The team over at the official Google Reader Blog have announced yet another superb innovation for the feed reader I can’t do without.

They’ve coded a new browser plugin called Google Gears which enables you to download the most recent 2,000 items from the feeds you subscribe to, so that you can read them offline. This is a great idea for those who travel or don’t always have net connectivity, and reminds me when I used to have to read usenet offline, because it was too expensive to stay online on a dialup connection. I’m sure that’s likely to still be the case for some readers.

More information about Google Gears is available on the frequently asked questions page.

For Firefox, Google Gears uses a .xpi extension, though it’s worth noting that at this stage the addon is in beta, so you may want to hold off trying it until the next release. By then it’s likely that bugs will have been identified and fixed, and new functionality may be included.

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