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Does the Distinction Between Online and Offline Still Matter?

Dawn Foster — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:00:37 +0000

I’m old enough to remember when being at home meant that you were off work. There was no logging in from home to check your mail. (If you wanted your mail, you had to drive into the office to pick it up.) Computers were big boxes that sat under your desk, not something you carried back and forth between home and the office with ease. Occasionally, you might bring home paperwork or something that you needed to read, but the constant connection to work was rare. Being online was something that I associated more with work than recreation, and it required conscious thought and effort.

Now, my phone has more processing power than my first work computer, and I am always connected. This connection isn’t just for work, or even for productivity. I rely on being connected for many routine personal tasks: dictionary, looking up random facts, amusement, recipes, etc. I jump back and forth seamlessly and no longer really think of it as being online or offline. I take it for granted that I can always be connected on a moment’s notice.

Gartner’s Nick Jones agrees that the distinction between online and offline has almost completely disappeared:

Labeling time as “online” vs. “offline” is so last decade. For many of us that distinction already vanished. Many of the things we do at home and work mean we dip into web services continually throughout the day. We post updates to social networks, stream media, check information, stream feeds and tweet (not the latter in my case as I’m a twitter refuser). And behind the scenes loads of gadgets in our home and pocket silently and continuously communicate to access web services, updates, information…There is no “online” vs. “offline” any more, there’s only online.

I spent the last couple of days taking a long weekend off work to just relax at home. I finished reading “Accelerando” by Charles Stross, which I had started reading a month ago; I started and finished Cory Doctorow’s “Makers,” a fantastic book; and I started reading Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash.” I stubbornly refused to do any work, but I noticed how often I kept looking things up on my phone or laptop:

All of my recipes are in Google Docs
I head to the search box whenever I want to learn more about something
I play Words with Friends for amusement
Twitter and Facebook help me keep up with news and my friends

Because I live in a place where Internet access is everywhere, I have stopped thinking about any distinction between “online” and “offline” in favor of an always-connected lifestyle.

What do you think about the distinction between online and offline, and is it still a meaningful distinction in your life?

Photo by Flickr user eschipul used under Creative Commons.

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Mobile Tip: Turn Your iPhone or iPod Touch Into an Offline Mobile Reference Library

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:00:44 +0000

This is a tip for anyone who wants to get any web working done while you’re traveling and/or in transit for any reason. If you’re going to be in areas of questionable network access, you’d better have the ability to get work done offline at your disposal, and you should also be ready to dig in for extended periods of time without a connection.

For some tasks, you absolutely need network access, but for others, a rich and varied stock of offline-accessible information and research resources should provide plenty of fodder for getting things done. Your iPhone or iPod touch can be a great supplemental resource for exactly this kind of thing. Here’s how to turn your device into an offline road warrior.

Instapaper or Read It Later

These apps are great because when you do have connectivity (if you get a signal briefly, for example), you can quickly save articles for reading in extended blackout zones of little or no coverage. Both these apps allow you to capture and store web content as offline pages. What’s more, integration with both of these apps is often baked into other iPhone gems, like Tweetie, the popular Twitter client that recently got a brand new version with lots of extra bells and whistles.

Instapaper comes in two flavors: a Free version, and a Pro version for $4.99. The more expensive app allows for Folders, article recommendations, background updates, and more, and really is worth it if you’re an avid Instapaper user. Read It Later also comes in Free and Pro flavors, with the Pro costing only $2.99. It features full-screen reading, sharing, and the ability to send articles to other iPhone apps.

Dictionary.com or WordBook

Despite having impeccable spelling skills (quiet, Simon), even I can see the value in a dictionary app. For instance, I often have an overwhelming urge to look up the origins of words. Not necessarily of tremendous professional value, but still. And of course, I’m kidding about the spelling thing. I often need to double-check words, especially ones for which I seem to have a mental block like “aesthetics.”

Both Dictionary.com (Free) and WordBook ($1.99) offer offline access to more than 200,000 definitions. My personal preference of the two is WordBook because of the UI, but both provide a thesaurus, word of the day, audio pronunciation guides, and more.

Encyclopedia

Wikipedia is a great on-the-spot reference for background and contextual information on new and unfamiliar terms and concepts. Which is fine when you have an active network connection, but doesn’t help much when you’re on a train in a 3G dead zone and you’re looking to provide a quick overview of the USB 3.0 standard for a client report.

Enter Encyclopedia ($8.99, iTunes link), an iPhone/iPod touch app that stores a complete full-text offline version of Wikipedia on your device. All internal links function, and you can navigate your history and backtrack when you need to. Beware, references are excluded in the interest of usability, and it will take up a full 2GB of your device’s storage space, but it’s much simpler and more convenient than the alternative.

myPANTONE

Web designers, and people who just take an interest in the finished look of their documents and web work, will truly appreciate the usefulness of the recently released myPANTONE app. The app gives you access to Pantone’s color libraries, and allows you create color schemes on the go. You can even use colors from photos taken with your device to find matching Pantone hues. Even if you’re not a professional print designer, this app can still be very helpful in coming up with pleasing color combinations for documents, personal websites and more.

It’s a little on the pricey side at $9.99, but it does let you do really cool things like GPS tagging, and voice/text annotation of palettes you create. If color is important to the work that you do in any way, there might be no better way to spend otherwise unproductive time out of network range.

The Pocket Reference Re-imagined

Imagine how crazy the idea of having an encyclopedia in your pocket would’ve seemed 20 years ago? Plenty crazy, I’d say. Thanks to the versatile platform Apple developed for its mobile devices, you can now have multiple encyclopedias on hand in a package slimmer than most people’s wallets. And it doesn’t end where I’ve stopped here. There are plenty of very specialized reference apps available via the iTunes App Store, for little or no money.

