Keeping Your Netbook in Gear With Gears

Google's Gears keep your Docs alive when your Internet connection isn't.

I had an e-mail about using Cloud applications when there is not a way to get on the Internet. What no Internet, in today’s world?

That does happen more than we want to for sure. You don’t have a 3G or you really don’t want to pay for the WiFi at a McDonalds  and you have a project to finish. Well if you are using Google Docs and Gmail you are in luck.

Google created a program called Gears that will allow you to download and run Gears aware Cloud apps and run them off your netbook’s (or desktop and laptop) hard drive. Gears has three important parts that include:

LocalServer: To cache and serve the Cloud app’s resources such as XML, JavaScript, images, HTML and etc.

Database: Which is a SQLLite engine that will store a local copy of the data in a fully-searchable database.

WorkerPool: Which is a collection of processes to interact with the LocalServer and Database to keep nearly everything you can online happening offline.

These three parts of Gears keep you working with most Google services like Gmail, Docs and Blogger, just to name three. To use these Apps with your computer offline you will need to install Gears and then activate Gears to download components of App to your hard drive. This is in the upper left hand area of Docs and Gmail. I’m unsure about Blogger – just Google it.

Also WordPress plays nice with Gears. To use WordPress when you are away from an Internet connection is simple. Once you have installed gears go to Tools and enable the Turbo feature with Gears. You will asked if this is OK and then will download the files and libraries needed for you to compose your post while you are offline.

There are some limits to what Gears can do for you offline. For one you will not be able to post to your blog until you are connected. Another is you can not create a new document in Docs while you are offline. My work around for the Docs shortcoming is to go ahead and create a blank word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and form then synchronize my Docs with my Netbook so when I need create a new document I open the blank, then when it is time to save the file, to file “Save as” and give it a new name.

Docs Fans Vote

If you are a fan of Google Docs like I am take note. Mashable is having a faceoff between Google Docs and Microsoft Office. Check it and vote your for your favorite.