Issue: Visual Studio closes unexpectedly when launching Help: About or when creating or opening a Live Mesh project in some non-ENU operating systems.

Workaround: Modify or add the following registry key to a value of “False”:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Cloud Computing Tools\Update Notification\AutomaticUpdatesEnabled=”False”

This will resolve the issue so that you can get back to exploring the new tools in VS.

Keep an eye here or on the Live Framework discussion forum for further updates.

Share/Bookmark

1. You can now run the local client for mesh.com side by side with the local client for developer.mesh-ctp.com.
2. Support for Windows 7 and IE8
3. Single install for the Live Framework SDK and VS Tools – no more chasing down multiple bits and pieces to install in the right order!
4. Continuing on that “chasing down bits” theme, auto update introduced in the January CTP release will bring this new release to you.  If you enabled auto update in the January CTP release, it should notify you now (in the next 24 hours or so) that the April CTP is available and give you a link to click on to get the update.

I say, this whole thing is beginning to feel downright civilized.  Wouldn’t you agree?

Share/Bookmark

That’s kinda neat as gizmos go, but not really earth shattering. 

Then Ori worked on software to make that “carputer” mesh-aware, connecting to his mesh data in Live Mesh.  If he drops MP3s into a mesh folder on his PC at the office, it will show up in his playlist in his car, ready to play on the road.  While he’s driving, the GPS-enabled unit can write GPS tracks into a mesh object, which can be read by family or friends (whoever he’s given access to read that private mesh object) to see where he is or how late he’ll be arriving. 

Ok, that’s a bit more interesting.

Here’s the kicker:  While he did have to write some code for the carputer to move data between the devices built into the carputer and objects in his mesh using the Live Framework SDK, none of the code he wrote ever opens a network connection.  All the network data transfer is handled in the background by Live Mesh’s automatic data sync.  The code on the carputer reads and writes data in the local mesh running on the carputer, and the local mesh client handles synchronizing data changes to and from the cloud mesh whenever the car has a network connection via WiFi, WiMax, cellphone or whatever.

Now *that’s* cool. 

That’s what mesh is all about, and shows another example of why the local client is so important as a game-changing facilitator.  Your mesh-enabled web apps and mesh-aware desktop apps or cloud services don’t have to think in terms of dealing with network connections across unreliable or occasionally connected networks.  They just need to think in terms of data handling and change notifications.

Channel9 did a video segment with Ori about his meshmobile (“mesh-mo-beel”) project back in October.  There’s a lot of talking heads airtime through most of the video (which has some great info) but they finally get around to showing the goods at the end of the clip.  If you want to see the demo before investing time in the chitchat, skip ahead to about 18:30. 

Oh, and by the way - Ori Amiga is Principal Group Program Manager of the Live Developer Platform team (the developer side of Live Mesh).  It’s good to see the leadership having fun with the technology after hours.  Passion rocks.

Share/Bookmark

This will be a great opportunity to listen in on technical topics on developing applications with Live Frameworks, both standalone desktop apps as well as mesh-enabled web apps. A large chunk of the webcast time has been set aside for Q&A, but the best way to get your specific questions answered is to send them to us prior to the event so they can be worked into the presentation schedule.  Post your questions to this thread in the Live Framework discussion forum.

To join the webcast, visit this link:  https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=LiveFx_Dec8&role=attend

For more information and agenda, see the announcement on the Live Frameworks forum.

See you there!

Share/Bookmark

I’m working on a scenario where I need to process mesh data at intervals. My concern is how I can do delegated authorization in a secure way. How and where do I store the user credentials (or their auth token) in my Windows Azure service? Is there a way of doing interval based processing in the cloud other than Windows Azure (excluding offerings from other third parties)?

You have three approaches to process data in a user’s Live Mesh at regular intervals: 

• An application that runs on the client machine
• A service that runs on a traditional server
• A service that runs in the cloud.

Client Application 

A client application running on the local machine can access the currently logged-in user’s mesh data.  Your app could be written as a desktop .NET Windows application, using the Live Framework SDK to connect to the user’s mesh.  Your desktop app will need to present valid authentication credentials to the Live Framework APIs; to avoid having to store and protect the user’s credentials, use the LiveID SDK.  If the user checks “remember me” and “remember my password”, your app can login on the user’s behalf using the LiveID API’s cached credentials.

