Google Gears is about much more than just offline. With Gears, you can create websites that use the local server and database to accelerate performance and provide innovative new functionality.
We've been waiting to see web applications that use Gears to do much more than just offline. Buxfer, an interesting new personal finance web site, has a host of powerful features, such as auto-syncing with all of your banks and credit cards. One interesting feature is that they are using Google Gears. If a user chooses, they can have their personal finance data stored locally in the Gears database rather than on the remote server. This is very powerful -- you can now get the convenience of web applications, while retaining control over your personal data:
While synchronizing your financial accounts, you can save theVentureBeat has a great article and review on Buxfer. A snippet from VentureBeat concerning the Gears functionality:
authentication information offline on your computer using Google Gears.
Next time you click on 'Synchronize', Buxfer will use the information
stored in Google Gears, and you won't need to type it again.
You will have the convenience of not needing to login into your
financial institution repeatedly, as well as the peace of mind that
your private information is secure and completely under your control!
Like Mint and the others, Buxfer has introduced a way to let you easily synchronize your financial accounts from Bank of America, American Express, Citibank credit cards, Chase credit cards, and more than 300 others with your personal finance information on its site. It uses Google Gears to download your financial account information — your username and password — to an offline Buxfer component that lives on your computer, that syncs with your online Buxfer account. It’s the company’s policy to never store this sensitive user information on its servers. It accesses the data stored on your Google Gears database on your computer, and authenticates you and your information with your financial institution. You can delete the data or make it unavailable to Buxfer whenever you want.[via TheMoneyUpdate]
Mint has received some heat from those concerned about letting a web startup store their personal data on its servers. Wesabe, like Buxfer, offers a set of financial information upload tools, so you can store your data on your own computer, then sync it with that site — we’ve found Buxfer’s implementation of this offline component to be easier to use.
