Why Gmail Going Offline Is A Good Thing
While I remain at odds on Google continued support of their Knol project, it is nice to see them using their talent to do something viable for me…today. As some of you might have discovered by now, Gmail is now available in an offline format. When used with Google Gears, it seems that Google is going forward in offering extended functionality for their email service that so many of us have come to know and love.
How do you enable this functionality? Well, first you need to go to your Gmail settings, select “Labs” and enable Offline Email. Gears will install and then you need to goto the top right part of the page, click on tiny icon next to settings to sync things up. Depending the number of emails you have, this may take some time.
Is it working as advertised? Well, understanding that this is a labs project and that it is in beta, yes, it is working well for me. Not finding it available for you just yet? Do not worry, it will likely be released to the rest of you in a rolling release as that is how Google appears to do things these days.
4 Comments
I’m Not a Slacker - Are You? | Chris Pirillo
January 29th, 2009
at 4:21am
[...] Would it be a good thing if Gmail were to go offline? [...]
Eddie Thieda
January 29th, 2009
at 4:36am
I think it’s great how Wordpress also is using this functionality especially if your bandwidth is limited.
DougW
January 29th, 2009
at 5:33am
Is this the whole article? I’m still wondering why Gmail going offline is a good thing or a bad thing, or a techie thing, or what?.
Norm R
January 29th, 2009
at 6:39pm
I have to agree with DougW. This feels like the beginning of an article. Very interesting as far as it went but I would like to have seen what you feel are the pro’s and why they outweigh the cons (if any).
Keep up the good work.