Virtual world: It's a term that can make marketers shudder in excitement or quake in fear.

With a “click” of an optical mouse you can navigate the Web, see a photo of your daughter in her prom dress, and write her an email telling her you think the dress is too short.  

I started looking into gold-teeth grills one day -- just for fun. My initial hypothesis was that because they need to be fitted to each individual’s unique set of teeth, these products would make a horrible candidate for selling over the Internet. As I looked into the subject further, however, it quickly became apparent how wrong I was.

At a recent Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange (MITX) event regarding online video distribution and discovery, I was struck by the wide range of companies that were represented in the audience. There were technology companies, manufacturers, merchants, and nonprofits, and their interest was all aligned around using media to further their businesses.

Ten years ago, it took me and my team about six months and a couple hundred thousand dollars to get a 1.0 version of an enterprise Web application to market.

With a “click” of an optical mouse you can navigate the Web, see a photo of your daughter in her prom dress, and write her an email telling her you think the dress is too short.  

My home office relies on satellite Internet, so I'm acquainted with the concept of service provider "throttling" -- the forced slowdown in response time that results when ISPs load-balance traffic to preserve a common level of service networkwide.

At a recent Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange (MITX) event regarding online video distribution and discovery, I was struck by the wide range of companies that were represented in the audience. There were technology companies, manufacturers, merchants, and nonprofits, and their interest was all aligned around using media to further their businesses.