgs, Microsoft moved the Live Mesh team under the Windows/Windows Live group. Since then, things have gone quiet.

At the PDC this week, I (and others) thought Microsoft might give us a progress report on Live Mesh… or a demo of the latest version of it… or a roadmap for it… or something. But no.

I had a chance to ask Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie about Live Mesh during a one-on-one interview with him at the show on November 17. I asked Ozzie why there was nothing about Mesh at the PDC. He said:

“We’re pushing the Live platform stuff to Mix. Or I shouldn’t actually say Mix, in terms of that, it is going to be spring….The Live stuff and phone stuff basically is out in that time frame.

“But that (Live Mesh) will no longer be discussed in the context of ‘Live Mesh,’ but rather in ‘the Windows Live platform,’ which is now, as you know, which it’s now part of.

I asked Ozzie a follow-up: If you aren’t using Live Mesh any more as a way to get consumers excited about the Azure platform, what’s the new plan to push the “commercialization of IT” strategy with Azure? Ozzie’s response:

“(T)he reality is — I know this isn’t very sexy — but I don’t think people are really going to be aware that it (Azure) is there. I think when people go to Web sites, they’ll just go to a Web site. They won’t really know what it’s connected to. When they use a phone or a piece of client software or a TV or a cable box that happens to talk to a cloud back end, it will just happen. And the way they will experience it is it will be reliable, it will be fast, it will scale.

“Probably the most important thing is that we live in a very faddish culture,… Whenever there is a service that’s backing up something that’s very trendy, these things will just happen without any issues. There will be black Friday and everyone wants to just buy their Beanie Baby and they’ll be able to.”

So if Live Mesh isn’t the consumer proof point for Windows Azure, what is? Ozzie said:

“(T)he best example I have is this app that (Microsoft Online Systems Division President) Qi Lu announced at Web 2.0 some weeks ago with Bing/Twitter integration. That came together in a very short time.

“In just a few weeks, a few developers got together and they had the Twitter fire hose, because of our relationship with — an early relationship with Twitter, and suddenly because of Azure, they were able to ingest this whole thing and start to do some amazing analysis that they could have never done if they had to, let’s see, how many machines should we order? When do we get them configured? When can we have rack space in GFS (Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services)? Those apps just never would have happened. And that’s why I’m so excited about this Dallas stuff because even though it is obscure, it’s hard to give compelling examples of how to use that data, once people have the ability to make a discovery based on data and then scale it to lots and lots of data, I think new possibilities are opened up.

“I think consumers are going to experience the benefit of the apps. Just take the H1N1 thing that’s going on right now. I’m not sure exactly what the benefit will be, but when there are these large challenges, suddenly some new app may be overlaid on maps or maybe it’s an app on a map that brings together some health data with geo data or an industry that you work in or something like that will pop up, and we’ll take it for granted at the time when it happens, but it will never have been able to happen without all that data behind it.”

When I recently asked some execs in Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division — the folks behind Windows Mobile and Zune — about their plans for implementing Live Mesh, I didn’t get a sense they had any real, near-term plans (and I don’t think they were just being cagey).

I’m really wondering what’s going to happen with Live Mesh going forward. Any guesses/hopes?

November 11th, 2009

Microsoft delivers new Zune HD games; Twitter and Facebook still to come

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:54 am

Categories: Apple, Corporate strategy, Gaming, Windows Live, Windows Mobile, Xbox, Xbox Live, Zune

Tags: Facebook, Twitter Inc., Microsoft Zune, Microsoft Corp., Games, Personal Technology, Mary Jo Foley

On the heels of providing a new firmware update to the Zune HD that provided support for forthcoming games, Microsoft is rolling out those games starting on November 11.

The firmware update, version 4.3, enabled 3-D gaming on the new Zune HD. The new six games that are available for download from the Zune HD Marketplace today for free (but ad-supported — there’s an ad at start-up) are:

Audiosurf Tilt: Audiosurf creates a rollercoaster ride from any song.

Checkers: A classic checkers game that can be played against a computer or a buddy.

Lucky Lanes Bowling: Bowl in different game modes: exhibition, blackjack, golf — either against the computer or up to four friends.

Piano: Play your own tune, or play along with music.

