We decided it’s time to update the look of Tekrati - The Industry Analyst Reporter, add some new features, and upgrade existing ones. You’ve probably noticed that the navigation moved from the side to the top. That’s just the start.

You’ll still find the latest analyst research and business news — and now older stories are easier to find. The really old stuff – which we call the historical archives, in tribute to one of our favorite movies — still requires a separate search. That is now tied off at stories posted prior to September 1, 2006.

Two areas where we’ve made changes to the site are search and directories. Site search now includes “categories”. You can perform searches across the entire site or just within specific sections: research news, analyst business, analyst blogs directory, or analyst firms directory.

We’ve also added two new search tools, based on Google’s Custom Search Engine. These let you search all analyst websites or blogs listed in the Tekrati directories. You’ll find the forms throughout the news sections.

We’ve done quite a bit of work to improve and integrate the directories. The Firms Directory detail pages now include a list of blogs and a site snapshot. The Analyst Blogs Directory is most improved. We’ve added alphabetical navigation by firm, headlines and excerpts from recent posts, Snap snapshots, and feed links. The OPML is updated to OPML v2.

We’ve taken down the Analyst Events section. We thank Kim Horner of CustomerClix for providing monthly listings of events. Please contact her directly for events information.

Finally, the old Opinion and Editorial column is now a blog, called Keeping Tabs. (You are here.) The original Tekrati Weblog remains intact.

Over the next few months, we’ll be adding more features.

I’ve played a bit with the free Compete site analytics tool, motivated into action by another Compete service coming out of beta this week. Website analytics is one indicator of the popularity — and hence, influence — of industry analyst companies, based on their public-facing websites.

Compete caught my eye because it claims to “triangulate” user-generated content from its own army of cookie-carriers with info from service providers and other sources. Sounds good, doesn’t it? It addresses one of my concerns with Alexa — its limited approach to statistics-gathering.

I tried this simple query, comparing Forrester, Gartner and Corporate Executive Board. Compete shows Forrester far ahead of Gartner — in visits, people, engagement, etc. The gap is 2:1 or higher, on several of the metrics. Overall, Forrester has a 10,000-point lead on Gartner in ranking against the top 1 million websites. Compete hadn’t gathered enough data on CEB.

For comparison, here’s the same query on Alexa.

So, is Forrester.com really wiping the floor with Gartner.com? I’m not so sure.

We each need to draw our own conclusions about the accuracy of Compete, just as we did with Alexa and other user-generated metrics. What’s great is that we’re being given more and more choices in analytics, complete with well-designed features, speedy response times, easy exports — and the lowest possible price.

Carter Lusher and the HP Corporate Analyst Relations team have launched a company blog for the worldwide industry analyst community. The new HP Corporate AR blog complements the HP Analyst Relations Portal and other online and offline outreach resources designed expressly for the industry analysts.

The intent is to keep the blog true to the interests and needs of the industry analysts. Other types of opinion and news bloggers — from journos to armchair pundits — continue to be served by the HP media relations group; financial analysts are served by the IR group. Not sure which type of blogger you are — at least in HP’s eyes? See the debut post for some clarification and examples, or contact the team directly.

Part of the intent is to extend a corporate handshake to all analysts, regardless of their “tier” status. That may seem like a small thing, but it is not. Every analyst knows the importance of having responsive, well informed and well placed contacts inside the big tech companies. And, every analyst knows that the big company AR programs often favor “tier 1″ over all others — for private briefings, survey responses, interview requests, informal updates on the state of the business.

Last month, we saw the launch of the Cisco corporate AR blog. This month, it’s the HP Corporate AR blog. Based on the strength of these efforts, blogging is fast becoming a best practice in corporate industry analyst relations.

Silicon Valley seems intent on becoming the mecca of new media. Despite YouTube evidence to the contrary, not everyone in the bay area tech industry is interested in donning webcams. Many are opting to get into the measurement side of the media business, cooking up new metrics services for Internet and mobile advertising buyers and sellers.

Three of these young measurement-related companies are making their own headlines today. First up, the launch of TVbytheNumbers.com, featuring a virtual panel of experts on Internet Video Metrics as well as aggragation, analysis and most likely some forking of third-party metrics on Internet video time-shifting, website traffic, video streaming, advertising and business.

The launch also puts a spotlight on local measurement start-up Quantcast, out to make accurate and insightful internet audience information as widely available as possible.

M:Metrics is back in the news, this time announcing M:Audit with partner AdMob. M:Audit builds on M:Metrics’ research platform and uses on-device survey technology to measure the audience composition of mobile web properties.

Audience measurement may not be as sexy as Scoble’s real-time streaming podcasts, but remember: advertisers won’t show anyone the money unless someone shows them the data.

On the road with an iPhone? Check it out: EditGrid today announced an iPhone Edition of its popular Web-based spreadsheets at the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. EditGrid subscribers will now be able to easily access and use their online spreadsheets right on their mobile phones.

“Our goal is to make it easy for business users to access their files while out of the office,” said David Lee, Chairman of Team and Concepts Limited, developer of EditGrid. “By supporting the new iPhone, we’re helping our clients stay connected to their critical data and providing a seamless transition from their desktop to their phone.”

EditGrid recognized that knowledge workers want a spreadsheet application to keep up with the latest figures and not necessarily for data crunching. EditGrid’s real-time update (RTU) feature allows users to get the information they need immediately without worrying about syncing files – all files are stored and updated on EditGrid’s server.

Developed and provided by Team and Concepts (TnC), EditGrid is already integrated with salesforce.com, Infoteria’s OnSheet, Central Desktop and ThinkFree Online Office. It’s offered on a SaaS basis on editgrid.com, and in licensed packages for installation behind the corporate firewall.