More Details on Microsoft's Life Drive Revealed

[Damion Chaplin]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-6109441.html?part=rss&tag=6109441&subj=news' target='_blank'>http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-6109441.html?part=rss&tag=6109441&subj=news</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Microsoft has confirmed more details of its forthcoming Live Drive service, which will offer free online storage. Speaking at a blogger's breakfast before the opening of Microsoft's Tech Ed conference in Sydney on Tuesday, Microsoft Australia technical specialist John Hodgson said that the basic Live Drive was likely to include around 2 gigabytes of storage for free. Additional storage capacity will be available for purchase, he said, though pricing and final release dates haven't been announced. While there have been rumors about Live Drive service in the blogosphere, to date Microsoft has been cagey about officially confirming those plans. What is known is that the service can be mapped directly from PCs running the upcoming Windows Vista operating system."</i><br /><br />Up to 2GB of free online storage space mapped directly to my desktop? Sounds good to me, though I do have some questions about identity verification, especially when trying to access your Drive from multiple machines and locations. Those will all be answered in time though, and in the meantime it's a question of whether Google's interested enough to beat them to the market before Vista's even released. I know if Google started offering a similar service today, I would probably start using it immediately and ignore any MS service that comes along later. How about you?

[Felix Torres]

in the meantime it's a question of whether Google's interested enough to beat them to the market before Vista's even released. I know if Google started offering a similar service today, I would probably start using it immediately and ignore any MS service that comes along later. How about you?

1- Google has its hands full keeping Gmail running even as a beta.
( http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/index.php?p=160&amp;tag=nl.e622 ) They *might* be reckless enough to try to pre-empt MS, but...
2- ...Google is all about ads and its not that easy to put ads into the File Open dialog with Ajax. Doable, but it would have to be Windows-specific code and at that point MS wins anyway, since Live Drive is about providing Windows-unique features.

The real question with Live Drive is data security. It might be worth doing if you can use the space to mirror your profile and data, maybe even hold a restore image, as off-site back-up for home users or small businesses. For other uses, I'm thinking a $50 (and dropping) 2Gb SD card/thumb drive is just a wee bit more effective.

But that's just me.
For a lot of folks, "free" carries a lot of weight. ;-)

[Damion Chaplin]

So are you saying that Life Drive will be ad-based, or that if Google did something similar they would have to be ad-based?

If Google was smart, they wouldn't bother with feeding ads to our desktop, they would just promote their other services from within their Drive program (or site) - services that are ad-based.

The biggest problem I see is that if Google were to offer something like this it would remain eternally in beta. For example gmail is fantastic, but since it's still in beta, it's not secure. Google can and does scan your email content in order to target ads at you. With email I don't mind, as long as I don't use it to communicate anthing sensitive (it's not appropriate for business use), but with my data, I would not want it examined by Google.

So let me rephrase and say that if Google launched a Life Drive-type service right now, and it wasn't in beta, I would jump on it right away rather than wait for a solution from MS.

Whether Google is in a position to do so or not is an entirely different question...

[Felix Torres]

What I meant was that if Google were to launch such a service it would have to serve a revenue-generating purpose, rather than just poisoning the well for MS. I don't think Google is that mean spirited and stupid.
(Though I could be wrong.) Even at current prices, 2Gb of hard drive space cost money to maintain so the money has to come from somewhere.

For Google, that means ads.

For a service comparable to Live Drive, which seems to use Windows Explorer (the file manager) and the file save/open dialogs as an interface (hence the integrated into vista), Google wouldn't have much room to manuever; live drive is *not* like the old X-Drive (and comparable) services where you uploaded and downloaded files via web-pages, but rather extends the Windows device and file tree onto the web.

MS can make money off the "free" Live Drive up front, because it is tied to Vista. Which means customers aren't really getting it for free; the cost is rolled into the Vista license, just like their user support.

So, free online space serves a purpose for MS but not for Google, where this service doesn't really fit their business model.
For anybody wanting to upload/download files to a free server, G-Mail works about as well as anything Google could put up, anyway. Anybody wanting the kind of seamless access of Live Drive is going to have to rely on Live Drive itself.

Unless they're ABMers in which case they probably prefer FTP, anyway. :twisted:

[Jason Eaton]

cough *.mac* cough

Sorry couldn't resist. Stir the pot I do. Think I would pay the nominal fee for encryption, multi computer usage, sync across computers, publishing, and backup, etc. If that were my type of thing. =)

Though a good NAS system is a little more my style.

