Just when I was about to get super excited about the next New Thing^TM from Microsoft, which is the big new Mesh initiative ..

http://www.mesh.com/

.. suddenly the Aptana team (creator of the Aptana Studio IDE, the best open source IDE for Javascript development, and creator of Jaxer, the first AJAX server) pulls another magic trick out of its hat and blows me away again!!

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Aptana-to-Launch-Cloud-Platform/

What's intriguing is that about a year or so ago I was blogging about some distributed-database-over-the-web mesh ideas that I had, that no one except a couple people talked to me about to comment on my ideas. I set up a wiki at http://www.distributeddb.net/ (down) (.. it's back up). Frankly, it fulfilled at a technical level exactly what Microsoft is trying to achieve. But while I knew I was on the right track as to where things could go and will inevitably be going, I pulled the plug on the initiative and retracted my blog posts and wiki (but it's back up now) because, frankly, I was ashamed of my lack of qualifications. I open up distributed database theory books and cannot get past the first sentence or two, they are beyond my comprehension skills.

With regard to this mesh / cloud stuff, though, I'm just really glad that I was on the right track, even if I couldn't lay claim to fame on the ideas, try as I might have considered.

UPDATE: No.. no, no, no ..... I misunderstood what Microsoft's mesh was all about. I picked up from the MIX stuff, from articles such as I think one was in SD Times, and from blog posts, that Microsoft's mesh was about web developers. But now that they've given me an "invite", I only see the ability to connect devices, such as a PC and, later, a Mac or a mobile phone to the mesh, so that you can put files out on your own personal mesh. And I can't even use the "device" installer on my PC because it doesn't allow itself to be run in a Windows Vista environment where UAC is turned off.

I don't get it. Not what I had in mind after all. Besides, if I wanted Internet-accessible file storage, I have my choice of Groove or Subversion (the latter of which, by the way, is more handy and usable for synchronizing my files between home and than FTP or anything else I've used).

So, um, nevermind what I said about distributed databases ( ?? ) .. garbage analogy, nothing to do with this.