Stories by: Emelie Rutherford

The latest three-letter acronym to spike the needle on the hype meter is P2P-that is, peer-to-peer computing. Broadly defined, P2P describes a way of connecting computers without intermediary servers and databases.

Despite the fact that other O's are still trying to make sense of ASPs (only half of the top corporate officers surveyed in June by IDC--a sister company of CIO's publisher, CXO Media--said they had ever heard of application service providers), the IT community has accepted them and made them hot. The market's at US$10 billion this year and will soar to $48.5 billion by 2003, according to Deloitte Consulting. To make sense of the myriad vendors, we look to how they're differentiated by some of the most discriminating market watchers--venture capitalists.

iWant's marketplace lets consumers dictate their needs online and gives sellers direct access to potential customers

What are ASPs? And why do they get so much attention now? Read on for a quick overview of the latest trend in applications outsourcing

Startups come and go--like mom-and-pop coffee shops on fading downtown streets or oriental-rug outlets in tacky strip malls. They open with big banners and high hopes. Most don't last. But still they keep coming, with earnest, optimistic proprietors trumpeting their business plans to bargain-hungry investors and speculators. The trick is to know which business models have a good chance at success and which are likely to lead to dead ends.

iWant's marketplace lets consumers dictate their needs online and gives sellers direct access to potential customers. The company: iWant.com Inc., Founded February 1999. Website Launched September 1999. Location Burlington, Massachusetts. Leadership Shabbir Dahod, president and CEO. Employees 28. Mission To facilitate one-on-one communication between buyers and qualified sellers.

Lifting his eyes from his laptop to grab the last slice of Chicago-style pizza, Matt Beveridge caught a glimpse of the clock. It was midnight, Wednesday, Oct. 20, 1999. Beveridge had been grinding since 8 a.m., and the high- spirited manager of Motorola's E-Strategy was ready to go another eight hours. After all, he thought, how many times in his life would he get to try something as radical as this: Gathering 58 people from various offices and keeping them holed up for four marathon days and three nights in an effort to build a brand-new intranet.

David Weinberger, coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto, talks about the impending death of corporate life as we know it.