Microsoft and Me.dium have teamed up to showcase the new IE8 Beta and a special application of Me.dium technology at Mix 08. Microsoft hand selected Me.dium to develop and IE friendly application just a week before the launch, and my Me.dium friends beat the deadline with an application designed to highlight IE8’s new functionality. Specifically, IE8’s “Webslices” and “Activities” are cool IE8 Beta features that are now enhanced by Me.dium’s latest innovation.

Me.dium is one of the most interesting innovations of Web 2.0 and the startup company continues to illustrate just how a startup should be run. I have covered Me.dium since their beginning, and one thing that stands out about them is their continual dogged determination to apply their technology. Me.dium (for those that are on Mars) is a real time, social browsing application that allows users to surf the Web with a focus on the activity of other people. The Me.dium experience is quite unlike any other I can think of, where surfing interaction becomes a rather normal and accepted feature.

IE8’s Webslices allow users to subscribe to portions of pages that update dynamically. Users can receive updates from these pages as content changes. The new Me.dium application allows users to discover and view Webslices directly from the sidebar. The Me.dium sidebar alerts users to Webslices on any page, and also provides a way to read these slices without leaving the sidebar.

The Me.dium “Discover” Activity provides recommendations related to a page or selected keywords. These are influenced by the real time surfing activity of all Me.dium users and a real time map is created to show users just how popular the pages, links or texts are. All in all , some fantastic practical application of a breaking technology. Kimbal Musk – CEO of Me.dium – had this to say about the IE8 and Me.dium collaboration:

“In less than a week developing on IE8, Me.dium has delivered some incredibly sticky and fun ways to stay connected with our users, while emphasizing new functionality delivered in IE8.”

IE8 Beta users can download the Me.dium Discovery Activity for IE8 from here!

Kimbal and his extraordinary team have an impressive record of breakthrough innovation and application of their technology in my opinion. Of all the startups I have covered, Me.dium is certainly one of the most forward thinking and dynamically applied developments. So many of these startups have fallen by the wayside, when they seemed to have so much potential. It is great to see the folks at Me.dium still going strong - this is another big step for Me.dium.