I actually got Live Mesh for Mobile installed during PDC, but as you may know there were some early problems with the initial build, and so I wasn’t able to get it running until literally I was just about to get on a plane and head back to Seattle.

But now that it’s running, Live Mesh for Mobile (running currently as a very limited beta, for Windows Mobile 6 devices) has the potential to be a game changer.  It’s already changed the way I use my phone, and that’s having only used it for a few days with very limited testing.

Setup
Similar to setting up any app on your phone, Live Mesh requires downloading and running a .cab file on your phone.  Once you’ve been accepted in the beta, log in here for US residents, or here for UK residents, and then download and install this cab file from http://m.mesh.com.  Since I did all this while traversing the airport on my way to my flight home, it obviously isn’t that hard.

Once the application is installed, it initially sets up your “my pictures” folder on your phone as a “mobile pictures” live mesh folder, if you ok through the setup.  And that’s about all there is to it to make taking pictures on your phone take on a whole new dimension.

Adding existing Live Mesh Folders to your phone is just a matter of clicking on “Add Existing Folder”.  I’m waiting for a new 8gb micro SDHC card to really make use of the syncing ($25 on eBay!), but Live Mesh on Mobile is worth it just for the photos sync.  Today I took a couple of pictures of the backyard with my phone:

and from there I did….absolutely nothing.  No plugging in cables, no SD card swap, no upload to some proprietary phone company photo site.  I just took the pictures, and when I came back from 20 minute worth of errands, they were on my desktop, in the mobile pictures live mesh folder.  I didn’t even have to click on the “Sync Live Mesh” option (and where is that in the desktop app for when you’ve just “got to” sync now, btw?).

Of course if there was a way to “meshify” Spaces (or Flickr or Facebook), it would be even easier.  But even now, I can see that I’ll be using the camera in my phone a lot more and worrying about bringing a camera along a lot less.  And of course you can sync more than pictures to/from your phone:

All your Live Mesh folders show up, and you can choose which ones to sync to your phone.  We’ll have more on Live Mesh for Mobile coming up (just waiting for that 8gb card).