Looking on the bright side #2: Offline Google Docs

As a reminder: The big plus of cloud computing is that you can get to your information from any computer any place, as long as you have an internet connection. The big minus is that you can't do much of anything if you're not on the internet. For instance: I conduct most of my email life through a variety of Gmail accounts. But unless I download and store the messages on Outlook (or Thunderbird or Mac Mail or something else), I can't read or answer them when I'm on a plane, visiting an office building, or generally wondering how I will ever dig out of the email hole I have created for myself in a month away from the computer.

Six weeks ago, Google introduced one useful tool for dealing with this "what about when I'm offline?" problem. This was an unobtrusive, elegant, and so far (for me) bulletproof way of keeping an online Google Calendar synchronized with a calendar file in Microsoft Outlook. I find this surprisingly useful. I can enter -- or change, or delete -- a datebook item either at my "real" computer, when using Outlook, or on the Google calendar if I'm using someone else's machine, in full confidence that the changes will ripple through all versions of my calendar information. Including the version I can get from any mobile phone via SMS if i send a text message asking for details on the next place I'm supposed to go or number I'm supposed to call.

Over the last four weeks, Google has been slowly rolling out another tool that potentially can make cloud-computing more usable. This is the "Offline" version of Google Docs, which in turn relies on a utility called Google Gears.

It works this way:

You compose a document online using Google Docs. (Of course you can also upload to Google Docs a document you've already written in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) It then creates a copy of that document on your laptop or desktop -- which you can edit, add to, re-do, etc when you're away from the Internet. The next time you get a Net connection, the system will automatically synchronize the changes you've made since the last time online. I n theory, it brings the benefit of both worlds: the "cloud computing" advantages of having a document that lives in the cloud, where you can get at it from any computer; and the real-world advantages of being able to use that computer when offline.

As is often the case with new Google beta products, this one is being offered to users on a gradual basis, rather than introduced all at once. I haven't used it long enough or in a demanding enough range of circumstances to be sure how well the synchronization actually works. But the first few times I've tried, it performed as advertised. (One point: it seems not to get along well with the current beta versions of Firefox 3. There is an easy workaround: install the synchronizer via Internet Explorer, Firefox 2, and I assume Safari, though I have not tried that.)

I have another very long set of airplane trips ahead -- the perfect opportunity to give it a better test. In the meantime, other views from Ars Technica, Lifehacker, ReadWriteWeb, and the official Google blog.