Google Gears, Part 1

I didn't quite get Google Gears at first. Do I REALLY need to read my blog feeds offline? As it turns out, Google Docs is getting offline support now.

Do I care? Sort of.

When you consider some other Google properties - Blogger, YouTube, News, Book Search, Picasa - you can see how Gears starts to fit into the Google experience. Working on a blog posting? Do it on the train during your commute, it's stored in the Gears database and automatically posts to Blogger when you get an active net connection. Just capture something newsworthy, Mr. Citizen Photojournalist? Dump it from your camera to your laptop running YouTube offline and the video will be stored in the Gears database until it can sync your content with your YouTube account online. Picasa already has a thick client but there's no reason Picasa web albums could not be connected to Gears for offline work.

Interestingly, these ideas aren't what I care about. It's certainly interesting from a usability point of view and allows for greater permeance of Google in your life (if you think that's a good thing) as well as allowing one to publish their virtual lives out to the Googlesphere from anywhere, connected or not.

What I'm truly in is the security controls that are utilized to protect the Gears database and the general security architecture of Gears and all of the Google properties and tools that are becoming offline-enabled. More to follow after I do some research into this.