I don’t know when it was launched, but I am sure all of you do.
One of the biggest downsides of going completely online with all these rich internet apps was that when you were not connected – a fair chance these days – then you were unable to do anything with your fancy rich internet app: no catching up with your email, no working on a document, no messing with your spreadsheet, no updating or accessing your calendar.
Of course, I expected there to be a day when the internet-only folks realized that they needed an offline version of their popular apps. Our team here at least understands that it’s not an either-or proposition, but that there is continuum between full Web app to various mixtures of internet and desktop to some full desktop app. The internet is the network behind it all, but various degrees of local storage can do wonders.*
I’m gonna install it as soon as I have the time.
Link: Google Gears (BETA):
Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using the following JavaScript APIs
- Store and serve application resources locally
- Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
- Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness
*Heh, this seems to be recapitulating the whole transition from dummy terminal to networked desktop computing.
