Five Startups to watch in 2008

Once you get over the mental hoop of using a computer to log on and be another computer, the benefits of a service such as G.ho.st become clearer. If you've ever used Gmail over more than one machine, such as an office PC, a colleague's laptop, and a short session on a smartphone, you're already using gmail as a 'virtual email client.' G.ho.st takes that convenience and effectively provides it over an entire operating system. When I was at University, access to any computing power (email, news groups, program compilation, printing, etc) was through a 'dumb' VT100 terminal that talked to a central server - G.ho.st is the Web 2.0 equivalent.

An interesting by-product of this is security. G.ho.st does not access any files on the local PC, everything sits on the G.ho.st servers, so there is no danger of any corruption to the local machine. Backup are provided by the system invisibly, giving you one less item to worry about. I love the duality that G.ho.st has, both looking back to how computing used to be in the workplace, but also providing a prediction to how we will interact in the future. I'm still wary of putting anything business critical into a free service that could disappear tomorrow, but as a place to store files I need when travelling, accessing my POP3 and IMAP mail boxes, and to give instant messaging from any PC with a browser (even if the IM protocols are locked down) gives me a safety net when on the road.

And the interesting URL in G.ho.st? The Global Hosted Operating System.

Holistis

Advertising campaigns and awareness can get people to a website, especially in the retail sector, but once they are there you need to make sure their visit is converted into the desired outcome (generally by making a sale). Holistis can help increase the adoption of products and services on your website.

It does this by using algorithms that detect distinct visitor intentions and display the most appropriate content to meet their expectations.

Content on the website is then altered dynamically, depending on the visitor to the site. The Holistis widget is placed on as many pages as required on your website, and in conjunction with marketing objectives, actions required to reach those goals, the secret sauce will go to work to for your bottom line; it's based on both the a/b and multivariate statistical analysis (which allow a number of variables to be altered in a sample). You can check on the progress with real time reports, which also shows a "before and after" comparison. For more advanced uses of Holistis, or for companies looking for an extra layer of confidence, you can have a dedicated server set up just for your own site.

Alenty

The most valuable resource to any website is a reader. And when the web was a single column of a static page, tracking 'eyeballs' was easy enough. But in this world of drop down menus, Ajax code, and dynamic content changing without a new page URL being called, tracking and analysing what your readers are doing needs something more complicated - and French based Alenty could have the solution.

Their solution is designed to work on Web 2.0 sites powered by Ajax - an environment which is typically very dynamic (one of the biggest Ajax powered sites is Google). The Alenty report breaks down how long someone was not only on a single page, but which part of the page had their attention. This works through monitoring the reader's mouse and keyboard activity and 'stopping the clock' on one section of the site when they move away, or it scrolls off the screen. And that leads to starting the clock on the next section.