DISQUS

I don't agree with the statement about half and hour; but

- implementing offline support for read-only probably is very simple;
- implementing offline support for read-write is probably considerably harder;
- Google is most likely waiting for the latter to be complete before releasing either;
- Google is probably prioritising Gears support for Gmail over Docs because there is certainly considerably greater demand for that.

I'm a little surprised that Gears support for Gmail is taking so long, but remember that Gears itself is really at "alpha" quality - making such a key product as Gmail dependent on it at this early stage is probably not a risk worth taking.

Unless there's some genuine and sustainable technology advantage that Technorati has relative to, say, Google, I don't see how they can be anything other than a marginal player in the long term. First mover advantage to build an audience is important in some communities, but you won't find a more fickle audience than the blogosphere. If it isn't an order of magnitude better, there's little point.

In fact the BBC site now publishes most of its content in both Windows Media and Real, although a small number of programmes are still only available in Real.

I don't think this move conflicts with license fee issues at all. They are a public service broadcaster and the more reach their content has, the better.

As for whether or not they will display Adsense, I doubt it - when they first introduced Real-based video services they constructed a cut-down version of the player stripped of advertising and branding.