The upside to Web-based applications is that, generally, they can be used anywhere a user can get Internet access and a reasonably modern Web browser: most of the time, documents, data, and the application itself are available via the Internet, so users don’t have to deal with carting around a computer, finding their files, and configuring software. The downside, of course, is that without decent Internet access, Web-based application are well-neigh useless.
With that in mind, Google had announced Google Gears, a new open source technology which aims to enable Web-based applications to work even when users don’t have access to the Internet, or when their Internet connection flaky or slow.
