Judging from the tentative language used by Keith Morrow, it is hard to pinpoint when (or even if) Blockbuster will release any consumer products based on Live Mesh. However, Live Mesh is clearly on the radar of a lot of corporate IT departments and hopefully we will see some 'real' products very soon.

LiveSide has just discovered this page on Microsoft's Live Mesh site, which reveals that the Mac version is now ready for download. It reads:

An early look at Live Mesh for Mac

The Live Mesh puts you at the center of your digital world by connecting your devices over the internet - and now, you can add your Mac to your Live Mesh! It's never been easier to synchronize all your important Microsoft Office documents, media files, and pictures between your computers or between friends.

Since the launch of Live Mesh, many people have been asking for a Live Mesh extender for the Mac and while it's still under development, here is an early preview of our Mac extender. With the Live Mesh Mac extender, you can

• Add your Mac to your Live Mesh - it will appear with your other devices on www.mesh.com and throughout the Live Mesh UI.
• Synchronize files between your Mac, your other computers, and your Live Desktop.
• Synchronize folder contents between your Mac and other folder members.
• Easily access Live Mesh news, your Live Desktop, and manage your devices from the Live Mesh menu bar item.
• Receive notifications through Live Mesh when updates are available and easily update the Live Mesh extender for Mac.

A word of caution!
Please keep in mind that the Live Mesh extender for Mac is still under development, and due to overwhelming enthusiasm, we're making it available earlier than usual. Like many software projects, we started our Mac development efforts with the basic technology and scenarios. We started by making our synchronization engine and operating environment work on the Mac and starting to sync file between computers and members.

Over the next few months, we'll be working on updating the user experience and improving the Live Mesh experience and functionality, performance, and stability on the Mac. As such, please use at your own risk and remember to send us feedback.

What It Looks Like

The Mac version running on OS X, integrates Mesh into the Finder, with a Mesh sidebar next to the folder view. Like in the Windows version, you can share Meshified items with other users from this bar.Also like the Windows version, you can customize the settings to specify which items are synchronized with which devices. Here's what Mesh on Mac looks like:

Image Courtesy of LiveSide

Allowing users to bypass the Live Mesh online storage by directly copying files from one machine to another is a major enhancement to Live Mesh. 5GB are not a very large amount of storage anymore, especially if you want to share videos or photos. Bypassing the Live Desktop of course means that those files are not available online from anywhere anymore, but for a lot of usage scenarios (backup, syncing between desktop and laptop etc.), the online storage wasn't really necessary anyway. Still, it would be nice to see Microsoft up the 5GB limit, or allow users to purchase more space.

Strangely, users will have to turn of syncing to the Live Desktop on the Live Desktop itself. It is not possible to directly configure a folder to bypass the Live Desktop from the desktop, which might have some technical reasons, but mostly seems like an unnecessary hassle.

The new version of Live Mesh will also allow users to manage potential file conflicts on the Live Desktop, something that was sorely missing before.

Going Mobile

Microsoft also quietly released a mobile version of Live Mesh, which allows users to access their files from their mobile phones or any other Internet connected device through an optimized site. While it works best on Windows Mobile phones, we have tested it out on the iPhone as well, and found that it worked surprisingly well. The iPhone displays all photos and documents, though it doesn't play back mp3 files. The site feel a bit better integrated on a Windows Mobile device (you can upload files to Mesh from the phone, for example), but it works well on other mobile platforms as well.

This is not, however, the promised mobile client for Live Mesh - it is only a way to access your files more conveniently from a mobile device. The mobile client is still 'coming soon.'

Going Mac Soon?

As if all of these updates weren't enough, the enterprising folks over at the Live Side blog today found a Mac version of the Mesh client on Microsoft's servers (though Microsoft promptly took it down). While this wasn't an official release, it is clear that Microsoft is taking the Mac platform seriously in its Mesh strategy and chances are that we will see an official Mac client in the near future.

