Microsoft unveils hybrid computing platform

Microsoft unveiled on Wednesday the first important piece of a new hybrid computing platform intended to ease the transition of its core software business to the web.
The move comes two-and-a-half years after Bill Gates, chairman, warned that the rise of internet computing could one day threaten Microsoft’s desktop software business.
It is the clearest evidence so far of the influence of Ray Ozzie, who took over from Mr Gates as the company’s chief software architect in 2005.
The new technology, known as Live Mesh, is designed to free a consumer’s data from the PC or other device where it resides and place copies of it automatically on any other internet-connected gadget, or make it available through a web browser.
Microsoft executives said the Mesh could make it possible for people to access digital music stored on their home PC from any device or computer, work on documents that were entered on other computers or share their photos and other media automatically with friends over the internet.
The technology is being launched in an early test version, with a full trial scheduled for later this year, Microsoft said. The group did not say when it expected consumer services based on the idea to be available.
By giving users a way to copy data easily to Microsoft’s servers and then work on it in a “virtual desktop” through a browser, the idea echoes the so-called “cloud computing” strategies of companies such as Google.
Microsoft said it would guarantee at least five gigabytes of storage free of charge.
However, Microsoft’s plan adds a further element, making it possible to “sync” information automatically between a user’s computers and other digital devices, creating what it called a personal “device mesh”.
Users who first register all their devices on a Microsoft website will be able to copy information between them simply by “right clicking” on the relevant folders, Microsoft said.

more on http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f5e2d34e-10a2-11dd-b8d6-0000779fd2ac.html

However, this don't seem any kind of innovation or development, rather MS is trying to do what they have been doing the whole time. Trying to use title of technology in order to monopolize and control the PC or nowadays personal media industry. This will enable MS to have access, control over users in terms of PC, media, internet, TV, virtually anything by holding their data as hostage. This don't seem much as a new technology, rather the technology and service mesh(as MS put it) with tremendous labor and data storage.