Project Gotham Racing: Ferrari Edition: A racing game using multi touch controls and the built in accelerometer.

Vans Sk8: Pool Service: “Put these Vans skaters to the test with all the tricks in their bag and achieve hero status once you unlock their pro model skateboards.”

A spokesperson sent me the following update, as well:

“As we’ve said in the past, we will be delivering additional applications for Zune HD including Facebook and Twitter in the future.”

I bought a Zune HD a month or so ago and have been showing it off to some disbelieving Apple die-hards. “Are you sure this is a Microsoft product?” is often the reaction I’ve gotten. Being able to change the music I’ve got on it whenever the mood strikes (thanks to a $15 per month ZunePass subscription) has been a great way to sample lots of new content. If this device had been available a couple of years ago, when I was searching for any MP3 player as long as it wasn’t an Apple one, I’d have snapped it up long ago…

But, as I’ve noted before, Microsoft isn’t planning to put a ton of resources into developing apps for its dedicated Zune HD players. Microsoft officials have said the not-so-long-term plan for Zune is to turn it into a service. There will be “at least one more” player release coming, but after that, it sounds like Microsoft is planning to integrate the Zune music and video services into its Windows Mobile, Xbox and possibly other third-party platforms. (The new Xbox Live services including Zune video went into public beta on October 21. The go-live launch date is still to be announced. is November 17.)

Microsoft officials still won’t give a firm yes or no answer as to when or if the company will make the Zune HD available internationally. (I ask periodically but still can’t get an answer.)

November 3rd, 2009

Microsoft to show Office Mobile 2010 at TechEd Europe

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 12:44 pm

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, Network service providers, OEMs, Office, Office 2010/Office 14, SharePoint Server, Windows Mobile

Tags: Mobile, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Corp., Office Mobile 2010, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft officials have shared details about two of the three different versions of Office 2010 that are in development: The Office 2010 client and the Office Web Apps. Next week, at the TechEd Europe conference in Berlin, they finally are slated to show and tell more about the third: Office Mobile 2010.

Update (November 6): A Microsoft spokesperson called today to tell me the Office team isn’t quite ready. This session on Office Mobile 2010 is being cancelled for TechEd Europe. I’m betting it’ll be on the PDC agenda instead, so we’ll have one more week to wait….

Office Mobile 2010 is the version of Office that runs natively on Windows Mobile phones. The most recently released version debuted in 2007. That release is Version 6.1 and includes mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and a rudimentary version of the OneNote note-taking application.

The Office Mobile 2010 release will include “a refresh to the Office Mobile client apps, an all-new SharePoint Workspace Mobile app and redesigned mobile access to SharePoint site content,” according to a synopsis of the “Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 In-Depth” session that is slated for November 12 at TechEd. That session also will cover the back-end infrastructure powering the new Office Mobile release, according to the write-up. The presenter is listed as Outlook Product Manager Dev Balasubramanian.

Here is the entire synopsis:

OFS01-IS Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 In-Depth
Presenter: Dev Balasubramanian
Thu 11/12 | 13:30-14:45 | Interactive Theatre 1 - Red

In this session we cover all of the mobility technologies and scenarios enabled as part of the Office 2010 “wave”. You’ve heard us talk about how Office 2010 spans the PC, Phone and Web — come learn what the Phone pillar is all about! Collaboration scenarios, mobile workflows, and mobile access to data, people, and corporate resources are all part of what makes Office on the phone a new experience in 2010. A refresh to the Office Mobile client apps, an all-new SharePoint Workspace Mobile app, redesigned mobile access to SharePoint site content, as well as the infrastructure needed to support it, are covered as part of this session.

In early October, I blogged about a screen shot that showed a mock-up of Office Mobile 2010 that seemed to indicate it the new mobile suite would be customized to work on Windows Mobile 7, the version of Microsoft’s mobile OS expected to be available by the end of 2010. That shot also showed off what looked like some kind of SharePoint application. Microsoft officials did not comment on that screen shot or its implications.

