Google Gears

For those who have been waiting so long for Google Reader to go offline, Google has finally found a solution they name as Google Gears. The open source browser extension enables web applications to provide offline functionality using following JavaScript APIs. Here are its functionalities:

Google Gears marks an important step in the evolution of web applications because it addresses a major user concern: availability of data and applications when there’s no Internet connection available, or when a connection is slow or unreliable. As application developers and users alike want to do more on the web—whether it’s email or CRM or photo editing—enhancements that make the browser environment itself more powerful are increasingly important.
- Google Press Release | Entire Release

Google Gears currently works on Firefox 1.5+ and Internet Explorer 6+ under OS X, Linux, and Windows XP/Vista and is a developer-only version.

To start reading your feed offline, simply click the "Offline" link in the top right of Google Reader. As predicted by Haochi from Googlified, Google Gears is expected to be integrated with Gmail, Google Docs and Spreadsheet, Google Notebook and thousands of other web applications (not necessarily hosted by Google) that stores users' data.

Related: Download | FAQ

Google Trends Hot Trends

Google Trends adds Hot Trends to their homepage showing the hottest queries for the day just like the monthly press release Google Zeigeist (weekly). According to Google, only a "sudden rise" in a query phrase that is not in the norm for that query with be flagged as 'hot'. When you go to the details page for specific keywords, you will see related news, blogs and websites giving you a clue why that keyword became famous. Google also ranks the hotness of these keywords with different level depending on the search volume they are "volcanic", followed by "on fire," "spicy," "medium" and "mild". You can also change the date to see past 'hot trends'. Here is a screenshot of the details page: