Gmail is not dead. Infact it’s alive and kicking. The Gmail folks at the Mountain View Giant ( read : Google) quietly rolled out a major feature on Tuesday. Its major because most of us haven’t seen anything like this before. What is it then? Its called “Offline Gmail”.

So, offline gmail – what is it exactly? To put it simply – It lets Gmail act like a desktop application. Just like Outlook or thunderbird used for email. How is that possible? The technology that makes this possible is called Google Gears. It is a plugin which when installed into your favourite web browser allows Gears enabled websites to go Offline ( literally). So, your Gears enabled web applications (Gmail for instance) will run smoothly even when the internet connection is not available and also giving you almost the same user experience as if you were online.  You can even create a desktop shortcut for your favourite web app and use it to launch it anytime you want irrespective of whether you have connectivity or not.

Among other things Offline Gmail lets you read mail, open attachments, access the address book and compose mails to be sent later when net connection is available. Read  what the Gmail blog has to say about it. It uses a local cache on your computer to achieve this. But to use this nifty feature you need to have Gears installed. The feature is available in the Labs tab in the settings screen in Gmail. Gmail detects if you have Gears installed. So, if you don’t have it you won’t see the option to turn the feature on. So go get it from here.  http://gears.google.com/

One final thought – Gmail is not the first Web application to go offline ofcourse.  Several other apps like Google Docs, Zoho Mail, Google Reader and MySpace are already Gears enabled.

And an afterthought – Microsoft too upgraded its email service ( MSN Hotmail). They added POP3 support. POP3 is essentially the protocol which lets you download a copy of all your emails on your local hard drive using an email client like outlook. By the way, Gmail has had this feature since a long time ago. Grow up Redmond…grow up.

Google Gears is an Open Source Project  :)

Happy Browsing !

In case you are still stuck try looking at the various UBUNTU forms where really nice helpful people will be willing to help you out. Or shoot a question to me.  I will answer them if  I know the answer .

As expected  this blog is not working out as it should have. In the meanwhile i have a little bit to share. A pic.

Yeah I completed it.

See ya later guys.

Life, on the other hand, is moving smoothly. It has been close to two and a half months now in McAfee and the experience has been more than satisfying. That, however, doesn’t stop me from waiting for weekends all the time.All I do on weekends is roam around the city meeting friends, college mates and schoolmates.My humble friend in most of my journeys has been my TVS Star City. Dude, its not a Harley. Its a plain old 100cc machine and worth every penny I paid for it. But, the coming weekend is promising. Raj is here and we all are hoping he can spare some time for us . My old faithful is up for scheduled servicing too. Our trip to the Big Bazaar is also due – lets hope we can make it this time. Till date, I haven’t caught up with Exeter guys- we might actually meet. I am supposed to attend a practice run on Saturday for the Sunfeast World 10k marathon – I have my doubts on that (Just doesn’t seem feasible at all !!!). Lots to do …… only one weekend.

See you later folks. Thanks Sunshine !

If you are jobless like me just spare a few seconds to contribute to my Johari Window here. It is a tool to see where our vision of ourselves intersect with our external relationships. According to Wikipedia:

A Johari window is a psychological tool created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955 in the United States, used to help people better understand their interpersonal communication and relationships. It is used primarily in self-help groups and corporate settings as a heuristic exercise.

As soon as I have a few replies to this I will publish the results in this blog.

Thanks,
Ravi

Joker in the Pack An irreverent view of life at IIMs Ritesh Sharma & Neeraj Pahlajani Buy the book here Visit the official website at http://jokerinthepack.in/

I must say there were two reasons why  I picked up this book. First, I did want have an insight into the IIM way of life. More than the glamour, I wanted to know the rigours involved. In case I ever manage to land up in one of these premier institues I sure want to have a fair idea of what I was getting into. Secondly, it reminded me of another book – “Five Point Someone” by Chetan Bhagat. This book gave me a feeling its going to be another try of the same kind. Not that I loved FPS or hated it, books of this kind were rare (or at least not popular, if there are many that I am not aware of).

I am at page 120 right now so I cannot give my humble review till I finish it but going by these 120 pages one thing is clear – This is no “Five Pont Someone”. In fact, it not fair to compare the two. This I must say appears to be a more realistic account  of events around the protagonist. It does not have Bollywood style drama that was characteristic of the two Chetan Bhagat books. It is devoid of the masala that pulls in the crowds. Hence, do not expect every Chintu, Bablu and Dolly to have read the book and appreciated it. The book is no booker material – Simple enough for anyone to understand. What I liked about the book was that it had a nice helping of common campus slangs thrown in (An english translation followed as a footnote). Mind you, these were not the ones which make the book look fancy or entertaining but very real ones and perhaps most of them are in use in IIM campuses as I type these words.

 At this point I feel I should go back and finish the book before saying anything else. If you have a free day you can finish it in one or two sessions. The book is not boring and that helps

Watch out for the full review later.

CAT results are out and I have a lone call from IIM Indore. I’ll keep you updated on this.

Ravi

I am taking another shot at blogging. Lets hope I can get over my laziness.

Ravi