At the recent Microsoft SharePoint Conference, executives noted that Microsoft has a number of enhancements coming to SharePoint for mobile. According to an October blog post by SharePoint Corporate Vice President Jeff Teper:

“We both improved the experience for mobile web browsers and are introducing a new SharePoint Workspace Mobile client so you can take Office content from SharePoint offline on a Windows Mobile device. These clients let you navigate lists and libraries, search content and people and even view and edit Office content within the Office Web App experience running on a mobile browser.”

To be clear, Office Mobile 2010 won’t be the only way to run Office apps on mobile devices. The Softies have said Office Web Apps also are going to be able to run on unspecified phones from Microsoft and other vendors. Supposedly when the public beta of Office Web Apps hits later this month, Microsoft will be ready to share more details how and when specific phones and browsers will support Office Web Apps.

I have lots of questions about Office Mobile 2010. Will it run on platforms other than Windows Mobile? When will it go to testers? Will the final version be released alongside the other two Office 2010 releases (around May/June 2010)?

What do you want to know about Office Mobile 2010?

October 30th, 2009

Microsoft refreshes Bing for touch phone users

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 12:35 pm

Categories: Corporate strategy, Search, Windows Mobile

Tags: Phone, Microsoft Corp., Telecom & Utilities, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft made available on October 30 an update to its Bing search engine for mobile browsers that includes support for high-resolution touch devices.

The new update is available at m.bing.com. Besides including touch support (for U.S. phone owners only), Microsoft also added a new National Football League (NFL) feature that allows users to see upcoming games, stats, and real-time updates (also in the U.S. only); and flight status updates (by entering the airline and flight number). Touch phone users also can access a new Bing Movies feature that allows users searching for movies in particular cities to see movies playing nearby, showtimes, overviews, trailers and video clips.

Microsoft officials mentioned the new features in a blog post today.

October 23rd, 2009

Ballmer: Zune services coming to 'next release' of Windows Mobile

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:58 am

Categories: Channel, Code names, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), OEMs, Resellers, Windows Mobile, Zune

Tags: Phone, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Mobile, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Zune, Engadget, Microsoft Corp., Pink, Mobile Operating Systems, Microsoft Windows

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer really made the rounds on October 22 to help kick off Windows 7. One stop he made was the Engadget Show, which was taped live in Times Square.

Ballmer was a lot more direct than Microsoft Entertainment and Device Division President Robbie Bach, when it comes to answering questions about Microsoft’s mobile and device strategies. (Not a high bar, given Bach’s reticence to even acknowledge the existence of anything codenamed “Pink.”) Ballmer did offer a few tidbits during the show yesterday that I found interesting, though still somewhat cryptic.

In response to Engadget’s questions on when the Zune music and video services will come to Windows Mobile, Ballmer said Zune services would definitely be available in conjunction with the next Windows Mobile release.

But as the folks over at the MobileTechWorld blog note, that answer is still somewhat murky. Microsoft is strongly believed to be readying a 6.5.x or 6.7 release of Windows Mobile, which many are expecting the company to release on or around the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2010. That release supposedly enables Windows Mobile to work on capacitive touch-screen phones. Microsoft officials continue to refuse to say if and when that release will be coming.

Engadget also asked Ballmer about the photos of the Pink phones (codenamed Turtle and Pure) that were leaked on Gizmodo last month. Are either of these the rumored Microsoft-branded phones that many of us heard are — or at least “were” — in the works?

“We are not shipping, pricing  or selling phones. As of today, that’s not our plan,” Ballmer told Engadget’s Josh Topolsky yesterday.

This is a more definitive statement than Bach or anyone else at Microsoft has made about the rumored Pink phones. (As I’ve noted previously, Microsoft officials have been able to wriggle out of repeated questions about whether Microsoft is planning to make its own phone because Microsoft doesn’t actually “make” any hardware. Other vendors make it for the Redmondians.

With Pink, most recent rumors seemed to indicate that Sharp was the company making the Pink phones that Microsoft and Sharp were considering they’d cobrand. Ballmer’s new statement still leaves a lot of wriggle room, but it also leads me to believe there’s a good chance that Microsoft’s phone partners may have complained so vociferously about Microsoft being involved in branding/distributing its own phones that Pink may be back to nothing more than a bunch of premium services for Windows Mobile phones. (That’s what I initially heard Pink was, before I got more tips indicating Pink also was the codename for a Microsoft-branded phone, as well.)

