Google gets in gear
Back in March, I posted about wishing I could use Google Docs offline, since sometimes I’m away from the internet but still want to do some writing, and while I love Google Docs, it just doesn’t have an offline mode. Well, yesterday Google released a beta version of Google Gears, a browser extension that provides a very robust offline mode for web apps. They’ve already integrated it with Google Reader, allowing one to download all of his or her blog feeds and read them while offline, and I figure it’s only a matter of time now until they add offline capability to their other apps, including Docs.
Jason Kottke doesn’t think offline mode is that important, which is a view I see often coming from tech-industry people who live in big cities (Kottke is in Manhattan), because most large cities have an abundance of open wifi networks available. For those of us who live in more rural areas, though, finding yourself without a connection to the internet is a commonplace occurrence. Since moving to New Hampshire, we’ve had two long-term power outages (too long for our UPSes to handle), and more than once I’ve sat myself down in a public place only to discover that the wifi network I thought I could connect to was too weak, so I’d either have to leave my comfy spot and try to find a place with a better connection, or just attempt to work offline.
Anyway, I look forward to being able to use Docs offline once Google gets its butt in gear (har) and adds Gears support.