Lots of Developments

Microsoft is putting a lot of resources behind its Live Mesh platform. It's good to see that the company is releasing so many updates and upgrades in such a short time. The syncing application is only the beginning of what Microsoft could do with Mesh and they surely have greater plans for it than just making it a glorified syncing app, of which Microsoft already has a few anyway.

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Mac users can now sign in to Live Mesh, go to 'Add Device,' and click the "limited Mac Tech Preview now available link." However, it looks like Microsoft is only releasing this as a limited beta so far and will only allow a limited (and unspecified) number of Mac clients to connect to Live Mesh at first.

Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 users in the US and the UK can now also download a Live Mesh client (US residents, UK residents).

Other Updates

Overall, most of the updates to Live Mesh are evolutionary, though Microsoft has made some important improvements to the user interface, such as having the Live Mesh bar remember its previous state and adding a 'superpan' feature to improve support for large monitors during remote sessions. Enterprise users can now also choose to enable authentication for Remote Desktop sessions, or disable this functionality altogether.

If you are using Microsoft's Internet Explorer, you can now also drag and drop files to and from your browser.

You can find a more detailed list of new and improved features on the Live Mesh blog.

The first key point is that Microsoft sees the Web as "the Hub of our social mesh and our device mesh." Ozzie calls this "social mesh" and writes that "in scenarios ranging from productivity to media and entertainment, social mesh notions of linking, sharing, ranking and tagging will become as familiar as File, Edit and View."

On the face of it, this is an acknowledgement from Ray Ozzie that the Web is at the center of software as a service. However, we all know that Windows is really at the center of Microsoft's strategy. This isn't explicitly stated in Ozzie's memo, but he does explain how the Web and the PC are intimately connected in this new world:

"To individuals, the concept of “My Computer” will give way to the concept of a personal mesh of devices – a means by which all of your devices are brought together, managed through the web, as a seamless whole. After identifying a device as being “yours”, its configuration and personalization settings, its applications and their own settings, and the data it carries will be seamlessly available and synchronized across your mesh of devices. Whether for media, control or access, scenarios ranging from productivity to media and entertainment will be unified and enhanced by the concept of a device mesh."

Ultimately Live Mesh is a product that enables Microsoft to bring their Windows software paradigm fully into the Web age via the concept of the "mesh". This extract, about connected devices, explains:

"We aspire to bring together Windows, Windows Live, and Windows Mobile by creating seamless experiences that span these offerings. Windows Live, for example, enables seamless communications and media experiences across Windows, Windows Mobile, and the Web. Live Mesh, a new services platform technology that will also become part of Windows Live, further extends the Windows / Windows Mobile / Windows Live experience by bringing your devices together to work in concert with one another using the web as a hub [...]"

The full memo will be made public tomorrow morning, after Microsoft staff have seen it. We will publish the memo in its entirely tomorrow on ReadWriteWeb.

UPDATE: here is the full text of Ray Ozzie's memo

Here are Marc's comments, via his post, and you can click the images to see the diagrams. Disclosure: I used to do some consulting work for Marc's company, during 2005-06.

“What does Google’s Open Mesh look like?”

Most of the infrastructure, services and applications that Google offers work all by themselves and are not dependent upon anything else. Google has launched OpenSocial and built Google Friend Connect.

Yahoo!

“How is Yahoo building the open mesh?

Yahoo probably has the most comprehensive, well architected approach towards building their own open mesh. They've left lots of room for us without getting in our way. Now they just have to execute those plans!

Microsoft

“Will Microsoft connect their Live Mesh to our Open Mesh? …[and what about the rest of Microsoft?]

Live Mesh totally rocks and it'll probably become a key element of our open mesh. It'll gateway us to mobile, car, living room, game machines.

Facebook & MySpace

“Aren’t Facebook and MySpace really Closed Meshes?” … [ and how can we connect to them?]

Sending out tentacles or satellites isn't the same as being open.

