Going offline indeed a trend

Posted by Charles | May 31, 2007 .

In my post four things that matter the most for the next web I mentioned that many lines are blurring such as the line between online service and offline application. It’s trend and the enabling technologies are available now, such as Adobe Apollo. Now Google proves that going-offline indeed a trend.

Google starts offer Google Gear. It’s Google’s offline enabling technologies that, overtime, will offline most of Google’s applications, such as Reader, Gmail, etc. It now allows you create offline database and do offline reading. It provides API to allow build applications using this offline technology. Not surprised the API is in JavaScript. By looking into Google Gear offline architecture, it’s very similar to other offline webtop startups. It’ll have a local server to handle the connectivity switching and data source switching.

google gear architecture

And to detect and install Google Gear from your web application, here is what need put into your page:

<script src=“gears_init.js”></script>
<script>
  if (!window.google || !google.gears) {
    location.href = “http://gears.google.com/?action=install&message=<your welcome message>” +
                    “&return=<your website url>”;
  }
</script>

Seems very easy. I think the biggest challenge for he offline feature is data scroynization. I still believe technology such Apollo should play a big role in the offline trend. We’ll see how big impact from Google offline offers.