No Internet, no problem? Enter Google Gears.

A few weeks ago, my always forward looking co-writer Jake waxed upon the relative advantages and disadvantages of web email vs. his trusty Apple Mail.app.  He hoped that Microsoft’s early moves into integrating the two would be followed by similar offerings from our favorite web giant–Google.

Not surprisingly, Google answered today with something it has no doubt been working on for some time: Google Gears.  Simply put, Google Gears offers third-party developers a way to create programs that allow the off-line use of websites.  It accomplishes this using a simple browser plugin (less than a megabyte) that offers developers’ three APIs with which to interact with the web.  It is open source, cross-browser, as well as cross platform.  For more technical details, check out the TechCrunch coverage as well as Scoble, who was at the press event.  See also the Gears website.

An example “Gear” is already up that enables off-line functionality in the beautiful Google Reader, which is many a power feed-follower’s client of choice.  It puts a little arrow in the top-right corner of the page.  When you click the icon, Reader begins to download the 2000 most recent messages for use off-line.  When connect again, everything syncs up–messages that have been marked read, tags, etc.  It works great, especially for such an early release.  Tomorrow, as I begin a road trip to New Orleans, I know that I’ll be happy to burn through the morning’s posts, which I’ll sync before I get in the car.

One can only imagine the possibilities.  The most obvious, following in Jake’s footsteps, is a Gear for Gmail.  This would fix my one remaining problem with the application.  If I could sync Gmail off-line, I would return to it with open arms and a big smile as my email client of choice.  The security this un-connected access would offer is just too big to ignore, especially as some businesses (and certainly business-people) embrace Google Apps as mission-critical software.

There is another environment that addresses this need called Dojo Offline Toolkit.  I would hope that Gears and Dojo would be integrated, as they seem to address the same space and there is no way Dojo can compete with the kind of muscle Google can put behind its offering.  As far as I can tell, Gears will work on any web-app developers to which developers decide to apply it, not just Google’s suite.

This is a big day for the future of a web that should be useful if one is connected to it or not.  Internet access will only spread, but users still have those times they are unable to access its services, most notably on planes.  Those unable to afford EVDO cards can add cars and trains, as well as your average coffee shop, to that list.  There is still something about web apps that I love, and I will be glad to be able to return to their world unfettered by the unease of disconnection that I used to fear. 

-Alex Rosen

Digg Incident: In People v. State, who wins?

The recent incident on Digg, when the staff preemptively took down some posts that gave and linked to the HD DVD cracking code, is well known by now. For quick background, check out Wired’s early coverage, the EFF’s excellent legal primer, and of course the now infamous Kevin Rose post on Digg’s blog informing the community that Digg would not continue to take down posts containing ‘the number.’Details are still a little vague on whether Digg actually got official take down notices, or whether they were just following advice from their legal team, though the latter seems more likely. Although it angers them, the geek community around circumventing DRM schemes and intellectual property rights online seems to have accepted that websites need to comply with the law, even when they don’t agree with it. The state, simply put, is still Weberian and controls the means of physical force. It still has the power. Or does it?

Digg’s decision to keep the numbers up heralds a decisive recognition of user power over what amounts to real force online–patronage. We have been hearing about the power of the group and the wonderful nature of socially generated media for years now, but this look like the first time that it has been put to this kind of test against the power of the government (or is it the company?). (I am probably wrong about this and there are many earlier examples to choose from, but I’m new at this and this particularly case has been getting a lot of media attention.) Digg’s decision (Kevin Rose even posted the numbers himself) has the subtext that a Digg user revolt (as we saw) is a more powerful threat than legal threats.

It will be interesting to see what happens to Digg in the long run on this. The MPAA and AACS realize that there is no way they can prevent the spread of this number. It is everywhere: blog posts, photos on flickr (that evil search engine bots can’t read), and music videos on YouTube (ditto). But Digg was the most high profile offender, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the industry chose them as a their target. It would certainly be high profile, as Digg started the social news revolution, and is populated by a fiercely loyal community (though not one that would sit back and watch as the site did something they didn’t like).

But all in all, the threat from its users was more immediate. Lawsuits take ages to play out and Digg can probably reach some sort of deal, so they will at least be able to stay up while this all plays out. In contrast, if it had done what it had been doing (taking down posts and banning users) they were going to be shut down with days (or hours).

The users have the power in this one, at least for now. But if history is any guide, the industry will retaliate. Everyone is certainly worried about this eventuality, including Wikipedia admins. But if a state can’t protect its citizens’ intellectual property, is it still the same kind of state? Are we moving further into the era of citizen and private corporation mediated laws?

-Alex Rosen