1.21 Gigawatts!

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed, or register a username and be kept in the loop of special updates. Thanks for visiting!

I’ve been reading a thread on the SomethingAwful Forums about Least well thought-out security measures (sic) and came across this beauty (141kB .gif). I miss the old days of senselessly bypassing lock down programs on school computers and making the teachers angry. And then pointing the finger at other people of course.

Google Gears is a browser extension for Firefox and Internet Explorer that uses JavaScript to store application resources and databases locally on your computer to allow you to view those websites when you (or they) are offline.

Gears consists out of:

* A local server, to cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) without needing to contact a server
* A database, to store and access data from within the browser
* A worker thread pool, to make web applications more responsive by performing expensive operations in the background

The only thing is that sites need to be set up specifically to be compatible with Google Gears. The main market for this extension is most likely large sites that offer access to huge datasets and their clients who directly interface with these sites on a large scale, or it can be used to just download part of a website that you would need access to while travelling abroad.

A Gears tutorial is available here and some sample applications can be found here.

Google Gears is compatible with Windows XP (and higher), Linux and MacOS X, running Firefox 1.5 or higher.

edit: 02-06-0-2007 Google Reader now makes use of Google Gears. Very handy indeed.

Yes, free. If you are an aspiring programmer without the millions of dollars available for software development tool licensing fees, then these Express editions might give you that nudge in the right direction. Anything from Visual C++ to SQL Server is available at your disposal. I think the worst thing you have to do is accept the EULA.

The files download as .ISO files, which can in turn be extracted with WinRAR

Also, if you’re thinking if going the C++ route, please check out Thinking in C++ 2nd Edition by Bruce Eckel. An amazing introduction to the world of making your computer see things through your eyes.