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We tried the technology preview version of the app. As a sync tool for PCs, it’s got good potential. It is easy to perform the basic operations of adding PCs to your sync pool and to define which folders you want to keep replicated. Synced data is automatically copied from PC to PC when both devices are online. It’s more difficult to set up the system so directories with different structures sync to each other, but once you find the option to do so, there’s a lot of flexibility.

CNET News.com reporter Ina Fried got briefed by Microsoft’s Noah Edelstein and recorded this video demo:

The Web-based Live Desktop lets you stream your synced media files. (Click image for gallery.)

And there’s a handy notifier widget with Live Mesh that shows you what’s happening with all your shares and syncs: Who’s accessing them, changing files, and so on. Once you start building out a large mesh of files and folders among various devices and people, this will become an important tool for keeping up with what’s happening to your data.

Microsoft is announcing Live Mesh today in conjunction with the Web 2.0 Expo. It’s an ambitious technology platform for sharing data among people, apps, and devices. Consumers will first be exposed to the technology in a personal data synchronization and device-sharing product of the same name, competing directly with products like LogMeIn, GoToMyPC, SugarSync (review), Syncplicity (review), and Microsoft’s own FolderShare, and SyncToy.

Ready for prime time? No.

One big plus: Live Mesh integrates Windows’ built-in Remote Desktop function. It’s easier to set up remote access using Live Mesh than any other app I’ve used.

Live Mesh shows you your synced devices in a cute animated "ring." (Click image for gallery.)

Live Mesh grafts a sidebar window onto Windows Explorer for directories that are synced. (Click image for gallery.)

Live Mesh allows users to share their directories with other people, but this feature isn’t fully built out. It’s currently possible to give another person full access to a synced folder on your PC, but I couldn’t find a way to share just a single file, nor share a file or folder from the Web-based Live Desktop (which would have been better, since sharing from a PC means you have to leave your PC on for the other person to see the files). I also couldn’t find a way to give other people read-only access to my directories.

As I said at the beginning of this review, Live Mesh has a ton of potential. Fix the performance, the user interface, and add
Mac and mobile clients (in the works), and it could help people really get a handle on their far-flung data. Add an option for unlimited online storage (like HP Upline; review) and it becomes a killer backup app. We’ll keep an eye on this one, and we recommend you do, too, but I wouldn’t rush to install it today.

Live Mesh is free. It also gives each user a free but limited (5GB) Web-based storage pool, the Live Desktop, that acts like another sync point: You tell it which of your PCs’ folders you want to see on the site, and the data is copied over. Some media types, like MP3s, can be streamed directly from the Live Desktop using a Silverlight media player.

See also:
Live Mesh: a glimpse of Ozzie’s plan

Peering through the Ozzie Mesh

FAQ: Making sense of Live Mesh

Gateway SX2800-01

In addition to HP’s announcement, Gateway also took the covers off two new back to school desktops today. And also like HP, Gateway does its own part to ensure piano black uniformity across the Windows ecosystem.

(Credit:
Gateway)

(Credit:
Gateway)

You’ll find the mainstream Gateway desktops at various retailers. The $749 DX4300-03 features a 2.4GHz quad-core AMD Phenom II X4 configuration, and the pricier $899.99 DX4820-02 has a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Quad chip. Other specs vary between the two, with a 1TB hard drive and a 512MB ATI Radeon HD4650 3D card in the DX4300-03, while the DX4820-02 comes bundled with a 23-inch Gateway LCD. Again, these systems compete well at their various price points against HP and Dell. We also like the look of Gateway’s new DX4000-series chassis, which has a much cleaner feel than the older version did.

The SX2800-01 is a $499, fixed-configuration, slim tower with an impressive configuration. Comprised of a 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Quad chip, 4GB of RAM, 64-bit Vista, and a 640GB hard drive, the SX2800-01 is one of the most affordable quad-core system we’ve seen. You have to spend $550 with HP for a SlimLine with a quad-core chip, or $460 for a quad-core Inspiron 537s from Dell, but both come up short in their other specs. Gateway has impressed us with its configuration acumen even since it pulled back its build-to-order business; and by its specs, the SX2800-01 seems to demonstrate further proof that Gateway’s all-ready-made PCs are worth your attention. Offering a fully featured quad-core PC at $499 also takes another chunk out of the already feeble Nettop argument.

Gateway didn’t mention a Windows 7 upgrade program for its systems, although we know the SX2800-1 and the DX4300-03 are Best Buy-models, and Best Buy itself is offering a free
Windows 7 upgrade voucher starting tomorrow, June 26. The systems discussed here go on sale by Monday, June 28, so with Best Buy at least, you’re OS upgrade worries are covered.

