For a few years most software innovation visible to ordinary users of computers has been in websites. After all, if you are an entrepreneur with a cool idea for a software product or service by making it a website you have instantaneous distribution to the world, can take advantage of the collaboration between users, and monetize it with online advertising.

Despite this recent history, I believe software that runs on your local computer without needing an internet connection is going to make a come back. Two things will cause this change.

The first is that multi-touch interfaces will come to desktop machines, allowing for new types of desktop applications. You only have to look at the Nintendo Wii to see that when the human interface to a machine changes, new forms of software can meet previously unmet or unknown desires.

The second development is that software systems like Adobe’s Apollo (see http://www.adobe.com/devnet/videos/apollo_demo07/index.html) make it possible for websites to easily distribute a desktop application to their users that will work even without an internet connection. So you can use ebay, without being connected all the time.

This should all be rather useful, if our broadband wireless internet goes down.