Gmail has pushed a new feature for its email service called Offline Gmail. It basically lets you cache your emails locally on your computer using Google Gears thus providing you with access to your mail even when not connected to the internet. This can be very handy in many situations. One that I can think of is while on a plane with no internet access, you can still compose new messages, play catch up on unread messages, and best of all, you can search your entire email database!

As it stands now, the feature is being pushed to Gmail users in phases so if you don’t have it yet, don’t despair, it will arrive hopefully sooner rather than later. If you are one of the lucky ones that already have the option (like moi), it can easily be activated from Settings>Labs>Offline Gmail. After this you will see the “Offline” option and you can click there and install. Pretty easy, though if you have a lot of emails it may take a while.

Pretty neat Google, pretty neat!

The fine folks at Apple have released firmware update 2.2.1 for the iPhone to address some bug fixes and functionality. Since yours truly’s iPhone is jailbroken, I don’t think I will go through the trouble of losing my Cydia apps and reinstalling them. Apple has yet to make good on their promise to deliver background push notifications to allow third-party apps to run in the background. At the moment I get this functionality (well, sort of) with an app called Backgrounder, found in the Cydia repository.

So the waiting game for this feature from Apple continues. They promised to deliver it in September, but maybe they meant September 2009? I’m getting really annoyed at the fact that they continue to ignore this and hope that people forget about it and try to sweep it under the rug!

I guess we’ll have to wait for firmware 3.0 to get this. Hey, hope is the last thing we should lose, right?

OH, APPLE, AND BY THE WAY, WHERE IS THE COPY/PASTE?

My fascination with LOST continues. I started watching this show on DVD not too long ago and went through season 1 rather quickly. Thanks to a friend who has let me borrow the first 3 seasons, I’ve been able to watch a few episodes at a time without having to wait for Netflix DVDs in the mail. Right now I’m in the middle of the season 2 and it keeps getting better. I can’t get enough of the story, the characters, the mysteries, everything!

Just a terrific all-around TV show.

I have been using Twitter lately a whole lot more than I had before, in part because I primarily did most of my social networking at Jaiku. However, I have been getting much more comfortable with using Twitter as my primary socnet but only using the service through the website when at the computer was not cutting it for me. I use Twitterrific on the iPhone and it’s excellent but needed to find a desktop client to manage the service. Enter TweetDeck, an Adobe Air desktop application.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck has quickly become my best friend when I want to “tweet” at my computer, be it at work or at home. It allows you to have different columns and have a quick snapshot of the most recent tweets by the people you follow, @replies to you and direct messages. It also allows you to create groups for your contacts, if you so desire, as well as uploading twitpics (pictures). It really is a winner in my book and very simple to use. I recommend it to anyone who uses Twitter and is looking for a desktop app to manage it effectively.

Beware: Twittering can be quite addictive

Today signifies a very historic day for this country. In just under two hours, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. It is a grand day and the excitement is palpable in the air. Even my 7 yr old  daughter woke up this morning and said “Barack Obama will be the President today, yay!”.

There is a lot of hope pinned on Barack Obama but we must also know that the road won’t be easy. It will take a lot of work and determination to dig ourselves out of the hole we’re in.

So I sit here with my coffee and my laptop and follow every minute of the inauguration festivities. There are many places to watch but I have chosen to watch via CNN/Facebook.