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Cloud computing. It's a phrase that's been on the lips of
many computer users over the last year or so. Imagine being able to
work or to access your files from anywhere there's an Internet
connection. And you don't have to be at your own
desktop computer or
laptop computer, either.
The main problem with cloud computing, though, is that you're not
always online. You might be on an airplane or train without an
Internet connection. You might be in a spot where a connection is
spotty at best. So, what do you do?
Turn to
Google Gears, that's what.
Gears: a brief introduction
"Imagine being able to work or to access your files from
anywhere there's an Internet connection."Google
Gears is an Open Source Web browser extension (from the folks at
Google, obviously) that literally brings a Web application offline.
Using Gears, you not only turn the Web application into a desktop
shortcut, but you can also use that application when you aren't
connected to the Web. Gears stores all of your data offline and
synchronizes it when you reconnect. It more or less creates a copy
of the Web application on your hard drive, and allows you to
seamlessly work in that application. Once you reconnect to the Web,
Gears will synchronize the data on your hard drive with the live Web
application.
For the techie (or the techie wannabe), developers of Web
applications integrate Gears with their applications using a set of
APIs (application programming interface), which are a way to
enable two bits of unrelated software to talk to each other). The
APIs enable Gears to (among other things) save a copy of the Web
application on your computer and to store your data locally using a
small, fast database. You can read more about the Gears APIs
here and
here.
Note that Gears doesn't work with all Web applications. Some of the
Web applications that do support Gears include:
As for others … well, it can be hit and miss to say the least.
Gears is available for several operating systems, including Windows,
Windows Mobile, MacOS, Linux, and Google's Android mobile platform.
Getting Going with Gears
As I mentioned earlier, Gears is an add-on for a variety of Web
browsers. These include Mozilla Firefox (version 1.5 or higher),
Safari, and Internet Explorer (version 6.0 or newer). You can find a
full list
here.
It shouldn't be a surprise to learn that
Google Chrome has Gears support baked in. To use this feature
from within Chrome, navigate to a Gears-enabled Web application.
Then, click on the Control the current page icon
and the select Create application shortcuts. On the
dialog box that appears, select where you want to put the shortcuts
and then click OK.
The rest of this TechTip looks at using Google Gears with Mozilla
Firefox. First off, go to the
Google Gears Web site and install the Firefox extension. All you
need to do is click the installation link, and then follow the
instructions. From there, restart Firefox to complete the
installation. Nowyou're ready to go.
Note: The installation process will differ for other
browsers. Please leave a comment to discuss how you installed Gears
in Internet Explorer or Safari.
Using Gears
 Next,
navigate to a Gears-enabled Web application and log in. You'll
notice a link somewhere in the top-right corner of the application –
it might read Offline or Go Offline.
Some applications (like the online to-do list Remember the Milk or
Google Docs) display a message when you log in.
The first time you sync your data using Gears, a message will
appear. This message will prompt to click the option to allow Gears
to save data to your
hard drive. This option will vary from application to
application – it could be, for example, OK or
Allow. This
 only
happens the first time you do this.
Once you give Gears and the application permission to save data to
your
desktop computer or
laptop computer, the synchronization process starts. Depending
on how much data you have saved in the online application, the
process can take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes. For
example, when I synchronized my Google Docs using Gears, the process
took about four minutes. Yes, I have that many documents in Google
Docs!
Now, if you go offline you'll be able to work with your files or
other data in the same way you would as if you were connected to the
Internet. When you reconnect to the Web application, click the link
in the application to return
 that
application to its online state. Again, this option may vary from
application to application – for example, Go online.
Gears will synchronize any changes that you made offline with the
version of your data in the cloud.
Drawbacks
The biggest of these is that not every Web application out there
works with Gears. Really, only
a handful do at the moment. That's changing slowly, but not
quickly enough for some.
If you're a Linux user (like me) and you're running a
64-bit version of the operating system, then you won't find an
official version of Google Gears; there is an unofficial one, which
is an extension for Mozilla Firefox, which you can find
here. Whether or not Google will support 64-bit Linux in the
near future isn't clear.
On the other hand, if you're using two computers – for example, two
desktop computers at different locations, or a desktop computer
and a
laptop – then you'll run into a problem. When you use Google
Gears with multiple computers, each computer syncs data
independently of the other. So, you'll be forced to sync the data on
each computer with the data from the Web-based application that
you're using. You risk stomping on changes that were made on the
other computer if you don't.
Final thoughts
Google Gears is an interesting and useful solution for bringing the
cloud offline. It's easy to use and set up, and working with
Gears-enabled Web sites offline is a seamless experience. When
Google Gears is more widely supported, it could mean that cloud
computing might just take off. |
