It seems like the world of technology — the world that I write about and care about, anyway — has cruelly decided to explode in a supernova of news in the past 48 hours while I’ve been away at Mesh. Anyway, some thoughts on some of the larger bits of news over the past few days that I haven’t yet commented on — but will do so if I have the time.

• Google launched Google Gears, a plugin (how simple!) which allows people to take online data offline. I think that the importance of this release cannot be overestimated. Although Gears is a product that is agnostic with respect to particular web applications, clearly Google is positioning itself to move its own Google Applications offline. This has enormous consequences, and most importantly from the way that it positions Google as a direct competitor to Microsoft as it applies to Office products. With the way that its secretly building data centers and locking up dark fibre so that it can solidify its on-line offerings, Google is a behemoth that is moving and evolving faster than, I think, many can hardly imagine.
• Jason Calacanis launches Mahalo, a human-filtered search engine that seems to use a combination of Wikipedia, Google Search Results, and hand picked terms to populate its index. On one hand I can see the attraction for wanting to do this — common search tems can often get clouded by “irrelevant” stuff — on the other hand, I just don’t know what the objective is. Do they think they’re going to out-Google google? Are they trying to penetrate a niche market? If I want information on popular terms why not just go to Wikipedia? In any of those cases it becomes a branding issue — but Google *already* owns what people think of in terms of search, and Wikipedia *already* owns the concept of common ideas, things, places, people, and so on.
• Bill Gates and Steve Jobs shared a stage for the first time in recent memory — and it seems like people, such as Om Malik, think that it was the ever personable Jobs who was clearly the most memorable … for all kinds of reasons. Which brings me to a thought: what would ever happen to Apple if they lost Steve Jobs? No, seriously. Do they have any kind of insurance policy for that circumstance? What do you think Apple’s market cap would do *then*?
• EMI allows YouTube to broadcast its music videos and Apple officially releases DRM free music: Big sounding developments from the arena of copyright and legal wranglings — but as Ethan Kaplan pointed out yesterday about DRM-less music at Mesh, you wonder if its going to make much of a difference towards anything. DRM-less music is more appealing but it still has to compete with free music. YouTube can now allow people to release music videos from EMI’s library — but who watches music videos any more? No, seriously — who does? I’ll give my stock standing-on-the-fence type answer: “time will tell” … but it would be interesting if it didn’t make any difference at all in the long term.
• YouTube on AppleTV? Its happening, now. I can’t help but wonder if this is as lame as it sounds; on one hand it kind of makes sense — on the other, are people really going to be interested watching grainy 30 second clips of human inanity on their 40 / 50″ television screen? I mean its one thing to watch it if you’re in a constant state of partial attention (like at your PC multi-tasking), but its another to sit in front of your TV and do it — with nothing else niggling for your your attention.
• RealNetworks has released a new Real Player that will allow you to download almost any streaming format, from flash, to YouTube videos, to Real Media and Windows Media. I think the biggest hurdle they’re going to have is in the early adopter circles — not the technology itself. Real Media player was probably one of the first pieces of bloatware, coupled with a terrible consumer experience married to an ongoing contempt for what users seemingly want. And it lasted that way for years. Everyone knows it and everyone remembers it. But it seems like they’re doing what Dell has done — they’ve put a face to the company, they’ve started a blog and they’ve started admitting their mistakes. It’ll be interesting to see if it works, as there’s a lot of negativity about the brand — but certainly no more than Dell.
• Zooomr Mark III still isn’t up.