Small Business Technology News - Business 2.0 Magazine

Watch out, Microsoft, GE, United, AT&T, and, yes, even Google. Here come 10 game-changing startups with plans to upend existing industries and spawn new opportunities for the rest of us.

You can't go far wrong in a truck equipped with an Astrata box. The device, half the size of a cigarette pack, can be wired into anything that moves - truck, car, shipping container - to head off nearly every conceivable type of disaster.

A year or two ago, it looked like instant messaging and other forms of online chat had reached their full potential as a business tool. Millions of people were using IM to interact with corporate colleagues. Live chat had also become a fixture on websites, giving customers a way to inquire about products and receive answers in real time.

Massive data centers are vital to the economy. They are also notorious power hogs. If their numbers keep growing at the expected rate, the United States alone will need nearly a dozen new power plants by 2011 just to keep the data flowing, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

In late 2005, Stanford student Luke Thomas tried to buy a Land Rover online. After a few frustrating days of trawling Craigslist and driving around the Bay Area, only to find cars that looked better in their photos than in real life, Thomas decided there must be a better way.

What's more creepily brilliant than ads that follow you around the Web? How about a Skype-like online phone service that listens in on your conversations and serves up ads based on what you say?

Computer makers are thrilled when, in today's PC market, they can get more than $1,500 for a high-end laptop. That's why Panasonic's Toughbook line is a standout.

The Samwer brothers never been shy about borrowing ideas. The first company the Cologne-born trio founded was a German-language version of eBay. Later, as venture capitalists, they invested in European startups that were direct knockoffs of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

Where can you find upside in the mature high-tech gadget business? Selling gadgets designed for seniors.

My final leson for you all? Never, ever, drive a nice car. There's no upside to it. Luxury rides are evil: insidious, stealthy things, burrowing into the human subconscious with terrifying ease, whereupon they trip a dopamine depth charge that explodes both your brain and your budget.

Shove aside the standard-issue hotel clock radio, with its stuck-in-the-'70s fake-wood finish and cryptic I-sure-hope-I-set-this-thing-right controls.

Here are four gadgets - recommended by readers - that will make your work life easier: A razor that saves both time and your face; a backpack that looks good in the boardroom; a projector that fits into any startup's budget and a spill-proof cup that won't damage your computer keyboard.

A 22-foot-long, neon-green banner hangs from the high-ceilinged lobby of the San Francisco headquarters of Pacific Gas & Electric, California's largest utility. "GREEN IS resisting the urge to drive to yoga," it declares. "GREEN IS saying no thanks to the daily disposable coffee cup."

The two Web multimillionaires had never crossed paths, but when Russell C. Horowitz and Frank Schilling finally met to talk business three years ago, the summit began in style - sipping soft drinks poolside at the Four Seasons Las Vegas and chatting about private jets.

The two Web multimillionaires had never crossed paths, but when Russell C. Horowitz and Frank Schilling finally met to talk business three years ago, the summit began in style - sipping soft drinks poolside at the Four Seasons Las Vegas and chatting about private jets.

The housing market may be melting down, but these spots have just about hit rock bottom - and offer opportunities for savvy investors to get in while the getting's good.

Way back in 2006, John "Bish" Neuhauser was the poster child of the biodiesel business. The shaggy-looking snow groomer for the Canyons ski area near Park City, Utah, starred in the acclaimed Sundance Film Festival documentary on global warming, "Everything's Cool," in which he made his own biodiesel out of restaurant grease and converted all of the resort's vehicles to run on it. In 2007, however, Neuhauser no longer has to brew his own fuel - he just drives to nearby Salt Lake City, where manufactured soybean biodiesel is now available at seven pumps. "Making it is fun and liberating," he says, "but I'm just too busy."

We're rumbling across eastern Colombia in a convoy of military jeeps and pickup trucks. Salsa music blasts out of speakers somewhere, and an unrelenting 100-degree sun is bleaching the bone-dry savanna. Although there's not a plane in the sky or a living thing on the ground for miles around, our convoy is armed to the teeth.

Some people can't stop thinking about food. Bill Gross can't stop thinking about new businesses. One of the world's great serial entrepreneurs, he's launched more than 50 startups through Idealab, his incubator in Pasadena, Calif. His track record includes both winners (CitySearch, Cooking.com, NetZero/United Online) and losers (eToys, Eve.com, Free-PC). But he's best known for inventing the pay-per-click advertising model behind Overture Services (formerly GoTo.com), the pioneering search engine he sold to Yahoo! in 2003 for $1.6 billion.