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.

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