Look ahead to web-based mail
So, as I was saying, the future of e-mail is web-based. It’s one of those no-brainers of new technology.
We need to stop thinking of the desktop as the computer and think of the Internet as the computer.
Our data is out there in the cloud, as the Internet is increasingly being known, safe on a hard drive somewhere in a server farm with too much air-conditioning.
But, as superb as the multi- connection cloud is, it’s still out there and when you’re offline, you have no access to your web-based e-mail. Until now.
Recently, Google introduced “Labs”, clever add-ons that give you new, optional Gmail features like adjusting your signature, quick links, adding shortcuts to Calendar and Docs, and more.
But I discovered a new add-on for Gmail that totally blew me away and convinced me more than ever that web-based e-mail is the future.
Called Gears, it allows you to store an offline version of your Gmail account on your computer and access your e-mail when it’s not connected to the Internet or when you have a “disrupted” connection, as Google calls it.
Gears is a very clever way of using a feature in Internet browsers (like Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera) called a cache, or a local version of online data.
Browser caches are usually used for pragmatic things like the images on a website — instead of refreshing them by pulling them off the Internet server, the browser uses its own cache. When you reconnect, it sends any new mails and “synchronises” again, including all your attachments.
The portents of Gmail offline are spectacular. Why use an e-mail programme like Outlook or Outlook Express when you can use a common-or-garden browser (which is already free) to access your free webmail? The only disadvantage to webmail has been that you don’t have access to it, or those attachments, when you’re offline. No longer.
It’s the most exciting thing I’ve seen since Gmail itself.
It’s an interesting return to splendour for an old concept that was almost disproved before this rush of Web 2.0-ness reinvigorated it. The idea is that the browser can be the only application you’d need to access server-based (in a big company) or web-based services and data.
Browsers have become more sophisticated applications than just windows onto the wired world. They are now powerful enough to usurp the e-mail programme, word processor or music jukebox as the most important app on a computer.
There was even a time when the so-called browser wars resulted in Microsoft being convicted of anti- competitive behaviour and paying steep fines. Despite this, Redmond won the war — until Firefox came along and siphoned off some 20percent of Microsoft’s once 95percent market share.
Google’s own Chrome has opened up another front. But while this form of software seems to be one of the most innovative, there are compelling offerings from Firefox (and its endless customisation through third-party add-ons), Opera (still my favourite, with its “speed dial” panels in new tabs, a concept it originally invented), Flock (which is geared for social-networking services like Facebook, Twitter and Flckr) and Apple’s Safari.
The shift in power to the browser (which forced Microsoft to hastily revamp its Internet Explorer) has in part been enabled by the maturity of a technology Microsoft originally gave a leg-up to, called Ajax.
Ajax does a very clever thing. Say you want to click on a link and open an e-mail in Gmail. Instead of the browser refreshing the entire page, it just refreshes the section that’s changing. It makes for much more rapid connections to the cloud (a server somewhere, perhaps half a world away), which approximate the speed of doing something on your own computer.
Add that to what Gears’ Offline function does and the browser is back in the driving seat.
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