What’s your take? Has Microsoft scrapped plans to cobrand a phone aimed at teens and 20-somethings? And when will Zune come to the Windows Mobile platform — in early 2010 with an interim release or not until Windows Mobile 7?

October 19th, 2009

Microsoft says 'steady progress' continues in Sidekick data recovery

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:18 am

Categories: Azure, Channel, Code names, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), OEMs, Speech, Telecommunications, Utility/cloud computing, VOIP, Windows Mobile

Tags: Team, Data Recovery, Microsoft Corp., Team Management, Manufacturing, Management, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft officials promised last week to provide an update this weekend on its ongoing attempt to recover the customer data and information lost during its ongoing Sidekick outage. On October 18, the company provided that update, which didn’t contain much new information.

The Microsoft/Danger team apologized for the amount of time they are taking to restore contacts, photos, e-mail and other Sidekick services to which users lost access at the start of the month. The team said they were taking their time “to make sure we are doing everything possible to maintain the integrity of your data.”

The team still is not committing to an exact recovery timetable, but is saying restoration should begin this week. From the October 18 update:

“We continue to make steady progress, and we hope to be able to begin restoring personal contacts for affected users this week, with the remainder of the content (photographs, notes, to-do-lists, marketplace data, and high scores) shortly thereafter.”

After telling users that they likely had lost all of their personal data, the Microsoft/Danger team then said they expected to be able to recover some of their data. Mid-weeklast week, they said they expected to recover “most if not all” of the missing user data.

Microsoft officials still have not provided many details about what caused the outage, other than to say it was a core system failure. The failure is unrelated to Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure and/or Microsoft’s Azure datacenters, as the company has continued to run the Sidekick back-end on the same infrastructure it has been running on before Microsoft acquired the company in 2008.

A number of members of the Sidekick team Microsoft acquired have been working on Microsoft’s Pink premium mobile services and phones for the past year.

October 15th, 2009

Microsoft recovers 'most, if not all' Sidekick users' data

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 4:26 am

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), Speech, Telecommunications, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Channel Management, Storage Area Networks (SAN), Storage, Marketing, Hardware, Mary Jo Foley

On October 15, Microsoft reversed itself, claiming now that instead of losing all of the personal data of Sidekick users, it has recovered “most, if not all” of it.

(Over the past few days, Microsoft has moved from saying all data was lost, to some, to possibly none.)

From a note on the company’s Web site signed by Roz Ho, the Corporate Vice President of Premium Mobile Experiences:

“We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage. We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.”

Microsoft isn’t explaining beyond that what went wrong, starting in early October, that knocked out the hundreds of thousands of Sidekick users. There’s been lots of speculation, ranging from sabotage, to an attempt by Microsoft to move Sidekick’s back-end infrastructure from its current platform to a Windows-based one. (Danger, which Microsoft acquired in 2008, is still running the back-end infrastructure for the Sidekick.)

One of my Microsoft sources told me

“(T)he data loss issue was caused by a hardware update on the existing Danger service that had NOT been ported over to a Microsoft platform and the issue was NOT part of a transition to an MS back end. It was an Oracle dB and Sun SAN solution that got a bad firmware update and the backup failed.”

Since then, I’ve heard from others that this scenario seems likely and that yes, Hitachi Data Systems was the company actually doing the maintenance/update for Microsoft. I’ve also heard that foul play has not been ruled out because the failure was so catastrophic and seemingly deliberate. Microsoft is supposedly continuing to do a full investigation.

Microsoft officials are declining to comment beyond the statement they posted to the Web on October 15. They are promising another update on the situation by this Saturday at the latest.

Meanwhile, lawsuits are beginning to pile up as a result of the Sidekick outage, though a full restoration of data may take the bite out of some of them, I’d think.

October 13th, 2009

Sidekick outage says more about the future of 'Pink' than Microsoft's cloud

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:48 am

Categories: Azure, Channel, Code names, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), OEMs, Speech, Telecommunications, Utility/cloud computing, VOIP, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Corp., Outage, Pink, Sidekick, Manufacturing, Mary Jo Foley

I was (trying to) unplug most of the long holiday weekend, but couldn’t help but read all the headlines about how the Sidekick outage spells trouble for Microsoft’s cloud strategy.

