Digital Home Thoughts: FolderShare To Be Re-Named Windows Live Sync

"Apparently the shroud of secrecy that surrounds Windows Live and Wave 3 doesn't extend to help files, as our friend Picturepan2 at LiveSino.net discovered as he was snooping around doing some investigative reporting. While Microsoft has maintained that FolderShare would continue on, even in the face of what seems to be redundancy with Live Mesh, those outside the company have been wondering what would become of FolderShare. FolderShare was acquired when Microsoft bought ByteTaxi in 2005, and offers file and folder synchronization between computers with a web interface component. Folder synchronization between Windows and Mac computers is possible. However it does not offer "in the cloud" storage, or work on the FeedSync RSS underpinnings that power Live Mesh (at least in its current configuration)."

Live Sync? Meh. I'm not feeling that name - FolderShare is a descriptive name that Joe Average can understand - it's something that allows you to "share folders". Sync is a geek work that has virtually no meaning in the realm of non-geeks. Names aside, what I really care about is whether or not FolderShare is going to continue to survive. As Live Mesh improves faster and faster, and FolderShare seemingly stays the same, I worry that FolderShare isn't going to be allowed to survive much longer. Of course, if Live Mesh reaches feature parity with FolderShare, it might not matter.