Things that are interesting this morning – MS Mesh and Facebook (yeah, Facebook)

Just a quick post because there are a few things going on this morning that are interesting. 

First, Microsoft released MS Mesh last night.  I’m looking forward to learning more about it and hopefully getting in the beta soon.  Mesh is an Application/Document/Device Synch system (and lots more) that has the potential to make multi-device computing much more usable.  Check it out, I think it will be huge when they release it to the public.

 

The other thing is that Facebook released chat for the Salt Lake network today.  I’ve been playing with it this morning and it’s pretty cool – but it also sucks. :)  Here are my first thoughts on it:

1. It’s very cool that I can now chat with all my contacts when I sign into Facebook.  There are plenty of people on there that either don’t have/use instant messaging or that I have just never set up a connection with them.  This bridges that and lets me chat with lots of people.
2. It has a popout window for the chat so you can navigate away from facebook and still be connected.
3. Some interesting info can be gleaned from it like getting a snapshot of how much of your network signs into facebook and for how long.  That also leads to some serious privacy implications – so I’ll also point out that there is a setting on there to hide from chat.
4. Here’s where it sucks – so far, there isn’t a desktop app or a jabber client and webchat sucks.  There is no system notification that you have a message waiting, so you have to constantly look over to the chat window. 
5. Hopefully they’ll release a good api for the chat system, then desktop or jabber clients can be made for it.  Then it won’t suck!