Google Calendar gets offline access

Earlier this week it was Gmail. Now, it looks like the search giant has decided to enable offline support via Gears for another of its most popular applications: Google Calendar. However, while offline Gmail is for anyone who installs the experimental feature, offline Calendar only works with Google Apps customers (free or paid) whose administrators have enabled their users to activate experimental features.

Unfortunately the offline features for Google Calendar are thus far read-only, so while it might occasionally be handy to check your calendar without the need for an internet connection, you won’t be able to add/edit new events, to-do items or other data in offline mode. This may not be the offline calendar solution many were hoping for, but it is a step forward in making Google’s online tools a bit more competitive for business users. Hopefully it won’t be too long before offline supports arrives for regular Google Calendar users.