I had an idea to use the apps from PortableApps.com with with Live Mesh and it works great! Install a portable application once and run it from any computer in your Mesh. I created a screencast with more details:
Cloud computing today, not tomorrow
http://screencasts.ehuna.org/2008/09/cloud_computing_today_not_tomo.html
Good times!
Emmanuel
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If you're already using portable applications, that means you have some sort of portable drive to run them from. So why upload your documents and stuff to the Internet? Just put them on the drive with the apps! Then there's no need to access them over the Internet (which could be slow depending on how fast whoever's connection is that you're using).
I really don't get this whole "cloud computing" craze. Why put your files on someone else's server and hope the server isn't down when you need something, when you could just throw the stuff on a USB key a carry that around? Flash drives are big enough now that that shouldn't be a problem.
I actually didn't buy any USB drive or any other drive. I just installed the portable apps on a live mesh folder on my desktop. A few minutes later I had the same portable apps on my laptop.
In this case, my bandwidth speed was irrelevant - the live mesh clients are "peer to peer" which means the portable apps were copied from my desktop to my laptop though the LAN.
On live mesh you have the choice on whether your portable apps are copied to which devices and/or your live desktop. In addition to a USB flash drive, you can access your portable apps from any computer through a browser (even a computer not part of your live mesh). It can be handy if you forget your USB key.
Watch my screencast for more details.
Indeed, Mesh shall be a major platform for running portable apps. The Microsoft gods have decreed it.
The only question is whether we are going to be able to ACCESS our mesh resources FROM a portable app running on USB or not, without needing administrative privileges on the client machine. Unfortunately so far it doesn't look promising. We may be saved if Microsoft includes the Mesh ActiveX control as a Windows Update that everyone automatically gets, but otherwise, Mesh is going to be a pretty useless platform for people who have to use public computers unless we can get access to it from Portable FireFox or another portable client.
I watched your screencast. The windows were rather similar, so it was not obvious to me at first how you run the PortableApps Menu or the apps themselves. Are those run straight from the Live Mesh browser windows, or normal Explorer windows?