LiveSide reported last night that folks were able to sign up for Mesh if they were in the U.S. and this morning, they confirmed this to be the case.

The official announcement was made in the Live Mesh Forum. It read:

Live Mesh is now openly available to anyone in the U.S.

The Live Mesh team is pleased to announce that anyone in the U.S. can now use Live Mesh just by signing in to www.mesh.com with a valid Windows Live ID. No sign up needed to participate!

International Customers

With Live Mesh open to anyone in the US, our international friends can join in the fun early as well - with one caveat: you must be willing to change your Windows operating system region and language setting to EN-US. Once you do this you will be able to immediately sign in to Live Mesh with a valid Windows Live ID. Please be aware that this may cause other applications that specifically require your native country region and language settings to encounter problems.

Feedback

Once you've begun using Live Mesh, we'd love to hear from you! We are working hard to create the best experience and appreciate any feedback you have. Please send us feedback using our online form. You can also submit (and view others') feedback and bugs here on the Microsoft Connect website.

Thank you,
The Live Mesh team

About Live Mesh

For those of you unfamiliar with the service, one of the main things you need to know is that at the moment, the service is Windows-only. However, Microsoft has confirmed in the past that a Mac client is in the works. Eventually it will work with mobile devices, too. Certainly those will include Windows Mobile, but also any other devices that permit it to run. They should have some takers, though, because Mesh isn't built with proprietary code, but rather with open protocols that most web developers are familiar with, including HTTP, RSS, REST, ATOM and JSON. Although Mesh's FeedSync is new, it is an XML protocol based on ATOM and RSS.

With Mesh running on your computers, you can simply right-click any folder and choose "Add to Mesh." By doing so, that folder and all the files it contains are synchronized with all of your other computers you've added to your personal Mesh. It also syncs those files to the Live Mesh Desktop, which is Mesh's "cloud" - an online web site you can access from any computer. At the moment, the online storage is limited to 5 GB, but that could change in the future. However, Mesh's recent update allows you to set folders to sync via peer-to-peer, bypassing Live Desktop.

A Live Mesh Folder

When folders are Mesh-enabled, a small panel appears to the right of the folder in explorer which catalogs any changes to the folder (file adds/moves/deletions) as well as notes and comments left by any of the folder's members.

Some people have compared Mesh to Apple's Mobile Me (I discussed this on my personal site not too long ago), but that's a little bit off the mark. Where Mobile Me is a consumer-focused product that offers sync and cloud storage, too - the difference is that Mesh is actually a platform. A service like Mobile Me could be built on Mesh, for example, so what you're seeing today with the file sync is sort of like a demo app of what the Mesh platform can do. However, that being said, we hope to see Mesh doing more than file sync in the future.

You can read our initial review of the service here

Where is Windows Live at?

We last spoke to Hall in June '07 when the second generation of Windows Live launched. At that point there was a lot of confusion about the Windows Live brand - we noted that it was "still a fragmented vision, with a few too many products". So I started off by asking Brian for an update on Windows Live and what the brand means nowadays. He explained that Windows Live is about people sharing and getting to "their stuff". There are 3 parts to Windows Live, said Brian:

• Hosted services
• Peer to Peer
• Platform

Among the 'hosted services' layer there are products such as SkyDrive, which went beta last June. They also have Foldershare, a product that Microsoft acquired in 2005 that does P2P and remote tunneling for files.

Differences between Windows Live and Live Mesh

My next question was: how is the Live Mesh platform different to Windows Live? And where will the points of integration be? Hall said that Mesh is "a ground-up platform approach", whereby apps and community are programatically integrated into other apps. So in the longer run, Microsoft plans to integrate the 3 Windows Live layers (hosted, P2P, platform) into one seamless experience, using the Mesh platform.

It still is a little confusing, but Brian Hall is the first to recognize that they have a lot of work to do. He told me that the current Live Mesh UI is a "proof of concept" at this point, but over time aspects of it will be integrated into Windows Live.

