Gmail offline: A guided tour

A First Class Commercial Backup Program for Free

from Gizmo's Tech Support Alert

Here's an unsolicited offer for all Tech Support Alert readers that I recently received from Neobyte, the developers of the excellent Titan Backup utility that I featured in my newsletter last year. Almost all the feeback I received at that time about Titan Backup was very positive so I'm happy to pass this offer on to you:

"Hi Gizmo,

I recently read the interview you had with Paul Gillin and saw you were recommending people an old version of Winbackup (the product is no longer developed by Uniblue)

I would like to offer your readers the FULL version of Titan Backup 1.5 (only few months old version), I am confident you'll find it very useful for your audience. You can find here some differences between version 1.5 and 2.5.

Your readers can download Titan Backup 1.5 from here:
http://www.neobytesolutions.com/trial-versions/free/titanbackup15.exe

Then they'll enter the below serial to activate the full version:
000020-ACM8KK-1YXPMT-JZT49Z-05Z6JZ-7C68TR-9Y7FU9-6PD2P8

We'll keep the special discount we already offer your readers, in case they want to upgrade to the latest version Titan Backup 2.5.

Looking forward to see your readers benefiting from this offer.

Best regards

Flavius Saracut
www.titanbackup.com
Marketing Manager, Neobyte Solutions"

Best Software for a Tough Economy

By Jessica Dolcourt, CNET Downloads

In tough economic times like these, good freeware becomes worth its weight in gold.

Professionals who squeeze every feature out of their top-shelf software will likely appreciate the investment, but those of us with more modest goals can still do just about anything for free. Assuming that you are willing to deal with a few minor character flaws and rough edges, we've got some tools to help you save your hard-earned dough. From graphic-design apps and security software to CD/DVD burners and ringtone makers, there's something available in this collection for most of us cost-conscious downloaders.

7-Zip
Small, amazingly effective and free, 7-Zip compresses files like a pro and unpacks archive formats including RAR, ISO and MSI. It can also pack ZIP, TAR and GZIP files. The latter two are often found on Linux and Unix systems, and are file types that the commercial go-tos can't muster. To shrink its footprint even more, try out 7-Zip's portable version.

Windows Live FolderShare
Lots of paid programs make syncing files among different PCs and the Web simple, but if you're counting pennies, Windows Live's FolderShare offers a more than adequate substitute. FolderShare, too, keeps files synced across Windows and Mac platforms -- so long as they're under 2GB. In addition to the desktop client, you can access and configure FolderShare online. Our biggest gripe is that it won't sync files if a computer is off or hibernating, but with a little planning or help from others when you're away from a logged-off computer, you'll be able to keep information constantly current.

IOBit Smart Defrag
There's no shortage of well-rounded defragmentation applications, but IOBit Smart Defrag runs circles around them. Its built-in tool persistently defragments your most-used files without gumming up your system. Like Diskeeper, you can set it to run during idle moments, and its performance is steady enough to run on older and more resource-scant machines. Smart Defrag's scheduler also lets you plan late-night defragging, and can shut down the computer when it's done.

BurnAware Free and Ashampoo Burning Studio Free
Unless you're editing data, audio, video and burned images a significant portion of your time, a fully caffeinated application such as Nero is probably overkill. If all you want to do is burn some discs, Ashampoo Burning Studio Free and BurnAware Free offer the same basic functions for CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray, without the extra bulk of Nero's video editing and slide show software.

ToneThis
ToneThis ringtone maker isn't especially attractive or advanced, but it is free, devilishly easy to use and can create, edit and receive SMS ringtones and scaled videos and photos from your PC to your phone (see supported models.) It's hobbled by some pesky flaws, but the core features work well enough to recommend the program for those watching their wallets.

GIMP
Prepare to be impressed with free image-editing tool GIMP. GIMP supports layering and has a good-size tool kit for adjusting colors, curves and balances, and adding blur, zoom and distortion effects. Unlike some freeware photo editors, it has an effective red eye removal filter, and tools for creating paths and quickly changing perspective. Tutorials and an active user base help you work through stickier editing tasks. The plug-in GIMPshop unites GIMP's two panes and renames some functionality to match Photoshop's nomenclature.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition and Avira AntiVir Personal Free Antivirus
Out of all the freeware antivirus applications, AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition and Avira AntiVir Personal Free Antivirus come closest to the comprehensive coverage of their premium cousins. AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition offers frequent updates, scheduled scans and real-time protection. It also quarantines suspect files and processes, and rates search results for safety.
Avira AntiVir Personal Free Antivirus also scans for definitions, and, unlike most security freeware, sniffs for rootkits. While thorough, Avira's freeware antivirus application tends to lag and is a bit more ad-heavy.

CamStudio
Free screen-recording software CamStudio isn't perfect by a long shot, but if you're scrappy and open to reading tutorials, you'll find a free way to take good-quality AVI and SWF recordings of your screen. The beta build remains somewhat buggy, and CamStudio is lean on options, but if you only need to blast out basic demos and tutorials of your own, CamStudio is a real find.

