Google is beginning to roll out offline functionality for Google Docs. What this means is that you can create documents online, share them with collaboraters, and make edits while you're nowhere near an internet connection. So, for example if you're on an airplane, you can work on a report, and as soon as you get back to your home or office, you just visit the Google Docs page again and all of your changes will sync up and your collaborators will see the latest version of the document.
If two people make changes offliine and then try to synchronize the same document with the server, Google should bring up a message letting you know about the conflict and asking which changes to keep.
You'll need to have Google Gears installed in order to use Google Docs offline. Google is doing a phased roll out, meaning that not all users will be able to access their documents offline right away. You should look for a little green arrow in the top navigation of Google Docs to see if you have access.
At first, users will only be able to access spreadsheets in read-only mode, but you'll have full edit capabilities for text documents. Presentation support will come in a few weeks.
Update: Google has posted an official announcement, including a video that will give you a better idea of what Google Docs offline looks like. (Here's a hint, it looks a lot like Google Docs online). Check out the video after the jump.
It looks like Google is preparing to add offline functionality to Google Calendar. A few days ago the folks at the Digital Streets blog noticed that Google seemed to have added some code to the Google Calendar page that would bring up a prompt to install Google Gears for access to 3 months worth of calendar data while you're offline. But once you install Google Gears, nothing happens.
The plot thickened on Thursday when Googlified noticed a new option in the settings section of Google Calendar. Go ahead and check, odds are you'll see an "Offline" tab in your own calendar settings. When you click the tab, you're told to download Google Gears. Unfortunately, once you install Google Gears, nothing seems to happen. Visiting Google Calendar with Gears installed just brings up the plain old Google Calendar with no option to save your data for offline viewing. But we get the feeling that Google wouldn't be adding features to the Google Calendar settings menu if the company didn't plan to activate those features soon.
Google has released a version of Google Gears that runs on Windows Mobile 5.0/6 devices. What does that mean? It means that you can access web applications like Zoho Writer or Buxfer on your mobile, even when you're offline. You'll need to go online at some point to synchronize your data, but once that's done you can open and view your documents while you're on the subway or on the ocean floor (the two places we're pretty sure there's on internet access available).
This is pretty big news for Windows Mobile uses who are tired of dealing with Office Mobile. Zoho's online office suite offers most of the features you'd want from a word processor. And it's free. Right now you can't edit Zoho Writer documents in offline mode, but Zoho plans to add that functionality soon.
In somewhat related news, Microsoft and Nokia have signed a deal to use Silverlight in some of its phone and internet tablets. Right now, Silverlight is primarily a platform for displaying rich media content on the web (like Adobe Flash), Microsoft eventually plans to add offline functionality to Silverlight (like Adobe AIR or Google Gears). That means we could see offline support for online applications coming to Nokia devices one day as well.
Back in August Zoho added offline reading to Zoho Writer. While it's pretty cool that you can save online documents for reading when you're away from an internet connection, there was no way to edit those documents at the time.
Now Zoho is filling in the blanks by launching a full read/write capable version of Zoho Writer. That means when you mark a document for download you'll be able to read it, edit it, and synchronize it with your online documents when you go back online.
Of course, you could also just use a free word processor like OpenOffice Writer or AbiWord if you really just wanted to be able to edit documents offline. What makes online office suites cool is the ability to collaborate with other users. And Zoho Writer has that covered. Several different people can download the same document for editing and then synchronize their changes with the online version. Because Zoho lets you see the editing history of a document, it should be easy to see who made which changes.
Users of Facebook in the United Arab Emirates have been left wondering if their access to the site will continue after major telco Etisalat appeared to have blocked the site today. Many Web sites are actively blocked in the Persian Gulf country which is home to a large expatriate community from India, the US, Europe and other countries in the Middle East.
The Muslim nation blocks many sites on the basis that they are against the moral or religious values of the UAE, however the selection of sites in the past has often been arbitrary and includes a ban on VOIP, which appears to be more focused on maintaining profits at the two main telcos than concerns over moral values. Earlier this year the social networking site Orkut fell afoul of UAE's blocking policies which also prevent access to dating sites.