Live Mesh concept illustration; source: Microsoft

So over time, we will see Live Mesh become integrated into Windows Live products. Brian Hall said it's unclear yet how that will play out, but for example we can expect SkyDrive (Microsoft's online storage product) to utilize Live Mesh technology to enable better syncing across desktop and Web, and among different devices. Also the sharing features of Live Mesh will become integrated into various Windows Live products.

The gist of the conversation was that Live Mesh is a platform and so in future we will see Windows Live products utilize that platform for syncing and sharing.

What's next for Windows Live?

As for Windows Live development, which Brian Hall is in charge of, he told us that we can expect to see new beta products in late summer / early fall. He also said that Microsoft is working on partnerships with social networks. At the end of March Microsoft announced the Windows Live Contacts API, enabling users to import and export their contacts and relationships from Windows Live to five popular social networks: Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, LinkedIn and Tagged. Microsoft also introduced a new website, www.invite2messenger.net, where people can invite their contacts from any of those five social networks to join them on Windows Live Messenger. We can expect more of that kind of data sharing functionality to emerge.

We can also expect to see further integration of Windows Live features into the MSN line of products - for example making user and community content more a part of the MSN news portal, via RSS, online video, social networking, and more. Hall used the word "intermingling" to describe how Windows Live products will integrate with MSN. The broad plan here seems to be to continue the MSN brand, but make it more personalized and social using Windows Live functionality. I would compare this to how the Yahoo homepage is evolving to become more like MyYahoo. Indeed, if Yahoo is acquired by Microsoft then Mesh technology merged with Yahoo content properties will be an exciting prospect!

Conclusion

Overall, there is still brand confusion in all of this - Live Mesh, Windows Live, MSN. But Microsoft is definitely tackling the Web in a big way, and the sync and sharing platform of Mesh is a key move by Microsoft to hook their desktop and Windows software advantage into the Web world.

Please tell us your thoughts on Mesh and Windows Live in the comments.

Collaboration on documents may be a part of the product as well. It's expected to be a simple, but powerful, service. A number of questions remain, however.

Ray Ozzie offered thinly veiled foreshadowing of Mesh at the Mix08 conference and described a product that offered the following:

"Just imagine the possibilities enabled by centralized configuration and personalization and remote control of all your devices from just about anywhere. Just imagine the convenience of unified data management, the transparent synchronization of files, folders, documents, and media. The bi-directional synchronization of arbitrary feeds of all kinds across your devices and the Web, a kind of universal file synch."

Questions Remaining

Performance seems to be the biggest question around Live Mesh. The technology itself doesn't seem terribly unique, but if the program is able to deal with file editing conflicts and lost network connections, that will be good.

Storage size and allocation is another question that remains. It's assumed that SkyDrive will be central to the offering, but that program's 5MB 5 GB (Ha! typo) storage limit will need to change. Even double that will not likely be enough storage.

Finally, some magic previously unimagined would be nice. When Ozzie says, "Just imagine the possibilities enabled..." I can imagine that he's imagined some we haven't. What's up their sleeve?

Cross-platform functionality outside of the Windows environment may be a pipe-dream, but even so - Mesh could be a game changer for the majority of the world using said environment.

What would you like to see out of Live Mesh?

Essentially, Live Mesh is a collection of feeds (which can be expressed as ATOM, JSON, FeedSync, RSS, WB-XML, or POX). Every piece of data entered into a user's Mesh -- be it a file, a folder, a message, a user permission, or a new device -- is rendered as a piece of information in a feed. The feeds are then synced with other devices that are part of that Mesh following rules for how to sync each particular piece of information (i.e., File A may sync with Users 1, 2, and 3, while File B may only be told to sync with Users 1 and 2).

Mesh is a combination of web based services that sync files and information across a cloud environment, and client software that allows individual devices to sync with the Mesh. This is a continuation of Microsoft's "software plus services" strategy, in which client software is augmented by (or reliant upon) web services.