I’m not downplaying in the least how serious this outage is or letting Microsoft’s Danger subsidiary  — and/or any other companies involved in the loss of users’ data — off the hook. (The latest: The Danger team is now saying that “some” user data might be recoverable, after all.)

But Sidekicks aren’t running from/on “the Microsoft cloud.” In fact, there is no such thing as a single Microsoft cloud. Microsoft has lots of different remote servers in different data centers running lots of different services.

The Microsoft Azure cloud is what many Microsoft watchers think of these days when someone says “the Microsoft cloud.” But the Azure environment provides the underpinning for very few Microsoft services so far. The Sidekick services don’t run on Azure. Microsoft’s My Phone doesn’t run on Azure. Hotmail, Xbox Live,  Microsoft-hosted Exchange — nope, nope and nope. None of these are running on Azure yet.

The Sidekick outage, to me, says more about Microsoft’s Pink than it does about Azure.

The Danger team, which Microsoft acquired in 2008, is largely responsible for the Pink “premium mobile experience” (PMX) software/services on which Microsoft has been working on secretly. There have been a few recent reports that Microsoft has decided against launching the Pink phone(s) that were going to run these services, but I haven’t heard from any of my sources whether this is true. Sharp supposedly is the manufacturer of the Microsoft-branded/co-branded Pink phones, which Microsoft is said to be planning to market primarily to teens and 20-somethings.

(Microsoft officials have denied repeatedly assertions that Microsoft is making its own smartphone. They have not denied that Microsoft is working with a hardware partner to build Microsoft-branded or co-branded phones.)

What was Microsoft doing to the back-end Danger services that resulted in such a catastrophic outage? Microsoft isn’t talking. There are rumors the problem stemmed from a storage-area-networking debacle but Microsoft isn’t confirming that, either.

The services at the core of Danger’s current offering — contact management, calendaring, instant messaging, e-mail — are all running on a back-end platform that Danger doesn’t describe publicly. Here’s the platform diagram it does provide (click on it to enlarge):

Because Microsoft hasn’t yet launched Pink, company officials have refused to talk at all about which premium services it will encompass and what kind of back-end platform they’ll run on. Is Microsoft designing the Pink services to run on its own servers? Is/was Microsoft intending to allow the Pink services to remain hosted on the existing Danger back-end? Did this past week’s Sidekick outage result from Microsoft (or Hitachi Data Services, or whoever) attempting to move the Danger back-end off the existing servers and onto Microsoft’s own servers? Microsoft officials won’t say.

Now that more everyday users know that Sidekick is connected to Danger and Danger to Microsoft, this week’s outage will cast a shadow over any kind of Pink phone and/or Pink premium services launch Microsoft may be planning.

October 9th, 2009

Microsoft to add OneNote and SharePoint clients to next Office Mobile release?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 11:02 am

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, OEMs, Office, Office 2010/Office 14, SharePoint Server, Windows Mobile

Tags: Mobile, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Office OneNote 2003, Microsoft Corp., Office Mobile, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft has been totally mum on what it is planning for the Office Mobile 2010 release and when that product may go live. (In fact, I tried asking again this week to no avail.)

But blogger Stephen Chapman — formerly of UXEvangelist and now Microsoft Kitchen fame — has unearthed a Microsoft presentation from August 2009 about “Office Mobile 7″ that provides new hints.

Office Mobile is a mini version of Microsoft Office that is tailored to run on Windows Mobile phones. It is not the same as Office Web Apps (even though Office Web Apps also are going to be able to run on unspecified phones from Microsoft and other vendors). Microsoft hasn’t released a new version of Office Mobile since 2007. Company officials said there is a new version in the works but have declined repeatedly to say when that version will go to beta testers or be released in final form.

The most recent version of Office Mobile is Version 6.1. It includes mobile versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. (Update: And a rudimentary version of OneNote that syncs with OneNote on the desktop, as a Talkback poster noted.)

