As more and more organizations (and individuals) contemplate moving to web-based applications, one of the big hesitations was that the applications (and your associated data) were stored on-line, “in the cloud.”

That’s perfectly fine if you’re at a stationary location, with a reliable internet connection, but it pretty much rendered online applications useless on airplanes, away from hotspots, at the beach… Anywhere without a connection.

Some time back, Google started working with a technology they called “Gears.”

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According to Allison Burnett on the IEBlog, Microsoft is actively looking for new beta testers for the forthcoming Internet Explorer Version 8, beta 2 (not yet released).

If you’re not afraid to live dangerously, and are willing to commit time to the testing effort, microsoft wants to hear from you at IESO@microsoft.com.

Having been involved with a lot of testing myself over the years, I think I’d be hesitant to install something this intertwined with the operating system on my every day computers, but if you have one that doesn’t matter?….

May the force be with you.

If you haven’t upgraded to Firefox 3 yet, but are curious about all the buzz, have a look at this post on the Mozilla blog.

Being a big fan of keyboard shortcuts, I searched-around for a reference to the shortcuts built-into Firefox, and came-up with this list maintained by the folks at Mozilla (the organization responsible for Firefox).

If you’re really interested in customizing Firefox, have a look at the documentation for about:config, too.

I’m a big fan of keyboard shortcuts, and it’s great to see so many supported inside Google Apps. If you’re the same, and would rather hit a key than drag the mouse, have a look at the lists of keyboard shortcuts maintained by Google:

• Google Docs (Documents, spreadsheets, and presentations).
• Gmail
• Google Calendar