A few months back, we added the ability of using Google Gears to store your private data offline (i.e., on the hard disk of your computer) to provide secure and automatic synchronization with your bank.

Today, we have extended the support for our beloved Safari users as well. Safari v3.1+ users can store their authentication information locally within their browser, and synchronize their bank accounts without ever having to share their username/password with our server.

Safari users do NOT need to install Google Gears or any other extension, since Safari has added support for client-side database storage (conforming to the new HTML5 standard)

You can read more about secure synchronization via offline data storage here.

We just released a brand new mobile interface for Buxfer, which provides offline access to your data with the help of Google Gears for mobile. So you can access Buxfer from your mobile device even when you are not connected to the internet! If you are always on the go, and hate to go online just to check your bank balance, then this is just what you have been looking for. Just point your browser to:

 http://m.buxfer.com 

Google Gears is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality. Today, Google released a version of Google Gears for the Windows Mobile platform, and we are glad to launch our offline mobile app in collaboration with Google. Support for more mobile platforms is in the works.

In online mode, the mobile interface lets you access your bank account balances, transactions, and analysis charts. You can add/edit accounts, transactions or tags. You can even synchronize your bank accounts right from your cellphone! More features should be coming your way shortly …

In offline mode, you can access all the above features in a read-only mode. You won’t be able to add new transactions or edit your tags, but you can still view your account balances, recent transactions and analysis charts.

A few months back, we added the ability to automatically synchronize your financial accounts. However, it required you to type in your login details every single time you wanted to synchronize your data. It was hard work for the users, but a price had to be paid for security. It is our policy to never store sensitive user information in our database.

But today, we have achieved the best of both worlds. Your private data stays completely under your control, and yet you don’t need to type it out again and again!

Buxfer is now capable of using the Google Gears extension to store your private data offline, i.e., on the hard disk of your computer. Subject to your authorization, Buxfer can access data stored in your Google Gears database and authenticate you with your financial institution. You can delete this data or make it unavailable to Buxfer absolutely anytime you wish. After all, its stored right under your nose!

Google Gears is available for Firefox and Internet Explorer, and we highly recommend that you install it on your computer. For installation instructions, please visit the Google Gears website.