Rich Internet in high gear ...

Enabling offline capabilities for web applications is the nemesis of desktop software since the browser could become more powerful in terms of functionality and operation. Web technology like Google Gears enables desktop-like behavior. Gears creates client-side data storage by exposing an API that allows the web application to store a database cache on your mobile or desktop machine. This allows you to access data when you are not connected to the Internet. Although gears works with other browsers; Google Chrome has it built-in and it works the same way in Android too. You'll be able to read, reply and open attachments in your Gmail account offline.  I just attended a technical overview of Windows Azure, Microsoft's new cloud computing "operating system." For the programmer, there is an offline development environment and SDK that allows client-side debugging in the Visual Studio IDE without ever "publishing" your application to Azure. The Microsoft team demonstrated a fully disconnected Silverlight application that once developed in the cloud, operates on your desktop independently of the browser. This has rich-internet-application (RIA) behavior but when asked, the team did not divulge any "gears" like capability in Silverlight. I believe Silverlight has "gears" features since it is a browser technology. The question will be if it is software plus service or just service.