Microsoft Syncs Phone, PC Data with 'Live Mesh'

Microsoft is testing a new product that will allow users to link data across multiple electronic devices through the internet—so the picture you took on your phone can be in the digital picture frame in your home within minutes. It’s a big step for Microsoft, which until now has resisted the “cloud computing” movement, Reuters reports.

Cloud computing is the idea of computing and storing documents online, rather than on any particular device. Until now, Microsoft has seen the philosophy, championed by companies like Google, as a threat to its bread-and-butter software business. “This is exciting because it has as much to do with who is doing it as what Microsoft is doing,” said one analyst. (More Microsoft stories.)