Hi Glenn & Maire, I must first apologize for being partly responsible for the slow start of our group. As I had told you earlier, I had been away from LSU to Dallas for an on-site interview for the weekend. It was a tough one with 3 gruelling sessions. Anyways, I'm back now and will focus all efforts on the project. Although it is a bit late, I'll go ahead and propose two ideas. Let me know what you think about these. Even if these are not selected, I am going ahead with the exercise to propose in detail because we may end up using some part of the idea in our final project. 1. Globstex.com --Global Stock Exchange The basic concept involves around people from all over the world being able to invest in stock exchanges accross the globe. Online transactions are now possible in all major stock exchanges in the world. Trading overseas is now primarily done by large financial institutions through their branch offices overseas. Our model would extend the services to the general public. One of the advantages is there would more cash inflows into all major stocks by creating more opportunities/avenues for people to invest. Another factor is the time difference would allow people to actually go through the trading experience after work hours and so should hypothetically decrease the constraints to trading. For the solution, we have to look at opening trading accounts (like a broker) with major Stock exchanges in the Globe. Have a payment mechanism for transfers of fund which would take care of multiple currencies (Either a electronic cash comcept or a standardize to USD). Online community tools like chat and Discussion board should encourage communication between members. We also would have to come up with a security policy for hosting such a service and some other technicalities have to be worked out. We also have to work on the legal and financial aspects of this model, but I think we can find ways to implement the model. Revenues would be generated through tansaction charges and advertising. We could initially start with a scale down model which would enable users accross the globe to investand trade in say New York stock Exchange or London Stock Exchange or Melbourne Stock Exchange and then extend the model for other stock Exchanges. Basically I am proposing a WEBSITE to invest and trade in stock globally accross time zones and currencies.

2.Home PC Solutions.. SOHOSolutions.com The concept involves around using community tools to bring experts to the door of the Small Office and Home/Office users. Picture this... A home user needs help installing a web camera and needs a tech person and is willing to pay a reasonable amount. He/she goes to our website.... 1 )finds an expert closest to his/her location, with reasonable ratings ,experience, and rate... 2) communicates his/her problem to the expert through e-mail, chat or phone 3) gets the expert to solve the problem on-site or online 4) pays for the service and rates the expert. Revenue model invovles around the large scale database that will be developed about the Home/Small office PC users. This information can be leveraged to analyze user profiles based on location or demographic segmentation. Advertising revenues can be healthy with highly focussed advertising based on the user system, location. Home PC users is an exploding market and there is very little information for the manufacturers for providing services and solutions. Also the home users who do not have warranty contracts with manufacturers can find more reliable, cheaper and faster service closer to home. Some of existing site cater to software development in a similar way (elance.com, arzoo.com), but there is no solution for home users. Also the focus here would be a global site which is self sustaining in terms of management by giving the users maximum options to locate experts.

Some reactions about bluetooth. Bluetooth faces strong competition from WAP. Technologically WAP is a much more advanced solution. Another factor is that bluetooth's usage is more prolific to give existing products like microwave, vending machines a wireless option. In future these devices may be manufactured with built-in options. So bluetooth may not meet the explosive growth expectations. This brings in a significant risk factor if the technology does not reach a critical market presence.( These opinions are based on research I had done for a technoology project six months back). The bluetooth website has changed significantly over the last few months and serves a better platform for the proposed pilot implementation scheme. Manufacturers (our main revenue source) may implement a scheme themselves rather than come to us. (They are in a significantly better position to do so with significantly better resources.)

Given all our reactions to the proposals, I think we can finalize our project scheme over a chat session sometime today. I got an email from Maire as I was typing away and shot off an email to her to come online, so I can figure out what is 1:45 irish time in US. Since she hasn't logged in yet, Ill figure it out myself. But I am hoping we can setup a session today (today in US that is). Please shoot me an email anytime any of you are logged on and my response should be pretty fast because I am continuously checking my mail (courtsey MSN messenger). This is a long post, so a chat session would be better place to discuss things proposed in here.

Hope to talk to you soon,

--Kushal

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2000