WebProNews

Disconnecting from the Internet doesn’t excuse you from most tasks, so why should such a move disable your calendar?  There are hints that, in coming days, it won’t - as long as you use Google Calendar.

According to Andy Beal, Google’s calendar application is talking to Google Gears, which specializes in offline functionality.  “I just saw an interesting pop-up message while opening-up Google Calendar,” Beal wrote.  “It said the application wanted to use Google Gears, did I approve?”  Beal did.

But despite that promising start, it turns out the feature still isn’t functional, and Beal’s pop-up isn’t even appearing for most users.  There’s no doubt that this is real, though - others have echoed Beal’s report, and he took a screenshot as proof - and it looks like whatever Google has up its sleeve is much nearer to the company’s hand than its shoulder.

All of this raises an interesting question: if Google Calendar becomes available offline, what else might follow?  The smart money’s on Gmail - even if taking it offline would be considerably more difficult, this represents a sort of logical next step, and is also something that would please a lot of users.

For the time being, though, we’re just waiting to see if Google Calendar can catch up with its paper counterparts.