I did not intend to have two Google-related posts two days in a row but yesterday I didn’t know that today Google was going to launch Google Gears. Google Gears is a new offering that allows developers to build off-line web applications. What better way to demonstrate that than by improving arguably the best RSS reader on the market, Google Reader, by adding off-line access to it. Scoble has good early coverage of Gears on his blog.
There seems to be some strong synergies between Google Gears and other platforms getting a lot of press of late such as Adobe Apollo or Microsoft Silverlight. I need to complete some additional reading before understanding the friend vs. foe line each of these development environments. For some additional background, I wrote an earlier post on Adobe Apollo after seeing it demonstrated at Web 2.0 Expo.
My colleague, Greg Merkle, and I have had a number of conversations about the merits of various readers. I’ve used Google Reader for some time and consume all of my RSS using it. Greg refused to fully convert from his heavy Shrook usage because of his need for off-line access to his feeds. Looks like Google just won over another user.
Other Mentions:
- Google Gears Lets Developers Take Apps Offline — TechCrunch
- Google releases open source toolkit for offline apps — O’Reilly Radar
- Dojo Offline on Google Gears — Ajaxian
- Google Gears – Jeff Nolan
Other Good Follow-ups:
- Google Reader Offline – thanks about time someone did it — Daniela Barbosa (because I link to colleagues’ blogs
- Additional coverage of the Google news @ Tailrank
