Google Goes Offline

Gears puts Google in the driver's seat - BizTech - Technology - smh.com.au

So I noticed this morning that Google has a new feature, which I'm pretty excited about. I was going to check out my RSS feeds with Google Reader (I'm now a fan since they've made some serious upgrades to Google Reader, it has now officially replaced SharpReader for me). It's called Google Gears and it allows me to take my Reader offline. This is really cool for me because I have a few hundred unread items and a 2 hour flight from Dallas to Des Moines ahead of me. Guess what I can do on the plane now! Once I synchronize the items (up to 2,000) and read them offline, I can then synch back once I'm online at home and it will tell Reader all the items I've already read.

Probably the most exciting part of Google Gears is the knowledge that email, docs, spreadsheets, etc. are coming soon. The ability to go offline with those apps (especially gmail) will be even more cool, but I'm happy they started with the Reader.