Gears is one of the lesser known technologies from Google but people who live in the cloud have found it invaluable to bridge the divide between offline and online applications. The technology enables offline functionality in Gears-enabled web applications, meaning you can continue to use both web application and your online content while you are not connected to the Internet. The search giant currently offers offline functionality in Reader and Google Docs but Gmail and Google Calendar are next.

Gmail and Google Calendar will add offline support in approximately six weeks. Some users have already seen the offline option "accidentally" turned on in Google Calendar. Gmail is to receive offline functionality in the same time frame as Google Calendar. According to sources close to Google, the feature will enable you to mark messages for offline viewing and editing and you will be able to compose new messages in offline mode. Next time you connect to the Internet, all changes will be synchronized and messages created in offline mode will be delivered to recipients.

Google is apparently set to enhance Gmail contacts with SyncML, an industry standard for data synchronization. It will enable two-way contacts and calendar synchronization between Gmail and web applications or devices (computer, MIDs). Google currently allows web services to securely read users' Gmail contacts but prevents them from editing or updating Gmail contacts directly, unlike Yahoo! and Windows Live contacts APIs. This limitation is the reason why Plaxo still doesn't enable two-way synchronization with Gmail contacts. Google is apparently using SyncML internally to enable contacts synchronization with the iPhone.

Gears copies users' content that resides in the cloud to a secure, searchable database and synchronizes information in the background. Any changes in the local database reflect in the cloud when user connects to the Internet and vice versa. This enables users to run web applications in the browser and edit online content as if they are connected to the Internet. Such technologies are considered the next big thing in cloud computing because they remove web applications' biggest drawback - lack of availability during offline periods. Google recently added Gears support to enable offline functionality in its Reader and Google Docs. If you use Google Reader or Google Docs, you can enable offline functionality by installing the Gears browser extension. Then, simply login to Reader or Docs and click on the offline option, usually located next to your Google Account user name at the top of the screen.

Gears is currently available for Windows XP/Vista (Firefox 1.5+, IE6.0+), Windows Mobile 5+ (IE Mobile 4.01+), Mac OS X 10.4.+(Firefox 1.5+) and Linux 32-bit (Firefox 1.5+). There is currently no support for Gears in Opera or Safari web browsers.

Preview of the upcoming offline functionality in Google Calendar. Screenshot provided under the Creative Commons license by NOTICIAS-TIC.

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