So lets face it, the cloud computing race is on.  Back in August ’08, Business Week predicted that Apple, Amazon, eBay, Google and Microsoft will be top contenders for the for the lead, based on transactions, user experience and presence.  Since then we’ve seen a flurry of organized activity from Microsoft Azure to make sure they gain the ground necessary to take and hold poll position.

Looking back, rich “desktop” user experiences on the web haven’t really been around for that long…  companies like Netvibes and Pageflakes made their introductions among others back in 2005.  In just 4 short years, the rise and conquest of startpages and widgets have been an on-going struggle, giving way to social networks and application frameworks like Facebook and Google.

A common challenge to all social application frameworks is, how do you get the content out, and share the experience outside the framework?  Widget distribution companies like Clearspring and Gigya were quick to knock down the walls between and across social platforms, but where does this leave us and where are heading?

Flashing forward to take a peek at what’s around the corner. Hakan Bilgin, has just released his beta of Cloudo opening up his Web OS-like GUI to developers to write applications to share across the open Cloudo network.

Cloudo’s UI looks, feels and works the way you would expect any Desktop OS to function, taking features and design elements from Windows and Apple.  As developers take advantage of this platform, it will prove to be more useful to the pedestrian user.

Like startpages & widgets, this could be the first wave of cloud computing ground swells that will soon be emulated, consumed and taken over by Business Week’s predicted leaders.  In the meantime, round one belongs to Hakan.