Along the last couple of years, mostly every facet of my life has somehow changed, with things only now just beginning to get calm. After and during all that I finally, I took a bit of time off and am not traveling or doing anything dramatic. Instead, I’ve used a small but of this recovered moment attempting to re-establish schedules that erstwhile fell by the wayside.
One of those acts is how I am still caught up, something I did not do so well during this period of chaos. I’ve been testing out different aggregators, trying to discover one that makes me more effective that I can use while on the move. I’d surrendered on the mobile access, mostly because I was peering at it through my Treo since it’s the one internet access point I without a doubt have on my person. It took me some time, but I just now got time to try Google Reader, and so far I’m very impressed, mostly because of Google Gears. Besides that it’s pretty awesome, it’s insanely advantageous if you’re a laptop user and I believe it has the aptitude to play an important part in the next couple of years.
In a nut shell, Google Gears is some code that everybody can place in their online implements to render them acessible offline. It’s built into Google Reader via a single install that doesn’t even ask you to restart your browser. Once utilized, a small icon arrives in the upper right-hand corner, green when online, purple when offline.
It sounds easy enough, but here’s what occurs when you press the green button. Gears downloads all of the posts in your Reader (minus the images) so that you may continue reading when you’re offline. You may still use the standard keyboard commands to move around and scan your news fast, just like you were online. When you do get back to a live internet connection, you just click on the purple icon, the Reader returns back online, and it harmonizes your un/read items back to the Google servers, adding to it any things you starred for upcoming reference.
