Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I have a website called TechFoozle. Currently it host free websites which I think is a saturated market. I am looking for fresh ideas on what to do with the site. It needs to be technology related and be a new idea or a niche twist on a current one. Any ideas?

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SecurityDistro Arm Your Toolbox

Someone is going to eventually come up with a turnkey operation that really and truly allows people to set up a shop online. It`ll be as easy to use as eBay or America Online. It`ll have an integrated shopping cart, handle international currencies, and offer a way for some fairly significant layout changes to various templates.

Shopify is trying this, but chose to use Ruby (I think?) as their underlying language. That`s fine, but for people more interested in putting up a store, plain HTML would likely be a better way to go.

Is that the type of "technology-oriented" thing you`re considering? Or are you looking for something in hardware, engineering...what?

Online shops are fairly easy. There is already plenty of software out that can do most of what you are talking about.

I am looking for content driven site ideas related to technology. That haven`t already been overdone.


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SecurityDistro Arm Your Toolbox

If you think online shops are easy, have you tried setting one up that configured to your taste? :-) If you have, go back and think about what knowledge you required, then compare that with the knowledge ordinary people have.

Content-driven sites are fine, if you`re a writer. If you`re not, how do you suppose you`ll get the content? One good example is Annoyances.org, relative to Windows problems and solutions. Unless it`s a successful forum, content is going to be the issue.

Yahoo! Small Business does the online shopping thing ...

And it accepts XHTML and CSS.
CSS is the way to go ... it`s what everyone should use for quick-changing the face of the website.

What is the purpose of your site? To make money for you? To just use the name? To ??

i guess efoozle wanted an idea to spin off as web 2.0 thingy. am i right?

if you do, check this out:

http://www.go2web20.net/

tons of new ideas of web 2.0. from some already very famous to some newly setup. i visit this site once in a while to get some new view on what`s new. enjoy!

Right now I`m not worried about profits. I just want to come up with a better site idea that is more niche than what I am currently using it for.




Thanks for the link. I`ll have to go through and check out all of the different sites.
http://www.go2web20.net/

I would like to build a web 2.0 site but not in the beginning. They generally take an on hand programmer and a good bit of money. I`m really just looking for ideas that haven`t already been overdone and deal with technology.



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SecurityDistro Arm Your Toolbox

hi efoozle,

what role are you in for this new setup? a developer?? a programmer? designer??

the reason i m asking this is that because i think is important to understand the web technology first before we start something on web be it business viable or not.

and i like to debate that it is not necessarily expensive to setup some web2.0 site. why is everybody get so excited about this is because it is not very complex in  technology wise, but rather the idea itself has to be so innovative and user friendly that others will come and use it.

perhaps we can try another way: tell us what you do best or what you like to do as your hobby or how you like other to see you in 10 years time(something like a lifeplan, hahaha!) then we can start brainstorming with a basis.

hope this help :)

For the most part my role is everything. I am currently a one man company that likes to build websites that are related to IT, Technology, and Security. My business model is web properties. I want to have various semi niche sites which attract enough attention and visitors to be a viable source of income. I currently have a few sites but only one of which is my main focus. The others get updated and get new features when I get time.

As for the web 2.0. I know plenty about it and understand it is not a complex technology. That being said, I am not a programmer. So to implement features that I really want means I have to pay someone to code it. Right now it is a matter of balancing a small budget while moving forward with ideas.

In ten years I will be working for myself again. Hopefully doing something closely resemble what I`m trying to start now.

To get another view of what I want to do you can go to http://www.inetinteractive.com .



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SecurityDistro Arm Your Toolbox

Although it may sound wrong, I`ll argue that today`s IT and technology is very similar to how automobile technology entered the culture, back around 1900.

Cars used to be a hobby item, and as late as 1970 offered people the option of working in their own garage on the engines, bodies, drive trains, and so forth. But around the 80s, with the introduction of internal sensors and onboard computers, all that went away. 

Right now technology isn`t only too hard for the typical person to understand, it`s not in any way standardized. Even the basic problem of Mac v. Windows demonstrates the problem, and browser compatibility is a huge issue for Web sites.

If you want to build something new, it seems to me that something in the area of either standardization or simplification would be a good idea. People use computers, but most people hate them. There`s no real reason for them to be as complicated and frustrating as they are, other than decisions made long ago.

Frankly, nobody gives a crap about hardware and operating systems, other than the hobbyists who want to get under the hood. That`s a lot of people, but in relation to the entire population of western civilization is too small a number to target.

So...do you want your site to target technophiles, or average people?