Jash’s Blog

Google was very innovative when they launched Google Gears. It allowed users to access all their data offline. Right from Gmail to Google Reader to Google Docs. Even third parties like Remember The Milk started implementing Gears to provide offline data access to users.

However, Google has announced that they are pulling out Gears support from Google Docs and would be implementing new ways to achieve offline data access, not surprisingly HTML5. They might soon remove Gears support for other products as well and use HTML5 to achieve the offline functionality.

So long Gears….

Google had rolled out Gears support for Gmail and have now launched offline access for Google Calendar via Gears. Now you can view, modify and add new tasks and appointments to your calendar when offline and sync the changes as soon as you go online.

You will also be able to change settings and select only the calendars you want offline access to and disable sync for other calendars. Gears for Google Calendar is only for Google Apps users as of now but will be added to other users shortly.

If you have any questions regarding offline access for Google Calendar, you can visit the Google Calendar offline access FAQ.

       Google Gears is a great way to access web content offline. Google Services such as Google Reader and Google Calendar made it possible to download feeds and tasks on the computer and access them later from the same web interface when offline. Even third party services like Remember The Milk offered support for Google Gears. However, Google is now offering Gears support for GMail.

Before, it was only possible to access mails offline by fetching them by POP3 or IMAP. But now you can use Google Gears and use the GMail interface to browse mails when offline. This feature is currently experimental and can be enabled through the Google Labs tab.

Video after the break.

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