And using criteria of the security-focused education group SANS to gauge offline applications, the study found that 18% of government apps passed, compared with 28% of finance industry apps and 34% of commercial software.

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The public beta it announced was for a Web-oriented machine capable of running complex applications on- and offline, which it says can manage multiple users with security and privacy, is automatically updated for speed and security, and has both a WiFi and 3G connection (by working with Verizon).

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Qualcomm recently unveiled a platform and software development kit that allows developers to build new applications that bring online and offline worlds together.

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The outage was particularly troubling for SixApart, whose online Web applications depend on continuous uptime to compete with offline tools like Microsoft Word.

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It took me less than an hour to download three or four applications, some cached filed, a map or two for offline navigation, and snap a few pictures.

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