Matt and company have announced that WordPress.com now officially supports Google Gears. Gears is an extension which works with the browser to enhance web based applications. It’s known for creating local database and file storage, while running javascript in the background to update that content without slowing down the browser.
Gears support in WordPress.com means you will be able to store all images and other web page components of the WordPress administration panel locally which will speed up access to those files while reducing unnecessary web traffic. To enable this feature, click on the TURBO link in the WP.COM dashboard area. This will be located in the upper right portion of the screen. You will need to have the GEARS extension installed before you will be able to take advantage of this new feature.
[EDIT] Rundown on Fool’s Wisdom of Google Gears Privacy concerned raised. Thanks Lloyd!
this feature will also be included in wordpress 2.6 and will (for me) solve the issue of doing wordpress stuff while I don’t have access to the Internet. From what I’ve seen you can write posts and manage comments while you’re not online. This next version is going to be super cool
What about the security? Will Google have full access to my admin-pages? Can Gears be used as a Key-Logger by anyone?
Jan: As long as the best practices are followed, Google Gears security is well documented. http://code.google.com/apis/gears/security.html
Local database and file storage creation and management is awesome!
This could become the single biggest threat to MS-Office as lots of coders will create nifty online data management tools.
I can’t say why, but I would not like to give my data a concern like Google, and I can’t understand the enthusiatic comments. Everybody talk it is fine and good and if someone ask–go to Google…
At Europe we got a trojaner on every pc from our goverment – why should I give them access via gears – ?
Google is a concern who is helping goverments like China with censorship – my faith in this concern is to few to give them my data.
regards
Monika
#7
Geez, what a mood killer
I tend to agree with Monika, but on the trojan and big brother part.
However, i do think that having google to access our databases or data, may lead to some unwanted results…
I will try it when WP 2.6 comes out to see and ponder the risks/benefits.
Google’s motto is to “do no evil”, right? This should mean that they will not use your information against you … hopefully.
That said, Google does have access to all the information we grant them, whether it’s through GMail, Analytics or anything else that the Big G offers. This information is usually aggregated quite a bit and used during their scenario planning ventures when they’re working out future trends online and answering complex business questions.
Unless someone is super popular, super famous, or super dangerous to a government, we likely have very little to worry about when it comes to what Google will do with the information we willingly give them when signing up for their services 😕
HTML5 (uhh working draft) will have a client-storage features and certain browser already implement this advanced features like Firefox (gecko 1.9,2.0 a bit buggy thought) & Safari
why do we need third party software like google gears?
excerpt from google gears TOS
superb man, great. It will surely help the theme developer too. isnt it ?
Well, it’s not like this is an opt out feature. The Google Gears support is there for anyone who wants to take advantage of it. If you don’t like the thought of Google Gears, simply don’t use it and you’ll have nothing to worry about.
Google Gears is great. I can’t believe WordPress will have that feature in 2.6. I can’t wait.
I notice it says that approximately 200 files will be downloaded to my hard drive. So, I’m wondering…….. if you have multiple WP sites, will 200 files be downloaded for each WP install?
*nod*
I agree with jeff but this seem more like viral promotions for google products.
google paranoia is mooot.. they’ll get info on you from gmail, google analytics, google web history etc etc. anyways..
even if you don’t use, for example, gmail, then what ever email provider you use will have your emails.. if you host it on your own domain, the hoster have your mails..
my point is whatever you do someone somewhere will be your big brother.. so your choice of weather or not to use the feature should not be dependant on that.. instead weaight the value that it gives to your blog..
Yes, I am the one who have a little doubt in mind, what Google will do in the future. 🙂 As long as I didn’t keep my digital signature in the computer which I use for the internet, I guess that I still be ok.
Good news indeed!