Adobe’s Apollo platform, Firefox 3, Dekoh and Joynet’s Slingshot are all projects in testing or development which allow users and developers to take their web browsing offline and onto the desktop.

Clearly, this idea is nothing new. We’ve tried to move online content offline, especially in the online marketing world. Online marketers have always been keen on discovering the holy grail of reaching consumers whether they be online or offline. These attempts to bridge the online-offline gap, if you remember, has taken on some very nasty forms in the not so distant past.

These are lessons learned about permission, data retrieval and security (not to mention just basic marketing humanity) which we should review and think carefully before attempting to cross this bridge.

And of course the technology behind such platforms as Apollo or Window’s WPF/e format are not entirely new, either. [Sidenote: Nothing is new in this world, especially in a communication vehicle such as the internet or the web. So, let's stop trying to disparage ideas or platforms because they are "just old ideas." It's all been done.] With the popularity boom of the web culture in the late 90’s and first half of this decade, these attempts to bridge online with offline experience were put on the back burner in order to accelerate the growth of “life inside the browser.”

Interestingly, it’s during this boom time of free (or low cost) high speed wireless connectivity that users are starting to look for ways to have the functions and applications they use on a now daily basis in their online life work offline.

The best example of this emerging, and rapidly developing, marketing need is the online word processing and document battles. The most publicized part of this trend is the battle between Google’s (formerly Writely) online Docs and Spreadsheets platform and Microsoft’s offline (but with a few online features) Outlook. However, there are other serious competitors in this space such as Zoho, who are gaining momentum and followings. For Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets and Zoho to seriously compete, or gain sustainable adoption, the need to move word processing and spreadsheet data offline is paramount.

Another practical example is the New York Times Reader, which allows for an online experience of reading a news paper in a way that is unconnected to an online browser. In addition, the paper can be read without the use of an internet connection. Perhaps most importantly, the NY Times is able to brand and sculpt the user interaction and emotional aftertaste (branding) of their paper’s presentation to their own liking, rather than being trapped inside of a browser.

And don’t forget widgets that move content from one page to a desktop (perhaps offline one day?) context.

Apollo, FireFox 3, Dekoh and Slingshot are all platforms aimed at allowing just that blending of the offline and the online.

As these platforms gain adoption among the early influencers and begin to trickle out to the rest of the web browsing culture, how will online marketers cope? It’s no secret that widgets, RSS, microchunking and the devaluation of links is a threat to the existence of marketable web pages.

In the very near future, web page inventory based on traffic or link numbers will be valued at close to zero, which is the natural function of a communication medium. The web pages cannot continue (and should not continue) to bear the brunt of force from marketers seeking to monetize traffic to and way from content. We’ve gotten so very confused in our sphere of online marketing by confusing the medium (web pages) with the message (content).

Widgets, RSS, and pull technologies along with these online to offline bridges are going to continue to give content its due place. Marketers smart enough to know how to monetize content (not traffic with links or search keyword buys) are going to reap the most benefit.

So, can online marketing work on the desktop given our past failings?

I hope so.

But we’re going to have to stop focusing on traffic and start focusing on the attention to content…