The tool works by having you drop in a special IMG code into your post that links up to SnapCasa’s servers. It will pull in updates to that image occasionally–with future versions providing real-time screen grabs and the option to change how big and what format you want the thumbnail to be.

Competing service Snap offers some of these features already with its SnapShots product, but wraps its live screenshots around text links instead of embedded images. I’ve embedded a few examples below, which should update despite this post gathering dust.

(Credit:
Dan Farber/CNET Networks)

The following is a record of a live report of Yahoo’s conference call with financial analysts discussing the company’s first-quarter results.

2:01 p.m. PDT: The call is getting started. For background, here’s a link to Yahoo’s financial results for the first quarter of 2008. To recap, Yahoo’s net income was essentially flat, excluding a gain from its stake in business-to-business site Alibaba, but revenue excluding commissions paid to partners rose 14 percent to $1.532 billion.

2:02 p.m.: It’s starting.

2:07 p.m.: Chief Executive Jerry Yang: “We are very proud of our first-quarter results…We are raising our cash flow guidance for the year.”

2:09 p.m.: Yang adds, Yahoo’s results “are all the more remarkable when you consider the environment and the uncertainty resulting from Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal.”

2:11 p.m.: Nothing much new on Microsoft’s attempt to acquire Yahoo: “The board’s decision to reject a proposal was based on our business and our plans,” Yang said. “Our board and management team continue to be open to any and all alternatives,” including a deal with Microsoft. The company is “exploring a number of strategic alternatives.”

(Credit:
Yahoo)

2:15 p.m.: There are uncertainties from the overall economy, but like Eric Schmidt at Google, Yahoo was bullish: “We have a diverse advertiser base and expect ad budgets will continue to move online. Targeting continues to get more attractive during (economic) softness.

“We are rapidly building out and differentiating our advertising network,” Yang said. The company is adding to capabilities in video, mobile, search, and display ads.

Yahoo President Susan Decker

(Credit:
Yahoo)

2:18 p.m.: President Sue Decker said search has improved, including relevance scores that show how well ads match what searchers are looking for. “We’ve come from behind and closed the relevancy gap,” she said. Citing various statistics, she added, “These are the most material gains in key numerical indicators…since five years ago.”

2:19 p.m.: Yahoo stock is down 19 cents to $28.35 in after-hours trading.

2:23 p.m.: Video is getting more important. The launch of Flickr video earlier this month already “quadrupled video uploads by users across the entire Yahoo network,” Decker said.

2:24 p.m.: Decker says Yahoo will be getting more personal: “Soon we’ll begin testing content optimization capabilities on the home page.”

2:30 p.m.: Lots of happy talk about display ads. Yang: “While we believe in search, our largest opportunity is in display. We have positioned ourselves to gain share in this huge opportunity.” Decker: Yahoo is “on the verge of fundamentally changing the game” in the display-ad business.

2:32 p.m.: Decker has sweeping words for the company’s position. “We are innovating more rapidly and effectively, delivering on our roadmap, expanding our partnerships, and receiving positive customer reviews.”

2:39 p.m.: CFO Blake Jorgensen says the overall ad market in the first quarter was strong among advertisers in the automotive and consumer packaged goods areas. But there was “some softening” in finance, travel, and retail. And of online advertising in general, he said: “Advertisers’ budgets may fall, but we believe the return on investment of online ads compared to other media may cushion the impact on our industry.”

Yahoo CFO Blake Jorgensen

(Credit:
Yahoo)

2:42 p.m.: Jorgensen: Yahoo’s headcount dropped from 14,300 at the end of last year to 13,800. That includes 600 new hires, offset by the company’s layoff.

2:49 p.m: Traffic acquisition costs (TAC)–the commission rates Yahoo pays to partners that host Yahoo ads–are up 4 percent because the company has to compete, Jorgensen said. “There is still upward pressure on TAC rates and (what we) pay partners as the competitive dynamics get more difficult,” he said.

2:50 p.m.: Decker said things are doing well on user clicks on ads. “We’re very pleased where we stand on click yield,” which is ad coverage times click-through rate.

2:52 p.m.:
Variable minimum bids have launched with a limited number of search keywords in the U.S. “We’ll be rolling it out to larger markets outside the U.S. later this year and to emerging markets most likely next year,” Decker said.

2:59 p.m.: The advertising weakness among finance, travel, and retail advertisers has meant slower growth or “modest declines,” Decker said. The relative weakness hit both display and search ads. On the flip side, both types also stand to gain from online advantages, she said: “There are strong return-on-investment components that are very measurable in both search and display.” In other words, advertisers can measure bang for their buck.