Gadwin PrintScreen
Spend a few moments configuring Gadwin PrintScreen before capturing your first image and you'll be a fan for life. Trust us, don't skip this step. Gadwin PrintScreen has plenty of customization settings for saving and processing images after you take them. You can save them to the clipboard, print them and automatically name files, for example. Gadwin PrintScreen doesn't have SnagIt 9's advanced editor library, but it will let you automatically open the captured images in any photo-editing application you like.

Gmail grows up with offline e-mail access

Posted by Stephen Shankland

Significantly increasing the utility and competitiveness of its Web-based e-mail service, Google is enabling an experimental ability to read, write, and search Gmail messages even while not connected to the network.

Google believes almost religiously in cloud computing, the idea that computer applications and data live on the Internet rather than on PCs. But there are times when the network is inaccessible, and generally Web-based applications like today's Gmail effectively seize up under those circumstances.

Offline sidesteps that problem, the classic example being a busy executive traveling on a plane. And offline Gmail access begins a new chapter for Google's ambition to appeal to business customers for services such as Google Apps, of which Gmail is a component.

"This is a feature we've heard loud and clear the enterprise wants," said Todd Jackson, Gmail's product manager.

Trying to sign up business customers generally means wooing them away from the dominant e-mail products, Microsoft's Exchange server software and Outlook PC software. Google and Microsoft began in separate spheres, but are ever-closer competitive rivals, each with a strong cash-generating business that can be used to subsidize forays into other markets.

There's more, too. Google Apps customers will get another major offline option "soon," too: Google Calendar access, though not initially the ability to create new entries. If the organization's administrator enables the "New Features" option, each person within that organization will get access to the calendar, Google said.

New features help make Gmail more compelling for business customers, but for many, a bigger problem is the fact that Gmail still sports its beta tag, said Gartner analyst David Smith.

"That's one of the biggest stumbling blocks for businesses," Smith said. "You're hard-pressed to find any businesses who decide to go into production with anything that a vendor calls beta, no matter how good it is." Google promises customers will get 99.9 percent availability through a service level agreement for Google Apps, which includes Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs.

Cloud vs. PC
And Microsoft, while not turning on a dime, isn't counting on a future that consists exclusively of PC-based Office. It already has a product, Office Live Workspace that lets users share and view--but not edit--Office documents online, and the next version of Office will run in a browser.

Philosophically, though, Microsoft remains firmly tethered to the PC, while Google wants to move as fast as possible to Web-based applications. "We think the browser is the ideal platform for deploying all kinds of applications. That's where Google is placing its bet," Jackson said. "But people are traditionally limited by the speed and connectivity of the Internet. We want to fill in those gaps."

Google already developed open-source technology called Gears that helps further this cloud computing agenda by storing Web data on PC, and Gmail, used by millions, could help coax more people to install Gears. That, in turn, could help solve the chicken-and-egg problem that currently means it's not worthwhile for most Web application programmers to build in Gears support.

Greater Gears support could help other cloud-computing companies, including Zoho, which already has offline access for its Web-based e-mail application.

It's not as if offline Gmail were completely impossible. People can set up software such as Outlook or Thunderbird to read and write e-mails, for example. But offline Gmail means people won't have to learn a new interface.

Offline Gmail has been in testing for months, though Jackson wouldn't share specifics about exactly how long.

What can offline Gmail do?
"We wanted the user experience to be almost identical to the experience you get when you're online," Jackson said.

Offline Gmail stores a copy of a user's inbox on a personal computer. Most people will have to install it, a process Google walks you through, but it's built into Google's Chrome browser.

Once Gears is installed and offline access is enabled, the software automatically detects when a person's network connection is working. If the network is good, Gmail works as usual. If it's bad, it goes into offline mode, sending unsent messages and retrieving new ones when the connection is restored.

And if the network is dodgy, a person can use the intermediate "flaky connection mode," which for example queues a message to be sent immediately by storing it to the hard drive then actually sends it as soon as it can. Google positions this as useful for coffee shops and poaching a neighbor's weak-signal wireless network, but I think of this as "tech conference mode."

When enabled, offline Gmail begins by downloading, in the background, a copy of a user's archive to the user's personal computer. But the software stores about 10,000 e-mails, so heavy users won't get a complete archive.

Gmail automatically updates the local cache of messages with new and recently read items and with messages associated with a particular label on which a person has clicked, Jackson said.

Imperfect
Not everything works, though.

One big missing piece is the ability to add attachments to new messages, though attachments are visible with existing messages.

Another is the contacts tab, so forget about managing e-mail lists or adding new addresses while offline. The autocomplete option works, though, so there's no need to start remembering e-mail addresses.

English-speaking Gmail users will be able to enable offline access as Google gradually adds the ability over the next "couple" of days, said Gmail engineer Andy Palay in a blog post. "Offline Gmail is still an early experimental feature, so don't be surprised if you run into some kinks that haven't been completely ironed out yet," Palay said.

What kinds of problems occur?

"We've seen issues with the local cache getting out of sync. You have to refresh the browser, and that gets you going again," Jackson said. "In some rare circumstance, it has to be fully flushed, so we ask to disable and re-enable the feature."

But these should be unusual problems, he said: "It's been in testing for awhile on all 20,000 Googlers, so it's gotten some good testing."