New Google Gears program opens offline door.
SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. on Wednesday introduced a way to move its online software applications off the Internet, hoping the flexibility will encourage more people to use the free services and extend the company’s clout beyond its ubiquitous search engine.
By installing a plug-in into Web browsers, Google Gears opens an offline door to software programs that until now have been inaccessible without an Internet connection.
That will change with Gears, which will enable users to synchronize their computers with online applications and then use the programs offline.
Just what exactly is Google gears? Google says:
Google Gears is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline. Gears provides three key features:
- A local server, to cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) without needing to contact a server
- A database, to store and access data from within the browser
- A worker thread pool, to make web applications more responsive by performing expensive operations in the background
In layman’s terms, if your a surfer then it is a browser plugin that will enable you to use certain web apps offline. If your a developer it will allow you to extend your web apps functionality offline. Google reader looks to be the first logical candidate. Thus allowing users to read their RSS feed subscriptions offline. Other uses will include email, spreadsheets and calendars.
Google is offering some Google Gear examples for your review. Please note though that you need to have Google gears installed before you can view and test the examples. You can download additional Google Gears resources as well.
Tomorrow we will test drive Gears and evaluate it’s usefulness thus far.
google gears
