It seems like Microsoft's Live platform adds more products everyday. Last week was the news on Windows Live Expo, and now this week John Montgomery, a program manager in Microsoft's developer division, has started thinking out loud about what a Visual Studio Live service might look like and offer.

Montgomery notes that Visual Studio 2005 has already started a trend toward "software that is smarter when it's online and back-ended by a set of services." He mentions CodeZone-integrated help, the Community Menu, and the Visual Studio Start Page as examples of quasi-Live services. He also asks the readers what they'd like to see in a "Live" Visual Studio. Some of the responses include:

Instant messaging capabilities in the team system

Shared editing, allowing two people to edit code at the same time

Faster patching, meaning users don't have to wait for service packs

Centralized project files

One-click "send solution to buddy" capabilities

Better documentation

One problem that Montgomery wants to avoid is users losing their IDE when the Internet goes down, or even worse, losing their work. His solution is to only make the Visual Studio IDE "smarter" when the Internet is available, and keep it away from complete reliance on the 'Net. I think that's a great idea, and something that could be very beneficial to developers. Does a "Live" Visual Studio sound viable? Is this a good direction for the IDE to move?