It seems that this year Google's most popular web applications will work offline. After Google Reader and Google Docs, two other services will integrate with Gears. Andrew Fogg saw a preview of the integration at Google's offices and found that Gmail and Google Calendar will add offline support in approximately 6 weeks.
In the past months, Google accidentally enabled the option in Google Calendar and some users saw the dialog illustrated below: "To view and edit the next 3 months of your Google Calendar when you're not connected to the Internet, click OK."
Andrew also found out that Google will add SyncML support for Gmail contacts next month. He thinks this is "related to the sync that they worked on with Apple for 3G iPhone".
SyncML is a standard for data synchronization supported by a lot of companies. "SyncML is most commonly thought of as a method to synchronize contact and calendar information between some type of handheld device and a computer (personal, or network-based service), such as between a mobile phone and a personal computer."
Syncplicity, a document synchronization tool integrated Zoho into their application recently. This Sync tool lets you synchronize your documents from your desktop (PC-only currently) to their web application.
If you have Syncplicity installed on your computer, you can right-click on a document on your desktop and choose the ‘Edit in Zoho’ option for editing your document. This opens up a window with the Zoho document editor. When the ‘Save’ button is hit in Zoho editor, it saves the file to your local folder and also your Syncplicity account, thus keeping your document in sync. This works with Zoho Writer & Zoho Sheet Apps now with Zoho Show to follow.
Similar editing option is also available in their online application to edit documents online. After you save the changes, the documents are saved on their servers.
And here’s a
nice screencast done by the Syncplicity team, demonstrating the integration.
We’d like to thank Syncplicity for integrating Zoho. Our other API Partners are
here. If you have integrated Zoho into your application, do let us know so that we can profile you here and list you as a partner in our partners page.
Google promoted on the homepage the offline support for Google Docs: "Get your documents whenever, wherever". If you have the Gears plug-in for Internet Explorer and Firefox, you can backup your documents, spreadsheets and presentations on your computer and view them offline in your browser. The documents can be edited and the changes are sent to Google's servers when you go back online.
The link from Google's homepage sends you to a page that explains the reason why Offline Google Docs is useful. "Worried about storing documents online because you can't get to them offline? Have no fear. Now Google Docs works offline."
In the near future, Google will add support for editing spreadsheets and presentations offline, but there are some features that will never be available offline without a local converter: exporting documents to DOC, PDF or opening a document from your computer in Google Docs. The documents aren't stored in a format that can be opened by other applications, so Google needs to find a way to sync your documents and convert them to an editable format.
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