There are two big problems with online applications. One is a limited UI - you do not have the rich controls and interoperability that you do with desktop applications. The other is connectivity - you need an internet connection, and given there's no connectivity on the Tube or most flights this can make many applications useless during such periods of time. Google have today gone someway towards solving the latter with Gears.

Gears offers two things that previously you'd have been looking at something like Apollo or Silverlight to provide - threading (rather than a single JS thread) and offline data storage. Hence appropriately enabled application, like the new version of Google Reader, can be toggled into an offline mode and used in the absence of connectivity. Also, Gears is really cross-platform and cross-browser, with IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera support promised, and it works very nicely on my Linux box at work (unlike Silverlight).

It also fires a salvo in the direction of Microsoft, clearly stating Google's desire to provide an application platform that threatens their core business. Further, once Google Docs is enabled it suddenly becomes rather a greater threat. Interesting times.

Now if they'd only release a synchronisation API for Reader I'd be chuffed silly. While Reader is a superb, quite possibly the best, web feed reader, it doesn't yet match up to NetNewsWire. Unfortunately that leaves me stuck using NewsGator as a synchronisation server, which has a rubbish web interface and no client whatsoever for Linux.

Well, I've been outclassed. The Tube Journey Planner not only maps the tube very nicely but integrates real-time problem information as well.

Technically, they are cheating a bit. They're using edited background images to show the tube lines. Hence it's not easy to modify (not a problem in London as our chances of getting another tube line are non-existant) but the line lines are smooth and look really good. And the redraw is nice and fast. Downside - the map stops at the end of the tube lines - the world outside has vanished (and a good thing, too).

Neat toy though, very nicely done. And it does set quite a high benchmark.

While I keep thinking it'd be neat to overlay the Tube on Google Maps some people have gone ahead and done similar things: A geographically accurate tube map, a geographically accurate map on satellite map and a start at mixing them with Google Maps (station to station only, but still rather neat).

Also, a map of future transport projects (and more information on them). Spiffing, if needed ten years ago...