Nothing to see here (this post)... move along... move along.

[Felix Torres]

cough *.mac* cough

Nothing to see here (this post)... move along... move along.

Well, not exactly...
It lets you see how the other half lives, no? ;-)

Serious query--if you're still there--does the mac have access to online storage solutions? (Does Apple offer that via .mac? I vaguely remember hearing of that service offering some data features...) And how does it work? explicit upload/download? masked upload/download? Or by integrating into the file system? Unlike google, apple has ways to monetize such a service without abandoning their core business model.

Anyway, most of the photo-sharing systems work by upload/download, no? So an integrated Live Drive service with controlled access could be used to set up private "viewing areas" on an adhoc basis, independently of the photo-sharing sites... or music/videos... Only instead of being available to all comers, it could be limited to friends and family.

Basically, what MS is building in Windows Live is a Public VPN with community-building features as a way to blend "fat", high-function desktop clients with net-based services. This could open the door to new mechanisms and business models for digital content to be published or distributed. I'd say there is something to watch there, even for non-windows users. ;-)

[Jason Eaton]

Still here, I am that dark shadow in the corner. Well okay maybe not so dark.

Link from the horses mouth... (http://www.apple.com/dotmac/features.html)

Lets see if I can paraphrase to the questions.

The service is built into the system, much like an external drive or network drive. It ties into the OS with what is the equivelent of 'Explorer' for file managment just like the normal file managment on the hard drive of the computer. Just open it up drag and drop and off it goes. It is also built into the iLife applications. So view the picture you want and send it off. No fuss no muss... sorta like Flikr on stereoids.

All media, html pages, iPhoto, etc can both be published to a public hosting spot (everyone) or you can create a group that is password protected and share images, calendars, message boards, links, and even data files (if you wanted to colloborate on a project per say). So you can both have a community or public materials. Good for setting up a 'family' spot for private photos or creating work groups around the world where you want to share calendars and files.

Photocasting, Podcasting et all built in. Throw in a mail address, unique url and presto.

Now the donwside (or upside) is the service is $99 a year. However no ads, no nothing. It is your stuff and secure. 1 gb for storage is the base but if you put more money on the table you can have more of course.

So I am not trying to be a fan boy, but MS is fashionably late to the party in terms of what it offers. The unqiue thing I suppose is that its free and available to the other 97% of the household OS computers. :D

[Felix Torres]

So I am not trying to be a fan boy, but MS is fashionably late to the party in terms of what it offers. The unqiue thing I suppose is that its free and available to the other 97% of the household OS computers. :D

Thanks.
And, no you didn't sound like a fanboy. We don't get many of those around here except for the iPod posts.

So, basically, it is a reasonably featured, reasonably integrated solution-- at a price. Pretty much what you'd expect for an Apple product except for the lack of hype and TV ads. ;-)

There's quite a few paid services out there for PCs, but they're business-oriented, so media-file sharing isn't front and center like with .mac, and they tend to rely on VPNs and proprietary software.

So what MS is bringing to the table (fashionably late as they do most of the time, but not always; sometimes they do lead the market) is the universal availability of the integrated client, the universal access to the data store, and the two-tier approach that seems to be the hallmark of their services strategy. Like Xbox Live, you have a free teaser feature-set open to all and a paid-service upgrade.

(Hmm, that reminds me of an old Dvorak column from about five years ago that suggested MS give every Windows user a free Hotmail account standard upon activation/registration and use that as a way to issue system patches and security alerts. This was before the Windows Update system was started up. Makes me wonder how long such a system would've survived the flood of spam inevitably targetted at it.)

Anyway, I think that given Microsoft's habit of making every product a programable platform, Live Drive offers the potential for some new media publishing applications. At a minimum, the online photo-sharing folks are going to have to ratchet up their features or... maybe they'll migrate to Live Drive? Maybe a downloadable app to manage and publish Live Drive stored media file?

We'll see what impact this has by next year, I guess.
But since this is an infrastructure kinda change the potential is fairly large.

[Felix Torres]

Oh, and as for Google; they're busy picking fights on other fronts:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=3547&amp;tag=nl.e622
http://news.com.com/Google+offers+hosted+communications+apps/2100-1032_3-6109823.html?tag=nefd.top