It's been a while.

Anywhoo.. Now that the hardware is final, I think there's still room for wishing on the software front. I won't go into the obvious wish about portrait mode. However, I will wish for something that I think is far more significant.

A Gears (formally known as Google Gears) extension for the web browser.

Gears is a technology designed to give online applications many of the same advantages shared of natively installed applications, in a very simple and non-intrusive way (similar to the upcoming HTML5 spec -- today). These include:

1) Offline storage of data. Data can be stored in an SQLite database offline as per the users permission.

2) System notifications. This allows the application to notify the system that something has happened.

3) Offline document/data serving. This mechanism can store the actual app, as html files and javascript files can be stored. Additionally it has expanded to include binary data (BLOBS).

4) Background worker pool. Basically a set of Javascript Objects that exist and execute outside of the page (for a given app/domain) and between page changes. Once registered, these can improve performance.

5) Geolocation. Using in-built hardware, or the estimated position based on the WiFi AP, location can be used as a part of any application.

When you mix all of these together, what you get is the potential to make an online application run very closely to that of an offline application. The major advantage here is an INCREDIBLY low cost to entry as applications do not need to be 'installed' in the traditional way, and can be tried as easily as navigating to a web page!

With the recent advances in the browser including the general javascript performance, the canvas element, etc. There are sufficient features to service a great number of applications. Including flash into this equation furthers the domain-of-usefulness.

Online development provides not only a low-cost for entry of the user, but the developer as well. Many apps can be prototyped rapidly, and improved gradually as time goes on. This equates to MANY MORE APPS and MANY MORE DEVELOPERS. Moreover, these apps are extremely write-once-run-anywhere apps. Lastly, while Javascript may be considered a muddled language, it is extremely powerful and very flexible if one adheres to good design principles (much like C).

It's of worth noting that online apps with gears do not NEED to be apps as services. In fact, a complete app can be contained in a set of pages, and the data stored completely offline. In this scenario, the app may be built to poll the the server for updates rather than requiring the server to run.

It's not all roses and bee-bottoms, though. There still are many things that native apps do better. However, when one considers twitter clients, messaging, maps, document creation, and a multitude of other apps that can be represented in this environment, its easy to understand that online development provides a very future-focused and attractive alternative to traditional offline tools.

I would *really* like to see Gears on the N900. It's a bandwagon worth jumping on.

}:^)~