Google shifts up Gears for mobile
05 March 2008
Google shifts up Gears for mobile
Web giant Google continued its foray into the mobile space this week, with the revelation that its Google Gears platform is available for Windows Mobile devices.
Google Gears is a web browser extension that allows developers to write web applications that run when the device is offline.
To date, the platform has only been available to PC users, but Gears is now available on Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices. Mobile Gears runs the same as on the desktop but within the limitations of that device, so developers have to bear in mind elements such as screen size and various APIs.
Charles Wiles, product manager for the Google Mobile team, said that mobile devices are, by their nature, often disconnected from the network, and even when connected, the latencies in data connections in mobile networks can make web applications sluggish. "You can create slick and responsive applications by hiding latency issues through controlled caching of data and storage of information between sessions," he said.
The next trick is getting developers to write Google Gears into their applications. At present there are only a handful of Windows Mobile web apps that use Google Gears for mobile, such as the personal finance service Buxfer and online applications provider Zoho.
Wiles also promised to bring Gears to other mobile platforms, including its own Android initiative. "We're also working to bring Google Gears for mobile to Android and other mobile platforms with capable web browsers," he said.
Find out more about Google Gears for mobile on Google's Code site.
Also have your say and see a video of Google Gears on the telecoms.com blog
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