Enough with the 3D maps! What about Windows Live storage?

Another day, another glitzy Live Search map. (Or is it a Live Map, Live Local Map or a Virtual Earth Map? Who can keep up?)

What I really want to hear about isn't who has better 3D buildings, Microsoft or Google. I want more details on Microsoft's storage service(s). Luckily, the Liveside.Net guys haven't let up in their quest for what's happening there.

In mid-May, the LiveSide team unearthed the existence of Windows Live Folders, a hosted storage service that may or may not be the long-awaited Windows LiveDrive service. (It also might be "SkyDrive," the storage service in the cloud that the LiveSiders mentioned a year ago.) Within hours of sightings of Windows Live Folders, Microsoft pulled down links to it.

Now there's word from LiveSide of Windows Live FolderShare -- Microsoft's file syncrhonization service based on the FolderShare acquisition from ByteTaxi at the end of 2005. Windows Live Foldershare will provide Web and remote access both to customesr who want to keep their files synched across their various online and offline accounts.

Microsoft also is delivering file synchronization via its forthcoming Windows Home Server product. And Windows Live Messenger has its own built-in file-synchronization capability. The newest release (the new 8.5 beta build), like recent Live Messenger builds, includes shared-folder integration. Sounds like that could be the "SDrive" technology also discovered by LiveSide a year ago.

Windows Live FolderShare, Windows Live Folders, Live Messenger Shared Folders. Looks like the branding police still haven't finished cleaning up the Live side of the MSN/Windows Live house....