You could implement your client app as a mesh-enabled web application, written in HTML+JavaScript or Silverlight.  User authentication is automatic in this situation, since the user must be logged in before they can run your app.  If the user has installed the Live Framework Client on their local machine, they can run your app on their local desktop just as they would a normal desktop app.  When your app is running on the local desktop, it will default to talking to the local cache of mesh data which is synch’d frequently with the cloud when the machine is connected to the network.

These client-side approaches may be sufficient for simple scenarios.  Client side code is convenient to write and doesn’t require allocation or management of server resources, but client side code is at the mercy of the local machine and network connection.  If your users tend to leave their machines on most of the time, this might be good enough, but if you need true round-the-clock processing you need a server side solution.

Traditional Server Application

You could implement mesh data processing in a traditional web server architecture, such as IIS with ASP.NET or Apache with PHP, Perl, or Python scripting.  This will require delegated authorization, and delegated auth requires that your server have a stable domain name.

Delegated authorization requires that the end user approve or opt-into allowing your application to access (parts of) their mesh data.  This approval must take place using a special Microsoft branded web page, so that the user will know that they are telling Microsoft that it’s ok for you to access their data. 

The flow typically looks something like this:

1. Your web page explains what data you want access to, and what you will do with it, and then forwards the user to a Windows Live authorization page
2. LiveID login will interject if the user is not already logged in, then forward to the intended page
3. The user reads the information on the Windows Live web page and chooses to allow or deny access to your site (your domain).
4. The user’s response forwards the user back to a landing page on your web site.  If the user allowed access, this response will contain an authorization token.
5. You store the authorization token in your system, usually paired with the user’s name within your system so you will know which auth token to use to access this user’s data in the future. 

How you store this auth token is up to you, but it should be under physical and network access protection.  At a minimum, you should encrypt whatever table or file you store the auth token in and restrict access to the file to only the administrators and web services that need to access it. You should also avoid transmitting the auth token across the network except when needed, and only via a secure SSL connection.

The auth token cryptographically combines your domain name with the user’s LiveID username.  The auth token can only be used on requests made from your domain name, can only access that particular user’s data, and can only access the kinds of data the user gave you access to.  The user can revoke your access (invalidate the auth token) at any time using the Windows Live web site.

Once you have the user’s authorization to access their data with the auth token, accessing their mesh data is fairly straightforward.  You can use the Live Framework SDK to make data requests of the user’s mesh data from within an ASP.NET server app, or you can make plain old REST style HTPPS requests to the Live Services cloud using your favorite server scripting tools.  You add the delegated authorization token for the particular user in a header to outgoing requests.

And finally, you can schedule your service to check the user’s mesh data on regular intervals, using cron or AT or whatever scheduling tool is appropriate.

Cloud Service

You can implement your mesh-checking logic in a hosted cloud environment, such as Windows Azure, Amazon EC2, GoogleApp, or a variety of other hosting providers.  You will still need to use delegated authorization as with the traditional server scenario and walk through the same steps to obtain the user’s permission and be issued an auth token. The code you write to access the user’s mesh data using the auth token is pretty much the same as what you would write in the traditional server scenario.

Data security is a core requirement of every app, but especially of cloud hosted applications.  I think you’ll find data security is a core component of Windows Azure cloud data services. You can store the username + auth token in a table in Azure’s cloud data service.

Scalability and cost management are where running as a cloud service has a distinct advantage over the traditional server scenario.  Scalability is easy: having the option to fire up additional instances of your cloud service by the tens or thousands as needed to meet demand is a key aspect of large scale cloud hosting that traditional servers in the closet or co-lo’s can’t begin to touch.

If your application needs to be checking the user’s mesh data every 5 minutes all day every day, the operational differences between cloud and traditional server will be relatively small, and perhaps offer no cost savings at all. 

If your application needs to run only during business hours or only on certain days of the week, you can do something with a cloud service that you can’t do with a traditional server, hosted VM or co-lo:  You can turn the cloud service off when you don’t need it, and stop paying for it until you turn it on again.

Anticipating a holiday rush?  You can scale up your customer capacity to massive volume during the holiday shopping crunch, then get rid of it in January and coast by on a shoestring ops budget until the next holiday surge.

If your mesh-checking app needs to check for changes in the user’s mesh data every 5 minutes, your service will be running pretty much non-stop.  If you only need to check 4 times a day, though, you might just turn your cloud service off until the next update interval.

When designing your mesh-checking architecture, be sure to take a close look at the notification features offered by Live Frameworks.  Notifications and data sync metadata could significantly reduce the frequency and amount of work your app needs to do to detect changes.

Share/Bookmark