Google Gears is a very interesting platform. It’s a browser plugin that is aimed at extending the abilities of web browsers to satiate the needs of modern day rich web applications. The Gears website defines it as follows ..
Gears is an open source project that enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser:
- Let web applications interact naturally with your desktop
- Store data locally in a fully-searchable database
- Run JavaScript in the background to improve performance
Gears today provides some very interesting features like a WorkerPool module to run JavaScript code in the background, without blocking the main page’s script execution, a LocalServer module that allows a web application to cache and serve its HTTP resources locally without a network connection, a Database module that provides browser-local relational data storage, a Desktop module that allows you to create desktop shortcuts for your web applications and more.
There are some very interesting features in the works as well like Desktop Notifications from browser apps, Multiple file select, resuming uploads, geolocation support etc.
All the above features have the potential of drastically changing the experience users have when using applications in the browser and that excites me 
Many of these features can be very useful for applications that run in other plugins like Flash Player or Silverlight Player as well… read more
