And more on the geek front - Google announces Gears

[Updated] Seems the only app (via IE or Firefox) using Google Gears as I write is Google Reader - shame Gmail, Calendar and the rest of the Google Apps line wasn't released at the same time ... not that I care as I only work "online" anyway.

Google Gears - let's you run web applications (Gmail, Blogger .... ) "off line", i.e. not connected to the Internet. You do need to download somefink to make it all work and stuff but I'm sure it's kosher so give it a whirl and tell me what you think ... and then I'll try it ... if I don't have to do any programming, API calls or anything I wouldn't expect 99.9% of the population to be able to do.

With Yahoo!'s Pipes and Google's Gears (blog) we might be able to make the perfect web bicycle.
And then we can all peddle away from the PC ball-and-chain for ever.

What others are saying:

• Search Engine Land: Google Gears Brings Offline Web Applications To Life
• Lifehacker: Access your Google Reader feeds offline with Google Gears
• Read/Write Web: Google Gears in Context - Browser Gets a Boost From Google
• Schobleizer: Inside the Gears of Google - plus tease
  
• ZDNet: Podcast: ‘Google Gears’ vies to be de facto tech for offline Web apps
• TechCrunch: Google Gears Lets Developers Take Apps Offline
  
• Google blogsearch 'google gears' ...