Google Gears : Your Web applications can now be used even when not connected to Internet

Microsoft has had a definite advantage in being a virtual monopoly in the PC market. In the past few years Google has been trying to grab this enviable market share enjoyed by Microsoft by releasing web applications which have similar features of popular Microsoft software products. Thus you have Google spreadsheet as a potential replacement for MS Excel, Gmail, Google Docs as a replacement for MS Word and so on. But till now Google applications lacked a fundamental feature which was that none of the Google products could be used while you are offline. In other words, you needed an Internet connection to use any of the Google offering except Google Desktop search.

Now this is bound to change for once and all and you can look forward to Google storming one of the bastions of Microsoft which is the PC Desktop. Google has just released what they have named as Google Gears. Simply put, Google gears is a web browser extension which makes it possible to make web applications run while you are offline.

Google Gears provides three key features which are :

1. A local server, to cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) without needing to contact a server.
2. A database, to store and access data from within the browser.
3. A worker thread pool, to make web applications more responsive by performing expensive operations in the background.

Google has released Google Gears as a open source product which means, interested webmasters can use the API to develop their own web applications which work offline. You can go through a Google gears tutorial as well as access some sample applications to whet your appetite.

But what I find most enticing is the fact that Google has simultaneously released the web extension for Linux too along with that for Windows and Mac OSX. If you are interested in say, writing an email in your Gmail account while offline and then connecting to internet just to send the mail, then you can download and try out Google Gears.

Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit

The first Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit takes place mid June, featuring the fourth Desktop Architects Meeting, an LSB face to face meeting and various council meetings.

The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, taking place form June 13-15 at Google’s Mountain View Campus in the Bay Area, is supposed to bring company and enterprise orientated minds around Linux together. The invitation-only event combines several previously singular events together, among them also the Desktop Architects Meeting which took place last time in december 2006 and the LSB face2face meeting which also took place last time in that December.

The schedule and agenda of this combined event give an overview over the main talks which will be given:

• State of Linux Kernel Roundtable Discussion — What’s New with Core Development
• State of Linux Roundtable discussion — Where are We Going? Where Have We Been? An Industry Perspective
• Cross Industry/Cross Distro Software Development: The Ubuntu Perspective
• How Do We Get More Apps on Linux? What are the Issues Facing Linux Application Development and How do we Solve Them? (Ha, I can answer that one )
• The Legal Protection of Linux - Patents and Licensing, GPLv3 and the Future
• End Users and Linux: What Works, What Doesn’t?
• How Do We Work Together as a Collaborative Community?
• LF Collaboration Summit Reception
• Joint Meeting of the Vendor, User and Developer Advisory Councils

Besides these talks the sub-events also feature their own talks, which adds up to quite a lot. Here is a list of the sub-events, called tracks:

• Desktop Architect’s Meeting 4, the only track which goes two days long
• User Advisory Council Meeting: Device Drivers
• Vendor Advisory Council Meeting
• LSB Face-To-Face Meeting
• Printing On Linux
• Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) Breakout Meeting
• Mobile Linux
• Kernel messaging
• IPv6
• Testing on Linux
• Multimedia/Audio

Ha, find a topic which is missing. To me it looks like almost everything is covered - and I wonder how many people will attend? It is more or less a conference on its own.

The list of speakers is also a nice read: almost every bigger company and distribution is represented there. Also other companies like Adobe or Real which provide Linux apps have speakers there. If you miss the more community centered groups there, they do appear as attendees.

Actually, the list of attendees reads like a who-is-who of the Linux ecosystem - especially the more business centered part. Interesting here are the numbers (although they probably don’t mean much): the distributions (Novell, Red Hat/Fedora and Ubuntu) has each a fistful of people in the game. But there are companies which send more: Nokia and HP send each 6 people, Google 7, Ricoh and IBM each 9 and Intel even 11 people!
While I can understand IBM, HP and Google and definitely appreciate Intel I wonder why other companies like Ricoh send so many people. And Adobe only has the Flash player and Adobe Reader for Linux, why do they send 4 people? And what about Cisco’s 4 members? Do they sell devices with Linux on them? And what is DreamWorks doing there with three attendees? And where is Trolltech?

Anyway, as I said at the beginning, the meeting is focusing on the topics which are important for companies working in the Linux ecosystem. The important non-company community parts are also represented, but clearly are a minority.
This is not bad (yes, for me even companies are part of the community), but knowing that avoids wondering.

I’m looking forward to the outcome of the meeting. I haven’t found any information about where results will be posted/reported.