3:02 p.m.: “We did see very strong growth in paid clicks in the U.S. vs. the market,” Decker said. Paid clicks are a very important measurement for search ads, both in terms of relevance and as a way to actually generate revenue.

3:04 p.m.: Asked if advertisers were spooked by the Microsoft offer, Yang said it was a relatively minor point. “We are watching the economy a lot more than the Microsoft uncertainty. It’s hard to say (there was) any impact.”

3:05 p.m.: Yang bids everybody adieu without any closing arguments or discussing the various elephants in the room–stay tuned for further thoughts on that point. So we’ll close by mixing two of his earlier metaphors: “Our results this quarter demonstrate we are on the right track. We are pursuing the right strategy and it’s beginning to bear fruit.”

Adding Symbian cell phones, many of them high-end, brings CellSpin’s free beta service to over 300 handsets and over 30 carriers worldwide.

CellSpinners can quickly share photos, video, text, and audio to Blogger, eBay, Facebook, YouTube, Picasa, LiveJournal, Flickr, and Windows Live Spaces, with more partnerships on the way. Of course, there are a few limitations brought on by the partner sites. YouTube only accepts video submissions, for example, and photos are the only media that can be uploaded to Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook. The blogging sites and eBay accept all four media types.

Motorola U9

(Credit:
Motorola)

Motorola U9
The Moto U9 inherits its curvaceous design from the Motorola Pebl U6. It has the same rounded edges and smooth body, though instead of a rubbery skin, it sports a glossy finish that reflects the light. Its features include Moto’s Crystal Talk technology, a 2-megapixel camera, quad-band GSM world phone support, and a music player with external controls.

Motorola Rokr Z6 and Z6w
The Moto Z6 is a GSM-only variant of the Moto Z6c and the Rokr Z6m. It sports the same slider design as its siblings but its feature set includes a 2-megapixel camera, quad-band GSM world phone support, Windows Media Player 11, messaging, and e-mail. The Z6w is almost identical to the Z6 but it adds Wi-Fi.

Motorola Rokr E8

(Credit:
Motorola)

Motorola Rokr E8
Moto announced the Rokr E8 at CES in January. As we said then, the E8 features a smooth “glasslike” surface with touch-pad controls that digitally “morph” depending on how the handset is used. As you shift from phone to music to imaging modes, the backlight on the control changes to illuminate only the relevant buttons for your current function. Its features include Windows Media Player 11, 2GB internal memory, stereo Bluetooth, USB 2.0, Moto’s CrystalTalk technology, an external memory card slot, a 2-megapixel camera, and a full HTML browser.

Motorola Razr2 V8 Luxury Edition

(Credit:
Motorola )

Motorola Razr2 V8
Moto’s V8 is part of its larger Razr2 family. Currently available with T-Mobile, the V8 has a stylish design, useful features, and good performance. Yet, it doesn’t fully utilize its external display or controls and it’s the only Razr2 without support for 3G networks. The Razr2 V8 Luxury Edition also is a LiMo handset, but it rolls out the bling with 18-karat and 24-karat gold-plated accents on a black slate finish.

Besides the above handsets, LiMo phones include several Japan-only handsets for NTT DoCoMo and a LG handset. And incidentally, a Verizon exec said last year that the carrier would support Google’s Android platform as well. But Android’s developer, the Open Handset Alliance, has yet to release Android-enabled phones.

(Credit:
House of Hackers)
Some people think of hackers as the bad guys who break into computer networks and steal data. In actuality, the term can be applied not just to people who circumvent computer security, but to home computer builders like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, open-source programmers, and people who in general like to tinker with technology, test the limits of information systems, and think outside the box.

It’s with this broad definition in mind that Petko D. Petkov launched House of Hackers, the first social network devoted to the often-maligned group. London-based Petkov is the founder of information security think tank GNUCitizen (no relation to the GNU open-source operating system).

Petkov writes in his blog introducing the site, “We do not promote criminal activities.” Still, the site is likely to attract hackers of all stripes–white hat, gray hat, and black hat hackers–as they are referred to depending on their motivation.

Unlike Facebook, there aren’t a lot of personal photos and information on profiles here. This group prefers to talk about ideas rather than post photos of themselves and announce what they did last night.

Unveiled a month ago, the site now has about 4,000 members who share their ideas in blogs, announce events, and discuss diverse topics in groups with names like Life Hacker; Urban Explorers (an examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of human civilization); Black PR (public relations with a negative twist); Female Hackers; IT Professionals, and Reversing (for people who like to take things apart and see how they work).