The News Feed

While Mesh doesn't have any version control capabilities yet -- a must for a service that syncs data between multiple users -- it does borrow a popular feature from the web for keeping users up-to-date on what's going on across a system: the news feed. The Live Mesh Notifier is a news feed of all the activity on a user's Mesh. Right now that means changes made to files, folders, devices, user permissions, and comments left on files/folders.

However, because Live Mesh is a platform that seeks to interact with third party services (more on that below), it is easy to envision how much more could be pushed through the news feed. We were shown a demo application that synced tweets on Twitter with the Mesh Notifier, for example. As more services use the Live Mesh platform, could it, or a service built on top of it, eat FriendFeed's lunch?

The Platform

What makes Live Mesh potentially very special is that Microsoft has turned synchronization into a platform. Eventually, services as well as devices will be able to hook into Mesh. We were shown some early demos of the type of things Microsoft envisions for the Mesh service that were quite impressive. In one proof-of-concept demo, a photo that was taken via a cell phone camera, was automatically synced to a Mesh that pushed the pictures out to a Facebook photo album.

It was certainly impressive to see data -- in this case a cell phone camera picture -- almost instantly synced across multiple devices and saved to a web service immediately after it was created. Microsoft envisions Mesh as a platform for data synchronization for any service we use and for any type of data. Ideally, for example, if someone were to comment on that photo at Facebook, the comment would sync to anywhere else that photo was hosted (your desktop computer, the desktop computers of anyone sharing the photo, your laptop, other photo sharing sites, etc.).

Taking On Google Gears?

Perhaps the most interesting bit that Microsoft demoed to us was an offline compontent of the Mesh platform. Web apps using the Mesh platform will be able to lean on the client software to take their web applications offline, including all user data, and sync it up when the user gets back online at a later time.

Microsoft is taking an offline approach that is more akin to Google Gears or Mozilla Prism than Adobe AIR -- the web-to-desktop functionality of Mesh is essentially a wrapper for the actual web app. The same HTML and JavaScript, etc. runs in a desktop window in offline mode, data is stored locally, and synced later. The difference is that Microsoft is ting offline access into the Mesh service, so developers don't just get the technology to take their apps offline, but also access to the synchronization and cloud storage services to move their data back and forth.

We've talked about the importance of web apps on the desktop on this blog, so this could be an important component of Mesh.

Will It Work?

It is still very early for Mesh. Microsoft intends to invite key development partners to try out the system in the next few weeks, and will roll out support for other devices (including mobile and Mac) over the next year. One thing that could hinder Mesh, though, is Microsoft's rather confused marketing around its online services. Between Mesh, SkyDrive, Live Spaces, and FolderShare there is so much overlap in Microsoft's services that users are bound to get confused.

Ideally, Mesh will be a platform that will tie all of Microsoft's online storage, synchronization, and sharing services together -- along with other, third party services. But the confusing muddle that is Microsoft Live could stymie mainstream adoption. Microsoft needs to clean up their act and present a more clear marketing message.

Software + services is also a potentially tougher sell than software as a service -- people don't like downloading things. Still, Microsoft has created a compelling product that they hope will standardize synchronization across the universe of devices and web services we each use every day. The prospect of getting easy access to user data on multiple devices could be attractive for developers and prompt them to embrace the platform, but it is probably too early to make any specific predictions.

Ray Ozzie Memo

Accompanying the launch of Live Mesh is a new memo from Microsoft Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie. It notes that Microsoft sees the Web as "the Hub of our social mesh and our device mesh." Ozzie calls this "social mesh" and writes that "in scenarios ranging from productivity to media and entertainment, social mesh notions of linking, sharing, ranking and tagging will become as familiar as File, Edit and View."

UPDATE: here is the full text of Ray Ozzie's memo

The Live brand confusion is something that Richard MacManus first wrote about on his ZDNet blog in 2006. Why then, hasn't this been fixed yet? It has gotten better -- MSN Hotmail vs. Windows Live Mail vs. Windows Live Hotmail seems have settled on the latter name, for example -- but there is still a lot of overlap in the Windows Live family that makes it confusing for consumers.

