by Charles Orton-Jones - Tuesday, 11th December 2007 -

Developers of the turbo-charged widget, Zebtab, scoop our Customer Interaction award.

For our Britain’s Digital Elite awards, Real Business partnered with Microsoft to scour the land looking for firms who are using technology to gain a competitive edge over their rivals and become masters of execution.

We spent months looking for companies who stand out – not because of what they do, but the way that they do it. Four judges – including two entrepreneurs who made their names using technology to shake up industries – sifted through the deluge of entries in ten different categories.

Winner of our "Customer Interaction" category: Zebtab

Cricket fans are big users of widgets. The BBC produces a little scoreboard that sits on your computer desktop and keeps you up to date with the Test Match. It’s less obtrusive than a browser window and keeps refreshing automatically.

There are hundreds of other widgets on offer – from clocks to train timetables. Windows Vista has a sidebar built specifically to host them. But what is the next stage in the evolution of the widget? It might just be Zebtab.

The Zebtab widget hides at the side of your screen, only to emerge when you summon it with a click. At ten by 15 centimetres, it is larger than current widgets and
has significantly more functions.

Like a pre-loaded tabbed browser, it stores the latest information from whichever websites you subscribe to. For gambling addicts, it stores the latest odds and fixtures from AtTheRaces, or for boys’ toys you can check out the latest deals from
Firebox.com. Each separate channel can be accessed with one click, making it
the first all-in-one widget.

Even better, unlike RSS content, Zebtab streams pictures and “rich” media to your desktop. By blending RSS with Ajax and .net, Zebtab makes browser-based
aggregators such as Newsgator look dated.

Launched at the end of 2006, Zebtab has already signed up 25 content partners. There are two price models for partners: £5,000 a year with revenue share, or £20,000 a year non-revenue share.

Visits to gambling site AtTheRaces has been upped by 45 percent, with page impressions increased by 77 per cent since signing up in January. “Zebtab’s desktop alert system has undoubtedly been a key factor in the significant increase in visits to our site,” says James Singer, AtTheRaces’ head of marketing.

“We’re excited about future opportunities, including integrated video content and delivering more tailored services direct to our users.” Closet gamblers and cricket addicts will be pretty chuffed, too.

To watch our video interview with Richard Edwards, Co-Founder of Zebtab, and Damon Oldcorn, CEO of Zebtab, click here

To read more on how Microsoft's technology can help you cut out the competition and to see the rest of the winners, visit our Focus-On Britain's Digital Elite.