The big complaint against using Gmail full-time is when you’re on an airplane and can’t get access to your mail; you can pretty much get to it any other time. If only Gmail had a thick-client sibling that let you use it seamlessly in off-line mode and it integrated with Gmail when you sync’d back up.

So I was intrigued when Dion linked to Mailplane, a thick-client wrapper for Gmail that lets your run Gmail just like any other OS X application, and, you guessed it, it adds the ability to use Gmail on an airplane. Except, it doesn’t. The author chose the name “plane” – and used an airplane in the logo – because “I liked the word, the beauty and power of airplanes and the history behind these specialized aircrafts. It was about time they could fly again.” It doesn’t actually work on an airplane. It just makes it easier to attach files and things.