Read your RSS feeds in Google Reader offline

Puzzled ? Google Reader has just announced a new feature which will enable you to read your RSS feeds in Google Reader even when you are not connected to the internet.

This feature enables you to read your 2000 most recent items even when your computer is not connected to the internet.To use the offline features of Google Reader, you will first need to install the Google Gears plug-in for your browser.

An offline version of Google Reader which could be used without the internet, was at the top of the feature requests for most of the Google Reader users. And Google has now done this without creating a standalone software. Instead you can now use the same old Google Reader interface offline and read the latest 2000 items of your RSS feeds.

And this is just the beginning. These offline features are enabled by Google Gears, an application that lets web sites store their data on your local computer using only your web browser and Google Reader is the first to be supported. GMail & Google Docs offline version may also be coming soon.

I am still trying to enable the new offline feature in my Windows XP Firefox browser and I have had no luck yet. And it looks like others are also having problems enabling offline access for Google Reader on the Windows platform. Gina Trapani of LifeHacker was also unable to use Google Gears on the Windows box. But she got it to work on the Mac Firefox instead. Damn! I wish I had a Mac.

And here is the official announcement at last.