Showing that its Web application priorities extend to the mobile world, Google on Wednesday demonstrated a version of Gmail for the iPhone that could be used even when the phone had no network connection.

Vic Gundotra, Google's vice president of engineering, showed off at the 2009 GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona what he called a "technical concept" of Gmail even when the iPhone was offline. In January, Google released an offline version of Gmail for desktops and laptops, and like it, the mobile phone incarnation runs in a Web browser, not as a native application.

The software let Gundotra browse and read e-mail even after he switched the phone into airplane mode, which shuts off the wireless network. To watch a demonstration, check the demo video on iPhone Buzz.

Offline applications can't of course retrieve new data from the network, but they do synchronize when network access is restored. Meanwhile, e-mail is stored in a local database on the phone, even when online.

"You'll note that it's very, very fast because it's using that local database," Gundotra said. The application also showed a floating toolbar that was visible even as he scrolled through his in-box.

It's significant for several reasons that Google is eyeing a new version of its Web-based Gmail application for the iPhone. For one thing, the company wants to bring to the iPhone all of Gmail's features--search, labels, and conversations, for example--and Apple's built-in mail application lacks those abilities. But more broadly, the move is significant because it shows how Web-based applications can bypass the control that particular companies such as Apple or Microsoft have over a computing technology.

HTC's newest Android-powered phone, the Magic.

(Credit: Crave UK)

Apple has achieved tremendous success with its App Store, which lets people download and buy software for the iPhone and iPod Touch. But it controls that conduit, and it only can deliver software written specifically for those devices. Web applications run in a Web browser, and all smart phones have browsers--though, of course, hardware and network constraints typically mean they're anemic compared with desktop versions.

In case the point about the power of Web applications was lost on observers, Gundotra showed the same Gmail software running on the HTC Magic, a new phone using Google's Android operating system.

"You now have an ability to build an app that spans devices as long as that device implements the latest specifications of these modern HTML 5 Web browsers," Gundotra said.

The mobile phone version of the Gmail software uses a somewhat different approach to enable offline access.

Where the desktop version uses a Google-developed open-source browser plug-in called Gears to enable offline support, the iPhone version uses the offline data storage standard of HTML 5, the gradually emerging overhaul of the language used to describe Web pages. That technology can cache the state of an application as well as data such as messages.

Of course, getting a modern, full-featured browser on a PC with plenty of memory is hard enough, and mobile browsers generally lag PC versions. However, it should be noted that Safari on the iPhone, like the browser in Android, is based on the WebKit open-source project, and WebKit has been building in offline support. So at least on some higher-end phones, a Web-based version of offline Gmail could be an option sooner rather than later.

One of my beefs with Gmail, a service I otherwise like, is its propensity to create duplicate contact entries for the same person without any action on my part.

I'm not sure if this is part of its internal workings for identifying contacts, an issue synchronizing with iPhones and Exchange, or something else, but it's annoying. On more than one occasion I've had to recombine my own entry back down into one contact, and I've had to do the same with my wife's entry, my parents' entries, and others.

Of course, there are legitimate occasions when Gmail might have multiple entries for the same person, such as when a friend whose personal e-mail address you use then e-mails you from her work address.

Google now offers to treat the symptom, if not the disease. There's a new "Merge these 2 contacts..." link that appears when you select multiple contacts. Clicking on it presents a unified entry that you can save, modify, or cancel as you see fit.

Gmail has added an interesting feature you can opt-in to by choosing Settings -> Labs -> Multiple Inboxes -> Enable -> Save Changes. Once Gmail restarted, you will find the main view split into several panes; the normal inbox, but also your drafts, or starred messages to its right. (Good for big screens, bad if you’re suffering clutterphobia.) You can configure the individual views by switching to Settings -> “Multiple inboxes” and entering Gmail search queries. For instance, I’ve entered is:unread to result in a pane which shows all my unread messages.

[Thanks Arie via the Gmail blog, with hat tip to Ionut’s

Google went a little crazy yesterday and started tagging every search result as malware. Later Marissa Mayer explained what really went wrong and how a human error affected the entire search results.

So that’s that.. but it does not end there. Apparently one of the signalsGmail spam filter is depended on is the Malware information from Google search. The Gmail blogsuggested its users to look into the spam folder to see if they find any legitimate mails in there. This might have happened because of the error in malware filters.

Google will also do its bit by automatically restoring these e-mails back into the inbox in the next 24 hours.

One of the longest-running requests for Google's web mail service Gmail has been for offline functionality. Now, finally, Gmail users will be able to type up those emails inside an airplane. Google has just announced offline Gmail support via Gmail Labs - to start with for consumers and businesses using Google Apps, but regular Gmail consumers will get it over the next couple of days. The offline feature was built using Gears, Google's offline web application API. In its email to us, Google archly noted that Internet connectivity has started to happen even in airplanes - for example American Airlines announced last year that they will offer in-flight wi-fi service. Even so, many people (including this author) have been clamoring for offline Gmail for years. Google's web mail competitors have been much swifter in offering offline functionality.

In October 2008 we reported that Zoho Mail had gotten offline support, ironically via Gears. Yahoo Mail gave offline access to all free and paid Yahoo Mail users through the Yahoo Zimbra Desktop in July '08. It's been frustrating for Gmail users, many of whom are early adopters, that Gmail has been so behind the times with this feature. Particularly when Google has Gears and has already used it to offline-enable Google Docs and Google Reader. So Google has been slow to use Gears in Gmail and Google Apps, but of course we're pleased to see it being deployed now. With its new offline access, Gmail will be able to be used inside the browser even without an Internet connection. Messages can be read, starred, labeled and archived and new mail can be composed, says Google. Messages ready to be sent will wait in the Outbox until the user is online again when the messages will be sent automatically. Google has warned though that "there might be some issues that aren't completely ironed out" in the new feature.

The feature will be rolled out over the next couple of days, starting this afternoon for Google Apps users. You can enable offline Gmail by clicking 'Settings' in your Gmail, then click the 'Labs' tab and select 'Enable' next to 'Offline Gmail', and click 'Save Changes.' Then in the upper righthand corner of the account, next to the username, there will be a new 'Offline' link. Click this link to start the offline synchronization process (note that you will need to to download Gears if you haven't already). For non-Google Apps users, you'll have to wait a couple more days. But wait, there's more. Google is also working on an offline Google Calendar. There is no date for this release, but it too will be launched with Google Apps first.

Gmail announced a feature in Gmail Chat today which lets you watch videos without leaving the current chat or opening a new tab.This feature works only on Gmail chat not on the GTalk client window. It certainly is a good feature as you don’t have to juggle between windows or tabs to watch video and chat. All you have to do is just copy a video link and paste it in your chat window.

Once the link is recognized, video thumbnail will appear in the window click on it and it will start playing the video in the window above the chat window. This feature applies to Youtube videos only. I tried using Vimeo and Break.com’s video links but they fail to show the magic.