The dream, of course, is to be always connected, all the time. And while it is a beautiful dream, if you try to stay canonical with Google's services you will find that it is far from reality. That's why we're pleased to hear that the company is finally bringing offline access to its web apps. First promised at Google I/O 2011, the apps are powered by HTML5 and will be available in the Chrome Web Store. Sadly, for the time being you won't be able to edit your Docs offline, but that functionality is promised for "the future." Ah, the future... sounds wonderful, doesn't it? At the very least, we can think of a few Chromebook owners who are going to be pretty psyched.

Gmail offline is due to hit today, while Google Calendar and Google Docs will see a rolling release starting today and continuing over the next week or so.

Source: The Official Google Blog, Chrome Web Store