Offline Google Mail App for Chrome Lets you Use your Gmail Offline

Gmail users previously were able to backup their emails offline using Gears, a Google plugin allowing web apps to run offline. But recently in May, Google announced that it shifted focus to HTML5 and stopped the development of Google Gears. As a result, those users who installed the versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome released after May could no longer backup their Gmail account using Gears.

The good news is that Google has brought back the ability for Gmail users to access their emails even when they are not connected to the internet.

The functionality can be achieved by installing “Offline Google Mail”, a new chrome web-app based on HTML5 that updates in the background while you’re online.

Incase the internet is not available, simply open a new tab in chrome and launch the app. From there you can compose, read, search and archive emails. Offline Google Mail will automatically sync the changes once internet connectivity is available.

The streamlined user interface, based on Gmail’s popular tablet interface, provides an extremely fast response time with a pure, email focused experience.

Install - Offline Google Mail

Images Missing from Blogger Blog Posts when deleted from Google+ Albums

One of the many features that Google introduced in its newly launched social platform: Google+, is that it displays all your Picasa web albums in the photo section of your Google+ account. You can view photos from your circles, your phone, your own photos and of course, it allows you to view, edit or delete your Picasa web albums directly from the Google+ interface.

What’s the link between Google Plus Albums and Blogger Posts?

Many Blogger blog users are not aware that the photos they use on their blog posts are saved in their Picasa web album. So when they join Google+ for the first time and see all their photos from their blog, they assume that the photos are also viewable by their friends and family members or even anyone who isn’t in their circles.

This is when the problem starts. Some Google+ users start deleting their albums and can unknowingly end up deleting the albums containing photos they have used on their blog posts for years.

This can easily be avoided. Users must know two things to be on the safe side:

1) Albums that you have not shared will be visible only to you:

As a Google+ users, you shouldn’t be worried about your blog images showing up in the photo section of their Google+ account as only the images that you share will be visible to your circles.

2) Deleting Photos from Google+ will also be permanently deleted from Picasa web album.

Any Picture that you remove from your Google Plus account will also be removed permanently from Picasa web album, hence from your blog if you had used it on your blog.

When you are about to delete an album, a dialog box will be displayed stating that photos will also be removed from Blogger, Picasa Web and other Google Products.

Related: Backup your Picasa Web Photos and data from other Google Product

Download data from Google buzz, Contact and Circles, Picasa web albums, Profile and Stream

The Data Liberation Front, an engineering team at Google has launched a new service called Google Takeout, allowing users to create backups of data from various Google services.

It’s a pretty straight forward service. Simply head to Google Takeout and select the Google services you want to download your data from. Once you’re done, click the “Create Archive” button and Google will provide a zip file containing all the data stored the selected service.

Once the download is complete, you’ll see that the data is in open and portable formats, which can easily be imported to other services.

Currently, Google Takeout is applicable to Google Buzz, Google Contacts and Circles, Picasa Web Albums, Google Profile and Stream, but Google plans to provide support for more services in future.

Protect Confidential files before syncing them on Dropbox

If you are thinking of protecting some of your highly confidential documents before sending them across multiple systems using the popular Dropbox service, SecretSync is an app just for that. It adds a client side encryption and protection for Dropbox files.

The first time you install Secret Sync, you’ll need to create an account to get an encryption key. You can also enter the optional passphrase for added protection.

SecretSync, when installed, creates a special folder, separate from Dropbox, where you can put all confidential files that you want encrypted before being sent to Dropbox. It will encrypt everything in that folder with 256-bit AES encryption, using a key to which only you have access. Files are then decrypted on the other computers on which you have SecretSync installed. Importantly, the files cannot be accessed from the Dropbox web interface and cannot be decrypted by anyone.

Dropbox already provides a server side encryption but the lack of client side encryption is where this app comes in. SecretSync is currently available for windows users only.

Download SecretSync

Use Gmail and Google Docs offline without gears

Google recently announced the end of development for it Gears plugin and that it will be shifting focus to HTML5. Internet explorer 9, Firefox 4 and Chrome 12 no longer support offline backup of Gmail and Google Docs via gears.

Gears is still available for older browser versions and allows compatible websites and service, including Google Docs, Google Mail and Google Calendar to be stored and accessed locally, in a fully searchable database.

Although Google plans to provide similar functionality through HTML 5, but for now, what are the possible alternatives for Gmail and Google Docs to be available offline?

Of course, there are workarounds alternate tools that can be used for this purpose and the good thing is that many of them are absolutely free and relatively easy to implement.






Save and access Google Docs offline:

If you need create a backup of all your documents in your Google Docs account, edit or even sync changes once you are online, here are a couple of tools that come in handy:

Syncplicity:
Syncplicity is an online storage and synchronization service similar to dropbox that also supports Google Docs.

Link your Gmail or Google Apps account with Syncplicity and then assign a local desktop folder that should be kept in sync with your Google Docs account [Tour]

CyberDuck:
Upload and download documents straight from your Google docs account using this open source FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Cloud Files, Google Docs & Amazon S3 client for Mac & Windows.

Joukuu:
Synchronize your Google Docs account with your local desktop, so you can access all Google Docs files anytime, anywhere. You also can edit files through your local applications, such as Microsoft Office or Open Office.

SyncDocs:
A windows only application, SyncDocs provides one of the easiest ways to keep your Google Docs library in sync with a local folder on your computer for easy access.

Backup and use Gmail offline:

When it comes to storing your email account offline, most modern email clients support access through IMAP. This needs to be enabled from Gmail settings (available under forwarding and POP/IMAP). One popular solution that works with Windows, Mac and Linux is Thunderbird. For anywhere access to your email, a portable version is also available for download.

If you are a windows user, the easiest and an absolutely free application for storing all your important emails is Mail Store Home. This application lets you archive emails from various sources including Gmail. It is also available as a portable app which you can use to create a portable archive on any USB flash or a USB hard drive.

Related: How To Save Important Emails From Gmail And Access It Offline