I am very enthusiastic about Microsoft's LiveMesh. It has proved itself genuinely useful twice this week.
Once was with photos. I had taken loads in the snow and downloaded them onto my main PC. Later I wanted to use some of them on my laptop. In the old days I would have had to put them on to a USB stick and move them from one place to another, attach a data cable between the two machines or maybe uploaded them to an on-line album and then downloaded what I required. This time all I had to do was check a folder which I had set to be synchronised between the two and, sure enough, there were all the new pics for me to do what I wanted with.
The second occasion was when I needed a bundle of old files which I knew lurked in the depths of the PC but I was somewhere else with my laptop. I was able to access the desktop of the PC, open folders, open files until I found the ones I wanted. Then I could just copy and paste them to my laptop.
Quite brilliant.
Whilst it won't do staff or students' carbon footprints much good to leave their PCs running at home when they come to College, it will enable them to access and save files and even use home software if they prefer and no longer need 'Sorry, I left it at home' be a valid excuse.
Yes, I know there have been similar applications around for a while that allow remote access but this is free and just works in a familiar way. Microsoft have stolen a march on Google with this. It will interesting to see how Big G respond as, with Live Mesh, Big Blue cannot fail to reclaim users to their other Live products where Google Documents have flourished.
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