When we were briefed a couple of weeks ago about the launch of Microsoft Live Mesh, we asked how the company planned to reconciled yet another file backup service with SkyDrive, Live Drive, FolderShare, SharedView, and Spaces, each of which have some amount of overlap at the service level with Mesh. The answer we got was itself confusing and muddled and basically boiled down to, those services can use the Mesh as their back end platform. The impression that we got, though, was that even people at Microsoft tend to be a bit confused about how the whole Live universe fits together.

The design differences across the Live Search sites highlighted today on the LiveSide blog may be minor, but taken as a whole they're a good metaphor for the branding confusion that Microsoft has created across its collection of online sites and services. If designers in the search division can't get together and decide on a unified design for a single family of Live products, it's no wonder the Live brand on the whole has become so sprawling and muddled.

Netflix Comes To Xbox

Earlier this week, Netflix subscribers got a nice surprise - they no longer need to save up for that Roku box to get instant access to Netflix movies on their TV. Instead, the new set-top box for Netflix is going to be one that many people already have in their living rooms: an Xbox 360. The partnership between Xbox and Netflix will be bringing a new "Watch Instantly" feature that will appear on Xbox later this fall. In addition, a "Live Party" feature will allow people to watch movies together over Xbox Live. Well, the coolness of that feature is debatable...but still, Netflix on Xbox? Did Microsoft just win the living room from Apple?

Deep Zoom Changes the Web

Bah humbug - another browser plugin. Is that what you think? Well, like it or not the Silverlight plugin is being pushed hard. It's going to be installed on millions of HP computers and it's going to power NBC's Olympics '08 website, so it's going to become hard to avoid installing this one after a while.

If you've been paying attention to Silverlight news, you know that one of the most remarkable things about it is its Deep Zoom feature. It's definitely the coolest. It initially received attention when Hard Rock debuted their Memorabilia website. Then there was the incredible Deep Earth site (which technically didn't use Silverlight's Deep Zoom, but instead uses Silverlight plus a custom-written component created in Visual Studio). Now we have a Silverlight Deep Zoomable image of Yosemite National Park. 70 photographers, GPS-enabled cameras, 10,000 high-res photos. The results let researchers study rockfall activity and help Yosemite search-and-rescue teams with their operations by providing detailed, zoomable maps of the rockfaces. Cool? Yes, definitely.

Live Mesh

This service is rapidly approaching coolness. Mac fans have complained there's no Mesh for them, but that's only a matter of time. In the past couple of days, we've seen Live Mesh open up to all and launch a mobile web site.

Via m.mesh.com you can see your stream of Mesh news, access your Meshified folders, and move your photos, videos, and other content from your mobile device into your Mesh, instantly making them accessible from any computer, anywhere. The Live Desktop (cloud storage) offers 5 GB, but you aren't limited to meshing only 5 GB - you can mesh as much as you want. Data will sync from device to device via P2P connections, but only 5 GB are stored online for access when you're away from a device you own. You have the option to configure which files are part of that 5 GBs. Oh, and it does Remote Desktop, too.

If you haven't been able to wrap your head around Mesh, yet, this video is a killer introduction. Here, Ori Amiga demos the native Mesh feeds, WPF applications using Mesh, a Silverlight client that supports working on and offline, a custom Facebook application that syncs Facebook photos with Live Mesh, and even a Mac client that sends photos to Live Mesh. Cool? You bet.