What reference apps do you carry with you?

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Singletasking Tip: Go Off Grid

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:00:54 +0000

For the past four days, as far as my social network, email and IM contacts were concerned, I disappeared completely. No, I didn’t unplug all my devices or sit in the dark with my power cut off, or even have to exert any willpower. I simply took a trip, up beyond the range of my cell phone carrier’s data network, to northern Ontario’s cottage country. The cottage my family visits there is not only beyond cell phone range, it also has no cable, no satellite and no local dial-up service available.

It’s an anachronism, but a welcome one for a web worker looking for a true vacation. Not that I didn’t work. Because I love (some) work, so it doesn’t feel like an imposition when I bring it with me on vacation from time to time. And what better setting for getting some web work done than at a remote location surrounded by nature and devoid of any Internet access?

Honestly, I did some of my best work while completely disconnected from the world I work in. It’s true that for a lot of what I do, maintaining currency is key. I’d say about 80 percent of my work is focused on current events, and as such, I could only focus on the remaining 20 percent while disconnected. But concentrating on that generally neglected sub-category meant that I was that much more efficient and attentive when dealing with it.

Tools and Methods

Oddly, my tools of choice for getting things done in such a rustic setting were ones normally associated with the web. First, there was my recently acquired 12-inch PowerBook, perfectly suited for the task because it wouldn’t suffer much from exposure to the elements, and because its screen is so much more appropriate for outdoor work than the glare-factory that is my 13-inch MacBook Pro’s optical glass screen.

Since writing was what I wanted to get done on this trip, I also employed Google Docs. But wait, Google Docs without an Internet connection? Yes, courtesy of Gears and a Fluid site-specific browser (SSB) instance, I can use Docs wherever and whenever I want as a fully functional standalone application. Web apps without the web are a beautiful thing.

As for methods, I just planned on waking up earlier than I normally would during a vacation and using the time during which the rest of the family was fast asleep to knock out some work, free of distractions. I ended up doing that. Owing to almost continuous rain, I also used big chunks of the afternoon on work, too. The setting and the absence of a sense of urgency made it seem like I wasn’t working at all, though.

True Focus

Being unplugged, for me, was the closest I’ve come to achieving true singletasking. The reason being, there’s far less to distract you from the task at hand once you don’t have Twitter trying to steal focus every two minutes (or however often your client happens to refresh), or the omnipresent temptation of Facebook, YouTube and countless other sites, lurking just a new tab away.

At first, I was understandably edgy, since it was such an abrupt switch from being completely, utterly connected 24 hours a day to not even being able to check my email without driving 20 minutes to the nearest town. But once I got over the initial shock, the benefits were immediately apparent. I finished a 1,200-word article in only two hours, total, a process which would’ve taken me well over four under normal circumstances.

Takeaways

Perhaps the only way to cure our great Internet addiction is to go completely off-grid. But not everyone has the opportunity to escape civilization and, by extension, the long tendrils of the Internet. However, everyone can learn a lesson or two about how to simplify their work habits from my experience, both about how to work and what to work with.

For example, one of the key lessons I took away from my experience is to use the right tool for the job. If I can do something without undue inconvenience on a simple PowerBook and Fluid instance setup, then there’s absolutely no reason for me to break out three screens, a surround sound speaker set up, a Wacom tablet, etc. Work with what you have, obviously, but if you don’t need it, don’t use it.

Last but not least, I learned that the Internet, surprisingly, is not the key ingredient in successful web work. Working remotely means just that, a freedom from the traditional ties between workplace and employee. I was looking for that freedom when I chose a career that allowed me to work from home, but eventually I became so dependent on connectivity that I may as well have been going to an office every day. From now on, an occasional forced exile from the web is going to be a vital part of how I do my job.

Do you ever disconnect completely? If so, do you notice productivity gains from doing so?

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Zoho Mail Goes Offline & Mobile

Imran Ali — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 14:17:05 +0000

As Google deepened its support for offline access via IMAP this week, Zoho, its closest competitor in the web office space, was publicly unveiling its own support for offline and access, ironically using Google’s own Gears platform.

Curiously Zoho decided that to bring users’ mailboxes offline, Gears was a better technological platform for offline access than the IMAP protocol; though we’re assured IMAP is coming.

Regardless, the offline features seem pretty comprehensive despite currently being restricted to Gears for Firefox and Internet Explorer and with most online features being available offline – messages, images & attachments are optionally available and a clever connectivity detection feature automatically determines whether a network is visible, flipping between offline and online modes as appropriate, with offline messages queued for later deliver when connectivity becomes available.

A Gears configuration dialog allows users to select the number of messages to download initially, how many Sent Items should be stored for offline access.

Finally, though Zoho is pitching mobile access alongside offline support, in reality Zoho Mail is currently only optimised for the iPhone.

Though the offline support appears to work well enough – as do other Gears-enabled services such as Google Reader – mainstream offline access seems a little too fragmented for comfort.

Where standards such as IMAP are pretty much guaranteed to work across multiple platforms, clients and services, supporting entire classes of application, such as email. AIR, Gears, Prism and Silverlight all seem to be mechanisms for locking users into a vendor platform, forcing developers to have to divide their efforts in supporting them.

As an industry, we should be thinking more responsibly about data portability through standards…a complex endeavor, but in the longer term much more viable and stable than the collection off offline platforms and browser combinations we see today.

Read more about Zoho’s offline and iPhone support here…

(Incidentally, I’ll be meeting Zoho’s evangelist, Raju Vegesna, later this month at O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Expo Europe. If you have questions for Raju, please drop me a message!)

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