Here’s a new service which serves as an auction site…How are they even thinking of competing with ebay ? Jittery , upfront looks like (ebay-listing fees) + open communication between buyers and sellers + intelligent software facilitating market research(similar to amazon book recomm) + use of blogs to list items and quotes . It’s in beta..Watch out for this firm, for it will give a pulse on whether the market is ready to accept services which link blogs and auction.

Paul Graham in an interesting article shares his notion about people and ideas. The primary point of discussion is why do smart people have dumb ideas? The reasons for a dumb idea are : Still life effect:You come up with a random idea, plunge into it, and then at each point (a day, a week, a month) feel you’ve put so much time into it that this must be the idea.

via evan: Lots of cool web apps are now available that you can more or less run you company on. Basecamp - project/task management JotSpot - internal information management Blogger - Blogging ofcourse Gmail - E-Mail management FogBugz - Awesome bug and customer email management Textdrive,- Subversion, email management, DNS management, and more – all with web front-ends.

Making and marketing something remarkable means asking new questions — and trying new practices. Here are 10 suggestions by Seth Godin 1. Differentiate your customers. Find the group that’s most profitable. Find the group that’s most likely to influence other customers. Figure out how to develop for, advertise to, or reward either group. Ignore the rest. Cater to the customers you would choose if you could choose your customers. 2. If you could pick one underserved niche to target (and to dominate), what would it be?

Cow # 3: Jingle Jingle Jingle Who decides whether an idea is dumb or mind boggling..Actually it doesn’t matter what others think of it, if you think there is an opportunity in following up the idea, go ahead. Look at Scott Schaible: Scott Schaible’s wife is a light sleeper. So light that the jingling dog tags around his dog’s neck woke her up. Rather than getting rid of the dog (bad idea) or using duct tape (for the collar, not the dog!