Martin Gordon's Blog

I can't believe I missed this: Google Gears is available for WebKit. This was announced three weeks ago, but I just found out about it on this TUAW post regarding future Google/Apple iPhone-related announcements.

News of this makes me feel better about AJAX/HTML based apps on the iPhone, easing my concern over offline access to these apps. I also haven't seen many developers complaining about the lack of a "real" SDK on the iPhone, which makes me believe that offline access and home screen placement was discussed at NDA-covered WWDC sessions.

A big question I have is that amongst all this Google/Apple collaboration, Apple decided to go with Yahoo for the iPhone's bundled email solution and widgets (you'll note that the Stocks and Weather widgets now sport Y! icons). Could Apple be playing both sides? If Google and Yahoo were desperate to get placement on the iPhone, then perhaps they didn't want to (or couldn't get) exclusivity. Google and Yahoo are currently tied on home screen icon placement at two a piece (Yahoo is slightly ahead overall because of the mail tie-in, however).

The biggest loser in all of this is of course is Microsoft. The one-two punch: iPhone is going to take away customers from the Windows Mobile platform (RIM sure isn't helping them out either). Thanks to the Google/Yahoo integration, iPhone users will have an investment in Google and Yahoo's online services, driving usage away from MSN/Windows Live/whatever it's called now. After the iPhone, Microsoft will be facing increased competition from both the mobile space and the internet space.

There is a bright side to all of this for Microsoft. From any way you look at it, Microsoft is seen as the biggest competition to Google and Yahoo: Either Google and Yahoo compromised to "share" the iPhone, in which case they don't think they can handle Microsoft alone, or Apple didn't want only Google or only Yahoo on the iPhone, in which case Apple thinks that Google and/or Yahoo are vulnerable to Microsoft.

Technorati Tags: Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, SDK, iPhone, WebKit, Google Gears, widgets

Socialtext announced Socialtext Unplugged at Le Web 3 yesterday. The idea is to allow for offline wiki edits that can be synced back to the system once the user is online again. This is similar to Scrybe's biggest selling point, OfflineSync, which allows users to work offline.

Working offline is the next big step for Web 2.0 apps. We've gotten to the point where web apps have become mature enough to actually replace traditional desktop apps, thanks to AJAX and the collaboration bonuses that come with a centrally-stored application. I use GMail for non-critical email (basically everything non-school), but I use a desktop client and my Treo for the emails I need ASAP or have a need to review later whether or not internet access is available. I use NetNewsWire because reading feeds keeps me entertained and in the loop if my connection is down or I'm in a place where no access is available. Syncing between my laptop and desktop works about 95% of the time, but on occasion I have to deal with having read items marked unread or getting subscribed to the same feed multiple times.

The thing I need to make the jump: offline access. If I could go to GMail whether or not I was online and find an old email, I'd use it over my desktop client. If I could catch up on my feeds in Google Reader while sitting on a plane, I'd use that over NNW. I don't mean to pick on Google, they're just the one with apps most likely to solve my current needs save for this one drawback.

I really hope the unplugged icon catches on and we get some type of standardization for offline mode. Imagine it being as simple as subscribing to an RSS feed: click on the blue icon and Firefox automatically downloads the sync information. Next time you hit the site, Firefox checks for the live site; if it finds it, you go to that, otherwise you go to a locally cached version. Now you can answer emails, star your feeds, whatever, and the changes are updated next time you get online.

Technorati Tags: Socialtext, wiki, offline, web 2.0, ajax, unplugged, RSS, web apps, Scrybe, OfflineSync