Matrix . a movie which talks about a future where mankind is trapped by machines to produce batteries to power themselves. A pretty psyching phenomenon.

As of now, humans seem to mime the matrix concept …MIT Researchers have come up with a breakthrough – creating power from spinach..Day is not far I guess when one goes and buys vegetables to power their mobiles and current appliances .
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/24/tech/main645436.shtml

Power of blogging seems to awaken the Redmond giant too
http://redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=10625&hed=Bill+Gates%e2%80%99+blog+strategy

Who says a person is old enough to start a company ?
84 year old James Lawrence Toast starts a company to connect to the younger generations. The apparel are so wacky that toast shd have no problem in connecting with the current wacky generation
where companies like http://littlemismatch.com/ can exist , a company started by 4 yound girls which is in to selling mismatched socks!!! Yes in this world of sanity, insanity pays I guess.

Tom Peters, the biz guru who spells out the secrets of excellence among companies says that there are Ten “Traits of Excellence” for an individual . He quotes them with reference to Gandhi, Churchill and Mandela.
I have tried to put in a few words against each of these traits . An entrepreneur who wants to build a successful company should possess these qualities :

1.Dreamer-Visionary.: He needs to visualize the situation much before lot of people can and have the guts to execute it.A healthy mix of dreaming and execution is important. Mere dreamer wont do. Like Ram charan and Larry Bossidy who point out thatExecution is the killer in this world of dreamers. This reminds me of a statement hung on the wall of my previous company , “ Lot of people dream , but only few stay awake in the night to make it succeed” –

Google takes 2.5 word query and displays 10 results in a second, - I mean how faster can a search engine be - A whole lot of information is accessible. what next ? Come to think of it , what is needed is user interface which not only lets users remember what they have visited, it makes the search experience very personal.

This is not some thing which is not already being worked on http://www.statalabs.com/products/bloomba/features.html This company works on making email search products and is developing state of the art search engine products which blurs the distinction between the PC and the net, thus providing a customizable search experience.

One always tend to talk about business model , revenue model , just after looking at a site.
Yes , may be we are reminded of the dreadful years that have gone by, the dot com bust years

I happened to visit www.changethis.com and was surprised to see their objective and their mission. First thing that struck me, as usual was how the hell are they making money and when I read their manifesto - http://changethis.com/files/CT-manifesto.pdf

Viral Marketing is one kind of marketing which is being increasing heard in e- commerce circles. Though the word was christened after hotmail’s success, there have quite a number of advocates for this type of marketing. A few good books have also been written on this – The anatomy of buzz, Tipping Point to mention a few. Advocates of viral marketing have always said that buzz for any product or service is a drama where there are 3 characters in the play.

Passion, Fun and Vision, they say are the vital ingredients of a successful company, irrespective of its stage in a business life cycle. One of the most important things that these 3 depend on is Communication levels in a company. Tomes have been written on how to effectively communicate, how to see to it that all the employees in a company use tools to communicate among each other, collaborate, voice out their opinions. However, if one looks at most the companies, the communication techniques are rather dull and boring, and inevitable they do not give the grass root feedback that is needed for everybody Lets look at communication from 3 aspects . Firstly, generic communication levels among all departments of a company. Secondly, communication inside a team and thirdly inter personal relation ships A company’s values are shaped by communication mechanisms. In fact a large part of culture of a company is shaped by how effectively people exchange information. Sadly most of the companies merely do a lip service to it. Lets take an example from a company, which I adore for some specific reasons - The Body Shop run by Anita Roddick . Its a firm which is in to cosmetics business and which has grown from a small outfit to a gigantic organization. Anita Roddick uses a simple but very very effective means to get grass root feedback. Imagine, one place where almost every employee visits atleast once a day Toilet - If one looks at the history of toilets, generally, people freak out on the walls…Why not turn this problem in to an opportunity. She put a electronic graffiti board which took feedback from all its employees. The type of feedback she received helped her take a lot of effective decisions. Such creative ideas should be used by one and all to know the pulse of the company and sort out issues if there are any. Apart from these techniques which are used across organization, there are also some simple but very effective to keep the communication free in a team. Do you know that human touch is a great tool for effective communication? In my little work experience I had, I really did not give a great importance to this aspect. But increasingly this simple aspect of touching some person while talking to him is certainly helping me put across my point better, when working in a small team.When was the last time you touched some person while talking to him/her? Go ahead and try it out for yourself Thirdly , the interpersonal communications. Ricardo Semler believes that there is no need to have any restraint on the language that can be used in a company.He feels that one cannot police on the employees vocab and the eco system will itself become one where diverse vacabs merge in to a culture unique to the company. Vineet Bajpai , one of the successful entrepreneurs thinks that language among employees need to be restrained, as in all probability they might use the same language with one of the supplier, vendor, customer or some external entity and that might reflect badly on the company. As you would have seen , this interpersonal communication is not a straight forward thing to deal with. Probably I will figure out this issue myself in the days to come whether restraint on the vocabulary of the employees plays any role . All in all, the role of communications in a company is a crucial element for its sustainability. what about the element of external communications..! Thoughts on it

° Traffic (hits) is the best way to measure a website. The truth is that without metrics to convert the hits to sales, or hits to market share, you’re wasting time.
° You can sell stuff on the Web if you invest enough in a secure server. Focusing on infrastructure, instead of marketing, gives you a store with no sales.
° The search engines are the key to traffic to your site. Successful sites need a process that creates a scalable flow of traffic, which doesn’t depend on random visits via a search engine.
• Your site should be a complete online experience. Most companies can’t afford to create an all-encompassing portal with everything a user needs in one site. Attempting to do this badly is worse than not doing it at all.
° Anonymity is good for the Net. Permission marketing rewards viewers for taking off their ski masks. Traditional Web techniques embrace anonymity and fail.
° Activity is good. Just because you tweak your site daily, add new features and have an active committee of well-paid executives involved, doesn’t mean you are doing marketing.
In conclusion , the future on e-commerce
- Wireless. More bandwidth. More clutter. Permission gets more expensive to get—and more important than ever

Today I happened to listen to a good business case, the story of 2 barber shops(Lets call the owners of the respective stores as Mr. A and Mr. B ) which opened simulataneoulsy at the same time, in the same locality, Now this was the perfect setting to witness the market dynamics. The owner of one of the shops whom I visit frequently , Mr. A , happened to narrate his store’s evolution from a no-branded place to a decently popular store.