Travel 2.0 (Google Gears)

Those of you that read my personal blog should be well aware of my recent trip to Thailand. Although initially I suspected the Internets would be available sporadically throughout the trip, I was somewhat troubled by the prospect of limited or even no connectivity. Being a geek from bones to breath, the loss of permanent online goodness was something I needed to plan for carefully. Offline activity more reliant on a computer; backing up photos, keeping a journal etc, would be available through the laptop I was always taking so the only real problem was with my recent dependence on the world of Web 2.0.

Services such as Gmail, Flickr, and Blogger were all high on my list of essentials at least partially during my 11 days abroad. While I could have waited for my return down-under before sharing the experience with family and friends, I was very keen to keep them as up-to-date as time allowed. Packing a wireless card and network cable were a good start but the consistent access I have come to know was never going to happen no matter how much I prayed. Thus I was left with a choice, forget about it all together or make the most of what access I could get when I could get it.

During the later stages of my vacation planning, Google was thoughtful enough to release a new product that would help me through these troubling times. Google Gears provides a means of taking an online application such as Gmail and saving it locally for use offline. This leads to traditionally online only services being available to users during times when net access is a little hard to come by, such as during a flight or a trip to the Lost island. Currently the service is limited to few services, initially only Google Reader. Lucky for me, Google Reader is one service I use and access to RSS feeds was something I was keen to have while disconnected.

After installation and a hard refresh (Ctrl+F5) following a Firefox restart, I was up and running. My feeds downloaded surprisingly fast and were accessible offline with little to no change. Reverting to an online state synced up any changes made just as smoothly and things were back to normal. Satisfied that Gears would do the job, I performed one last sync before leaving for the airport.

It must be said that Gears delivers on it's promise of bringing Web 2.0 to the desktop. For a first release of a dramatically new and useful product, both the speed and reliability match that we've come to expect from the modern web. During my flights and free time I was able to whittle away at the 2000 or so new articles my Reader account had downloaded and when I could get online I was able to update the list. The only problems I had with the Gears were that embedded content such as images were not available when offline and accessing content via https (essential when logging in through public hotspots) was not synced with the default http service.

These petty issues aside, Google Gears provides a promising example of things to come. Of course I was still stuck with little access to the rest of my online life, but beggars can't be choosers. For anyone expecting some disconnected time away I can definitely recommend giving Gears a try. It's not exactly well supported yet, but hopefully this will change soon enough.

Categories: Web2.0, Travel, GoogleGears