There are also groups devoted to topics like hacker movies, open-source security, wireless and mobile device security issues, electronic music, cryptology, cross-site scripting attacks,
iPhone cracking, and hackers from countries around the globe.

“I wanted to aggregate in a single place people interested in hacker culture, security, people trying to find solutions to interesting problems,” he said in an interview Monday.

The goal is to bring people to together to share ideas, collaborate on projects, and eventually create a recruitment market for independent security consultants, he said. Toward that end, Petkov will be working on a system to verify job experience, training, and performance.

Whether companies will come a-hiring remains to be seen. But for those who want to see what today’s digital rebels are up to, this site offers a glimpse.

As I’ve said before, in coverage of Satisfaction and SupportSpace, if you want to get good support for the products you own, your best bet is usually to skip calling the official support line and find other real users of your product. Somewhere out there, you can be sure, there’s a geek who knows the ins and outs of the ice maker on your Frigidaire. Or at the very least, how to troubleshoot your HP Windows Home Server box.

And now, finally, someone’s trying to bring those geeks back to the companies that could really use them. MinuteFix looks, at first, much like SupportSpace, a company that pays product experts to provide support to users. MinuteFix does that as well, but its real business model is to sell its service directly to the consumer product companies. It’s competing with outsource service companies such as SlashSupport (which provides Vonage’s support, for example).

MinuteFix certifies product experts around the world and pools them together into distributed call centers. The cost to companies is the same as for offshore-based support, but the support personnel are now local to the caller (in the same country, at least), sharing not just their language but cultural sensitivities. Plus, hopefully, their knowledge of the products they are supporting comes from enthusiasm and experience, not from a script.

MinuteFix certifies its support providers by testing them on customer service skills, language skills, and any relevant knowledge specific to their clients (similar to how oDesk certifies its providers). Ongoing quality is maintained through post-call caller satisfaction scoring (if a tech doesn’t score well, he or she will stop getting calls). Also, the support techs have a channel they can use to communicate with each other during calls, even though they’re not sitting near each other. CEO Diego Orjuela told me that techs can make $15 to $20 an hour when they are online taking calls. All the techs on MinuteFix connect via Skype. MinuteFix techs don’t get access to sensitive data like billing records, but the company does integrate at least partially with its customers systems so its techs can do a bit more than just talk customers through issues.

Assuming the company gets its technology right, it has two big challenges: Getting good techs and getting customers. To the former, Orjuela told me that advertising on Craigslist has been highly successful, and that he’s terminated some ads early since he’s been overloaded with qualified candidates.

To the second point, getting customers, he’s aware that Volkswagen is not likely to be one of his first customers. He’s starting, instead, with the low-hanging fruit: He’s going for companies that understand the power of community. His first relationship is with Skype: MinuteFix is the preferred partner in the IT division of Skype Prime; MinuteFix-certified provders earn more than if they are unaffiliated.

Orjuela also pitches more than just enthusiastic techs to his potential customers. His solution makes it easier for companies to set up support teams in different languages or timezones than using traditional call-center-based outsourcing.

MinuteFix is, basically, ChaCha with potential big-money customers. It will be difficult, though, for Orjuela to sell the service, since he’ll be going up against the traditional centralized support model and entrenched sales relationships. But that’s smart: He’s not trying to invent a business model from whole cloth, like so many Web 2.0 start-ups. Instead, he’s aiming Web 2.0 concepts at an established and lucrative market, where there are customers paying big bucks already and leaving their customers, to a large extent, unsatisfied. This is a good business model.

See also: 10 ways to make money while in your underwear.

In a telephone interview on Thursday, Colleen Healy, Microsoft’s general manager of investor relations, said that the company booked a greater amount of future revenue than it had expected, taking in about $500 million more than planned in its “unearned revenue” column. That comes on top of the record results for the quarter that ended December 31.

“From our perspective, we are expecting IT spending to remain stable,” Healy said. “Software, in particular, remains healthy, and our ability to capture IT budgets looks good.”

Healy said some of the bookings appear to be early indications of demand for its coming server and tools products, including Windows Server 2008.

On the consumer side, Healy said that both the
Xbox and the
Zune had a good holiday quarter. Microsoft has now sold 17.7 million Xbox 360s. Healy did not give a Zune figure, but said, “We had a good holiday season, positioning ourselves as the clear alternative to the
iPod.”

Microsoft also continues to see gains from reducing piracy rates of Windows, Healy said. In the past quarter, about 3 percentage points of Windows sales growth was due to reduced piracy, she said.

The company is also benefiting from a larger number of customers opting for high-end versions of Vista, as opposed to the basic edition, with premium options accounting for three out of every four Vista copies sold.