April 14, 2008, 3:13 PM — Microsoft plans to launch its Live Mesh offering next week at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco but so far is not revealing details of the service.
On Friday night, Microsoft sent out e-mail invitations to a "Mesh it up" event on April 24 featuring demos by Microsoft "experts." The invitation includes a reference to the mesh.com Web site, which currently requires visitors to sign in with a Windows Live ID and then displays an error message.
Microsoft declined to offer any more details about Live Mesh except to say that it will launch next week and further information will become available on Tuesday evening, April 22.
Earlier this year at Mix 08, Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie vaguely referred to the Mesh concept as a way to use the Web through Microsoft products to connect devices, entertainment, businesses and development.
The Web 2.0 Expo Web site includes a listing for a presentation by Microsoft executive Amit Mital, general manager of Live Mesh, entitled Get Mesh. Mital was previously a general manager of Live Meeting and BizTalk Server, according to the listing.
As it faces competition from online services, Microsoft has been slowly rolling out services that fall under its software-as-a-service strategy. In addition to Office Live Workspace and SkyDrive, Microsoft also has begun offering hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint.
