Lost/stolen mobiles again.
I wonder how safe and feasible would the worker pools encryption of data be for symbian system.

I believe that Nokia has built in poor lock PIN code system. The data is vulnerable.

Regards,
Koparday

As far as carrier software, I suppose that only applies if your aim is to get things pre-installed when a handset is shipped. Thereafter, the carrier has less control, and that control is only lessening as time goes on, thank God. With few exceptions, Windows Mobile devices usually don’t restrict “certified” application installs, although I know the capability is there and some carriers to try their darnedest. That’s what cooked ROMs are for.

And as far as my connection goes…I can’t say that I’ve ever noticed a data drop in the same way that you immediately notice voice drops. Maybe Sprint’s 3G data network inherently fares better than the voice connection, I don’t know. It has not been an issue to date, but I do live near a large metro (Atlanta).

@Giff: Good comments about stolen laptops and devices. I created something called Dojo SQL that encrypts and decrypts the data stored offline in Gears. Gears provides threads to JavaScript, so that you can do things like encryption without blocking the browser. These threads, called worker pools, are also on Google Gears for mobile, so someone could encrypt their data stored locally if they wanted to. I’d love to see someone do this with the new Windows Mobile release! Who wants to knock out a quick open source library to do this and put it on code.google.com?

@halr9000: Hi there. You raise two points: why add new abilities to mobile web apps rather than just make them native; and why is offline necessary on mobile devices?

For your first question, it is _much_ easier to create mobile web applications than native ones. The mobile space is very fragmented. Being able to create consistent mobile applications that are web-based (and use Gear’s open source abilities to augment this with offline access, greater reliability, etc.) is much easier than creating many different native applications. Further, getting permission from carriers to install native apps is very difficult. Something like Google Gears for mobile makes it much easier for entrepreneurial firms like Buxfer and Zoho to innovate and get their software on mobile phones without having to get executive-level buy-in from carriers. Sure Google can get Google Maps native installed on mobile phones, but what about other companies? We should all be able to innovate in the mobile space.

On the question of whether offline is useful on mobile phones, if I want my applications to be in the mobile browser than I need them to be available even with intermittent network connections. How often does your cellular connection drop? Mine drops alot.

@Subodh: Google Reader is not tied into Google Gears for mobile yet. Good question.

Best,
Brad Neuberg
Google Gears