According to a mock-up of Office Mobile 2010 which Chapman is featuring on his site (and which I’ve embedded in this post, above), Microsoft is planning to include mobile versions of its OneNote note-taking app and its SharePoint collaboration products to the next Office Mobile suite. I’d think the SharePoint Mobile mentioned on Chapman’s site could provide users access to SharePoint Server 2010’s enterprise social networking, content management and other collaborative tools. The slide indicates that Office Mobile 2010 will be customized to work on Windows Mobile 7, the version of Microsoft’s mobile OS expected to be available by the end of 2010.

If Microsoft follows through with this plan, that will help the company — at least to some degree — differentiate Office Mobile from Office Web Apps. Office Web Apps, Microsoft’s forthcoming Web-ified suite of productivity apps, includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote (but not SharePoint). Office Mobile is currently preloaded on a number of Windows Mobile phones by the carriers. It also is a natural for Microsoft’s just-launched Windows Marketplace for Mobile app store.

Microsoft announced earlier this week that the company is planning to field a number of new distribution vehicles for Office 2010, including an “Office Starter” version that replaces Microsoft’s Works product; a Product Key Card for unlocking and/or upgrading to versions of Office 2010 that come preloaded on new PCs; and a streaming/virtualized Click-to-Run offering.

Office 2010 should be launching in May/June 2010, Microsoft officials told the company’s reseller partners earlier this year.

October 7th, 2009

When will Microsoft's Live Mesh matter?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 9:16 am

Categories: Azure, Code names, Corporate strategy, Live Mesh, Red Dog, Utility/cloud computing, Windows Live, Windows Mobile, Windows client, Xbox, Zune

Tags: Team, Microsoft Corp., Team Management, Management, Mary Jo Foley

It was April 2008 when Microsoft rolled out a first beta of its Live Mesh synchronization/backup software. The promise was Live Mesh would help users more seamlessly integrate ther PCs, phones, digital picture frames, Xbox consoles — the whole gamut — and not just devices from Microsoft. It sounded almost as though Live Mesh was a precursor to, if not the heart of, the whole three-screens-and-a-cloud strategy Microsoft execs have been increasingly touting.

But maybe not. This week, I asked some of the executives and teams participating in Microsoft’s consumer open-house showcase in New York about how and when they planned to start making use of Live Mesh. The stammers and blank stares said a lot to me.

I asked Robbie Bach, the President of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division about how and when he expected teams in his unit to take advantage of Live Mesh. He didn’t have a whole lot to say. He noted that Live Mesh is more plumbing/infrastructure than something Microsoft plans to offer as a new product or service directly to consumers.

“My Phone (Microsoft’s new Windows Mobile service for provisioning and securing phones) is not using all of Mesh today,” Bach said. Sometime, Microsoft could use Mesh to help replicate files and other information across multiple devices, he said. But that’s going to happen “tomorrow,” Bach said.

Not to be a contrarian, but I’m actually not sure that My Phone is using Live Mesh today, either. I asked Aaron Woodman, Director of Product Management for Windows Mobile about the WinMo team’s intentions around Live Mesh and got a similarly vague statement.

“From a techncal standpoint, Live Mesh is important,” Woodman said. “But it’s more about plumbing. It’s not something we will put in front of consumers.”

A year ago, members of the Mesh team were contemplating how to make consumer devices like Zune and Xbox part of a user’s Mesh. (In other words, to make the kinds of scenarios highlighted in this much-shared Live Mesh marketing/promotional video a reality.) But how and when is this going to happen?

Microsoft has continued to provide beta updates to Live Mesh for the past year and a half. There’s a Live Mesh software development kit out there. Testers who are using the Live Mesh beta seem to really love it, from feedback I’ve gotten. Undeniably, something is changing with Mesh — strategy and/or technology-wise Microsoft has been moving supporting Live Services components of its Azure cloud environment around as of late. But the Softies claim Live Mesh is alive and well and not a victim of the product/head-count cuts Microsoft has been making.

Given the champion of Live Mesh is none other than Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie himself, you’d think product teams at Microsoft would be falling all over themselves to Mesh-ify their products and services.Maybe Microsoft will have something tangible to show and say at the Professional Developers Conference in November, given that it would be the perfect place to talk about Live Platforms Services and the “Live Mesh Cloud.”

But when Mesh will actually figure in Microsoft’s products/services line-up is anyone’s guess at this point.