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.

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.

My strategy for sampling the wave of new communications and collaboration tools, thought leaders and brands is to hit the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco next week. I could have kicked myself down Lombard Street for missing last year’s event: the selection of demos, panels and personalities was second to none. This year’s event looks to be even better.

A killer group of analysts, media and other influencers plan to converge on this event. You can get a glimpse of Amy Wohl’s checklist at her SaaS blog, “Bombarded by Innovation”. Jonathan Eunice offers another candid analyst viewpoint at the Illuminata blog, “Out and About: Reinventing Office in September”. You can find the complete list of analysts here.

My mission — aside from filling the gaps in my own toolbox — is to understand how new enterprise office technologies can transform the way we market, deliver and consume industry research. Likewise, I’ll be looking at how these technologies can redefine an analyst relations backoffice. I suspect at least a small subset can have a positive impact on the frontoffice, too.