The move may not be permanent as Facebook users are currently just experiencing a 'Page Not Found' error instead of the 'UAE Screen of Death' (as pictured) so the authorities may just be testing the waters. UAE Facebook users have been concerned about this possibility for some time and have set up an online petition.
Online office suites seem to be all the rage these days. ThinkFree, Zoho, and Google all have word processing and spreadsheet applications that you can access from any computer with an internet connected web browser. But what do you do when you're taking your laptop on a plane or train where there's no Wi-Fi signal?
The funny thing is that Zoho has enabled offline reading using Google Gears. Google, on the other hand still doesn't haven an offline mode for its Docs & Spreadsheets office suite.
For now, you can read Zoho documents offline, but you can't write them. Zoho plans to add full read/write/synchronization capabilities within the next few weeks.
Google has been tooling around with the Talk Gadget lately, and has added in the ability to have multi user chats through a Group Chat feature.
The process of chatting is simple. Select a user that you want to chat with, then click on the Group Chat button, this will allow you to connect to another user. Keep in mind, this option is only available in the Google Talk Gadget. So if the user is currently using the standalone player for Mac or Windows, or is offline, a message will get sent to them and open up in a Talk Gadget when clicked.
Google seems to be forgetting about the standalone player with the last few updates. Could they be focusing on the integrated online Google Talk Gadget for a reason? I realize offline applications are shifting towards online, but IM is something we sure could use as a standalone. Google has recently added in the support for Flickr slideshows, and emoticons in the Gadget.
Online applications are great, but what happens when you can't get a connection to the internet? Whether it is because you are on an airplane, or in the middle of nowhere camping, and have to get certain emails, calendar items, or files, you are quite possibly out of luck. Its sure a bummer, and one of the reasons why so many people are hesitant about using online applications for their most important information.
Now Imagine being able to take your online applications, offline, and store that data locally in a completely searchable database? Google is making this possible with Gears. Google Gears is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide complete offline functionality. Google hopes that developers will use this new toolset to create offline web applications using JavaScript APIs to store and serve the applications resources locally, as well as store data in searchable databases. All of the syncing runs in the background without burning out the browsers memory usage, or slowing anything down.
The Google Gears Beta is currently available for installation on Windows XP,Vista, as well as on Mac and Linux machines. The plug-in works with Firefox 1.5+ and IE 6+. Google's first stop with Gears is Reader, with JavaScript APIs getting released shortly for data storage for use in applications like Docs and Spreadsheets.
The official Google Gears announcement will be made tomorrow to over 5,000 developers at Google's Developer Day gathering.
After years of successful topics and entries that everyone has had the ability to contribe to, the online free encyclopedia is finally going offline.
Ok, so it's not going offline in the traditional sense of shutting down, Wikipedia has created a DVD version of Wikipedia, with close to 2,000 hand picked articles from a group of academics and Wikipedia staff.
The CD is selling for $13.99, which seems like a rather high price for something that can be accessed for free online. But hey, if you don't have internet access this is the next best option. The Wikipedia Foundation DVD is first available in English format, with a French format as well as other launguages in development.
iCal and Google Calendars are great applications for different sets of reasons, one is online with sharing capabilities, one is desktop driven with great notifications and offline capabilities. Get ready to get excited Mac users, Spanning Sync syncs all of these features together and lets Mac users choose which calendar application you want to work in with total two way calendar synchronization.
If you find yourself working on different Macs, or require a calendar that is shared throughout the day, Spanning Sync ties in support for multiple Macs and sharing capabilities. Simply share a Google Calendar, and Spanning Sync will sync them all together. Changes made in iCal, will appear on the Google Calendar, and changes that are made to Google Calendar will be made on the iCal calendars. Apple's iSync then works to sync up calendars onto capable devices like mobile phones and iPods as well.
There is a 15 day trial period for Spanning Sync, with a one year subscription costing $25, or you can drop $65 to purchase the app outright.
