Amazon has announced their S3 storage service. It looks interesting and pretty straight forward to use. There is even a C# library to get started using S3.

So why am I disappointed? Well, for all the hoopla Microsoft is making about Windows Live, this is much more the type of thing I would like to see from Microsoft's "software as a service" efforts. As a developer, I like the idea of being able to just reach into the cloud and store and fetch data. As an end-user, I would love to have a "virtual drive" that is avaialble directly from Windows Explorer that represents my "any where, any time, always safe" data. This seems like a natural extension of Windows to the web, not just a new funky portal page.

Sure, some nifty developer will come along and build an extension to the Windows shell and do exactly what I am describing, but I think Microsoft should be the first to do this. Easy to find on Windows Update, Passport ready to go to control access, share data with friends easily via MSN Messenger. The extension points for this and other things (Outlook-to-web calendar synching anyone?) seems like the best way to show people the powerful marriage that is possible between rich Windows experience and web software as a service.