Ori Amiga: Programming the Mesh

Your guide to this video

• 10:53: Skip to this point to start seeing the best stuff
• 19:10(ish): The developer stuff continues until 19:10ish
• 19:40: WPF demo app Family Show
• 27:01: Silverlight App PhotoZoom running offline
• 33:08: Mesh connector for Twitter
• 34:35: Mesh connector for Facebook
• 36:45: Mesh running on the Mac - photo from Photobooth synced to Mesh almost instantaneously - to both PCs and mobile!
• 43:00: Opening/editing files directly from the cloud - the cloud will be a shortcut on your desktop
• 46:09: Viewing offline RSS feeds synced to Mesh in your RSS reader

Do these innovations change your opinion of Microsoft? Are you impressed, annoyed, neutral, upset, undecided? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Author Disclosure: I also blog for Microsoft's Channel 10. I'm not a Microsoft employee, just a technology fan. This is not a paid endorsement - these are personal opinions.

All of these applications are meant to complement the Windows Live online experience and work closely together. You can, for example, use Windows Live Sync to keep your online and offline photo albums in sync. Live Sync has replaced FolderShare.

We tested the new versions of the Live Essentials for the last few weeks and all of them represent a major update to the older versions.

Even if you don't typically use the Microsoft's Live services, installing the Live Photo Gallery, for example, is well worth a try thanks to its seamless integration with Live Photos and SkyDrive. This new version compares quite well with Google's Picasa 3 and also lets you upload photos to Flickr. Photo Gallery also ties in with other Microsoft tools like Auto Collage or PhotoSynth.

Windows Live Writer, on the other hand, is more of an evolutionary update, but it is the favorite blogging client for a lot of us Windows users here at RWW and the update makes handling media files a lot easier.

Also worth a look are the enhanced Live Toolbar and the Windows Live Messenger, which has received a major facelift. The Live Toolbar (IE only) now displays your updates from the Windows Live online services, including new messages and pictures from friends. You can also use the toolbar to sync your IE7 and 8 bookmarks between different computers.

Software Plus Services

The real selling point for the Live Essentials suite, however, is how well all the apps play together, both online and offline. Live Photos, for example, can use your Live Messenger and Hotmail contact lists for tagging faces, or the Live Messenger connecting to your status updates on your Live Profile page. The one Live Service that has remained behind, though, is Live Mesh, which seems to be on its own development track. We assume, however, that it will be merged into the Live services at some point.

Box.net has been around for quite a while, but is still one of our favorite places to store documents online. Thanks to its integration with numerous online services, including Gmail, Zoho, picnick, and Scribd, box.net can not only store all your documents, but can also function as the hub of your virtual office.

One other nice feature of box.net is that you can share your files and folders with 'collaborators,' which makes it a good service to exchange files within a small business or among friends.

The storage limit for the free accounts is 1GB, which is plenty if you mostly exchange text documents or spreadsheets. Paid accounts start at $7.95 a month and include more advanced features, including 5GB of storage, a versioning system, mobile access, and 24/7 phone support.

Live Mesh

The online storage component of Live Mesh is only one part of Micorsoft's latest venture into cloud computing, but it is also one of its most compelling features at this point. Live Mesh gives you 5GB of online storage and an online desktop that looks a lot like Windows Vista. You can upload any type of file to Live Mesh, but you cannot edit any of your files through the online desktop. In the future, though, we expect Microsoft to start adding more of these features.

One of the main reasons we like Mesh is because it constantly watches for changes in the folders you are synchronizing to it and updates them automatically. In addition, you can share folders with friends, allowing you to collaborate on projects.

Live Mesh works on both Windows PCs and Macs.

DropBox

Few online storage services integrate with your desktop as well as DropBox, which only recently opened up to the public after an extensive beta test. While you do have to install a small program on your machine to run DropBox, it is well worth it. Besides setting up a folder on your machine, which automatically syncs with DropBox, you can also set DropBox up to then sync that folder with other machines, similar to Live Mesh. DropBox lets you upload any type of file, as long as it is smaller than 350MB. DropBox uses Amazon's S3 service as its storage solution and provides its users with 2GB of free storage. For $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year, you can buy 50GB of storage.

One of our favorite features of DropBox is that it preserves every revision of every file. You can also easily share folders with your friends or colleagues.

