Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

Robert Scoble says that Google Gears is nothing new. Radio UserLand was doing the same thing in 2002:

Back in 2002 I was director of marketing for UserLand Software. You know, Dave Winer’s company. In January of 2002 we shipped Radio UserLand. It was pretty darn bleeding edge for its time. It had a built-in Web server. A built-in database. A built-in RSS aggregator. That let me read feeds in a river-of-news format. It even worked offline (I used it back then to read feeds on plane rides and I could write blog posts while in a plane and sync them up when back online).

This week Google Gears came out and Google’s Reader has offline capabilities.

Hmmm, I swear I’ve seen this all before.

Not exactly the same thing though.

Radio UserLand was client software that allowed you to do stuff online but maintained an offline data store. Google Gears is a simple browser extension that now allows you to intelligently cache things offline so that you can use them when you aren't connected. No client required other than the browser.

Yesterday I installed Google Gears and set my blog up so I could read it offline. And I didn't have to install a database, or an RSS reader, or a web server.

In the Web 2.0 world, something like Google Gears is the key to being able to work just as effectively when you aren't connected as when you are, using the same online apps you already do.