As we reported at Google I/O in May, Google has been working on offline versions of their three most popular apps: Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. Google previously offered offline access for Gmail, Calendar, and Docs but leveraged Gears. But Gears is no longer being supported by Google as Chrome gains many of the same features via HTML5. And offline-acces functionality was limited. Today, Google is announcing that it has rebuilt offline access for these applications, in the form of a HTML5 Chrome web app. Gmail offline will be available today, and offline for Google Calendar and Google Docs will be rolling out over the next week, starting today.
Intuilabs is showing off their proof-of-concept HTML5-based multi-touch smartboard in an effort to prove a) that HTML5 is pretty rocking and b) that someday we may all have smart tabletops in our home. To see the big screen in action you can fast forward to about 3 minutes in.
Sick of mailto: links in your browser opening Outlook or Mail.app whenever you click them? You can tackle this problem with extensions or through other means, but Googler and HTML5 guru Paul Irish offers a simple, no-add-ons-required approach.