DropBox supports Windows XP and Vista, Mac OSX, and Linux.

Oosah

Oosah's main selling point is simple: you get a whopping 1 terabyte of storage for media files. One restriction of Oosah is that you can't use it for text documents, spreadsheets, or presentations, which seems a bit weird, given that those types of files are generally small.

One interesting aspect of Oosah is that it accepts RAW image files from most camera manufacturers, though it automatically converts them into JPGs. You can also connect to your Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, and YouTube accounts and view your images and videos from those services in one central place. Oosah also gives you Media RSS feeds and even a podcast feed for your audio files.

While we love Oosah for its general ease of use, the one aspect we really did not enjoy was the fact that uploading files seems to be unnecessarily hard. Oosah does not provide any desktop clients and while you can use the web based uploader to select multiple files, uploading multiple directories at a time is not an option.

JungleDisk

JungleDisk is the only service in this list that is not available for free - and technically, it is not even an online storage service. Instead, it provides a frontend to Amazon's S3 storage service. JungleDisk costs $20 and after that, you pay Amazon for the storage and transfer of your files. JungleDisk also lets you map your Amazon S3 storage space as a network drive on your computer, so that you can just drag and drop files back and forth between your online storage and your local desktop.

JungleDisk is available for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux.

Other Services

Online storage is a competitive market. The best services integrate fully with your desktop and allow you to effortlessly upload and download files. They also provide you with an online desktop to access files from any computers and are stable and dependable. A service that does not fulfill these basic requirements is going to have a hard time convincing users to use and trust it.

There are, of course, a large number of other online storage services that we did not include in this list. BOXSTr, for example, is a great application, but it constantly bothers you with ads and attempts to sell you their premium service. AOL's Xdrive is a great service, too, but we have heard too many rumors that AOL is trying to sell the service or that they will simply close it to be able to recommend it anymore.

The one company that is suspiciously missing from this list is Google. While you can upload your documents to Google Docs, the company that has made cloud computing a household name does not have a dedicated file storage service. While rumors about the existence of a 'GDrive' have regularly appeared in the tech blogosphere over the last few year, users still have to rely on hacks like the GMail Drive shell extension to store their files on Google's servers.

What Did We Miss?

Do you have a favorite service that we did not list? Let us know in the comments.

Logo courtesy of Flickr user blakespot.

One feature still missing from Syncplicity, which came out of beta late last year, was a Mac client. We were able to get some invites to the private Mac beta of Syncplicity, however. You can claim yours at the bottom of this post.

Synplicity, as the name implies, allows you to synchronize your files and folders between different computers and store them online. More interestingly, however, Syncplicity also allows you to sync your documents with your Google Docs account. You can also edit your documents with Zoho and work on your pictures with Picnik.

Just like Microsoft's Live Mesh, Syncplicity synchronizes your files automatically whenever you change a file. The client encrypts your documents before the transfer and your documents are also encrypted on Syncplicity's servers.

Talk About a Crowded Market

Syncplicity is working in a very crowded market. Most importantly, Microsoft's Live Mesh and Live Sync offer more storage, though also a slightly different feature set (of course, it wouldn't be Microsoft if they didn't offer at least two solutions to the same problem). But there are also numerous other startups like Wuala, SugarSync, Mozy, Box.net, and Dropbox that offer similar synchronization and backup solutions. All of these services, however, will definitely be facing the competition from Microsoft once it releases it online version of Office and integrates that with its online storage services.

For now, however, Syncplicity offers one of the most compelling services in this market.

Pricing

Syncplicity's basic service, with 2GB of storage and syncing between 2 computers, is available for free. For $9.99 a month or $99 a year, you get 50GB of storage and the ability to sync data between an unlimited amount of machines.

Mac Client Beta Invites

One feature that was still missing from Syncplicity was a Mac client. Syncplicity gave us 300 beta invites for its new Mac client. Just head over here and claim yours.