Israelis and Palestinians Launch Web Start-Up

This is an amazing story. The pictures are great, too. Control-Alt-Delete, an universal expression. What I like about the second picture: look at the desk: donuts: an universal office snack?

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Nibbling doughnuts and wrestling with computer code, the workers at G.ho.st, an Internet start-up here, are holding their weekly staff meeting — with colleagues on the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide. The goal of G.ho.st is not as lofty as peace, although its founders and employees do hope to encourage it. Instead G.ho.st wants to give users a free, Web-based virtual computer that lets them access their desktop and files from any computer with an Internet connection. G.ho.st, pronounced “ghost,” is short for Global Hosted Operating System.

Get it? Ghost is pronounced ghost. Ach!

The Palestinian office in Ramallah, with about 35 software developers, is responsible for most of the research and programming. A smaller Israeli team works about 13 miles away in the central Israeli town of Modiin. Palestinian employees need permits from the Israeli army to enter Israel and attend meetings in Modiin, and Israelis are forbidden by their own government from entering Palestinian cities.

Somewhere, that makes sense, one supposes. Not to me.

Instead of creating its own Web-based software, the company taps into existing services like Google Docs, Zoho and Flickr and integrates them into a single online computing system.

I use Google Docs all the time, I have pictures on Flickr, and I've tried Zoho -- though it hasn't made sensr to me, yet. The idea of piggybacking on existing technology is smart, savvy, and current.