One of the things that I've missed about using FeedDemon as my RSS Newsreader is the ability to sync my unread items locally and read them while offline.  Since my current RSS Reader is a web app, Google Reader, I had accepted the fact that syncing unread items to read on the train ride home or elsewhere was something I would have to live without.  Apparently, I'm not very forward thinking because with Google Gears I can now sync locally and use Google Reader while offline!  In fact, with Google Gears, any web app can now add offline support and thus open a whole new world of possibilities.  Gears provides a client side relational database that can be accessed via Javascript.  Under the covers Gears uses SQLite.

What's even more interesting is the thought of how Microsoft might respond, or perhaps how they've already responded.  Imagine being able to write Silverlight applications in managed code, ruby, or whatever language tickles your fancy and persist data to a local SQL Server Compact edition using the common ADO.NET programming paradigms that we're all used to.  Next imagine ADO.NET Synchronization Services thrown into the mix so that local data in the SQL Server compact edition database can be synced back to the server. 

While the advancements made by Google Gears excites me, I'm not real big on being limited to programming against it with javascript.  The idea of building web apps that can now work offline, and use local databases that can sync back with the data center using Sync Services, all within the nice managed environment provided by Silverlight would be a sweet deal.  Heck, even if that doesn't happen we should be able to write a managed wrapper on top of Google Gears so that our managed code within Silverlight can take advantage of it.