This is an item to enter business opportunities in.  Not "get rich quick"
crap, but what you may perceive to be an empty niche.  This is best used for
ideas you don't intend to make money from yourself.  

17 responses total.

Here's one:  I'd personally like to know what is going on in Ann Arbor, esp.
with the city govenment, without all the dead trees and plastic bags I'd get
if I subscribed to the Ann Arbor News.  What would be great is if somebody
collected local news, city council meetings, etc., and emailed it all every
day or two.  This way I'd know about parking rate proposals, etc.  I called
the Ann Arbor news, and they weren't interested, even though I offered to pay
*more* than what a regular subscription would cost (their Web site is a joke,
BTW).

Add Washtenaw Co. government to that, then Ypsi & the various townships
and offer subscribe-to-the-parts-you-want custom service.

Heck, I do this already with scissors and paper.  Any of you computer/web
types know can show me how to find the A2 news on the Web, and I'll clip
electronically too.  

I thought that their web site included local stories.  Is this not true?

"local" meaning things like sports wins, or if Briarwood were to blow up, yes,
but nothing like local politics on the daily level.

I don't think anyone reports local politics on a daily level.  There are
over 100 commissions and appointed civic boards in Ann Arbor alone.  It
would take a small group of dedicated people to attend all the meetings
and summarize them on a daily basis.  The most severe problem would be to
project the outcomes of an action in terms that were meaningfull to
general readership.  

For example, I could report on the AATA meeting each month and could
summarize the Local Advisory Committee minutes that are included in our
packet.  But I'm not sure how to interpret our votes for you.  Do you care
about the details of the marketing grant application that we submit to the
state?  Do you want to know about the addition of office space to the AATA
building on South Industrial?  All of these are big ticket items.  How
much detail do you want about LAC recommendations?  Maybe you don't care
about recommendations from a small advisory committee.  But it is exactly
those recommendations that resulted in the local parking rate increase
proposal.  

The problem with on-line newspapers, is that they get most of their revenue
from teh advertising and would have to charge a lot more than the subscription
rate if you were to get news only.

Delivered on-line, the "how much detail do people want" problem is easy to
solve by the "Click Here For More Detailed Story" approach.  Getting enough
readers to pay (directly or via advertising) for all the reporters needed
is another matter....

Here's a news item (which, btw, I found while reading the news on
the web) that shows that this is an idea whose time might be here:

    Internet Use For News Triples In Two Years 

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of Americans reading news on 
    the Internet at least once a week has more than tripled in the 
    past two years, according to a survey released today.
    But people who go online for news do not appear to cut their
    consumption of news from other sources such as newspapers and 
    television, the Pew Research Center said.

    The center's survey of 3,002 adults, conducted by telephone between 
    April 24 and May 11, found that 20 percent of them went online for 
    news at least once a week, against six percent in 1996 and four 
    percent in 1995.

    That translates into about 36 million people in the United States 
    in 1998, compared with 11 million in 1996, it said.
 
As people have pointed out, the trick would be to find people to
actually cover all the local news.  You might be able to do it if you
recruited a bunch of journalism students from U-M and EMU. (Does EMU
have a communications department?)

If I could change the topic a little, there are many, many ideas for 
starting new businesses.  One idea that has stuck in my mind for 
several years now is an adult-education business. 

These businesses are thriving elsewhere. Boston, for example, has 
something called The Learning Channel. We had something here in AA for
a while called Ann Arbor Seminars, but they went out of business when 
one of their principals got sick.

As I envision it, this service could provide both "fun" stuff and
business training.  The fun stuff might include crafts and hobby
classes.  The business training classes would be geared towards 
the needs of businesses and include management training, quality-
control, and maybe a series aimed at teaching small business owners
the basics of small business.

I would be in favor, in fact I might even get a TV.  Do the grex conferences
count as news?  That is where I learn about the latest political scandals.

It's not called the Learning Channel because the classes are on TV.
They are held in public places just like the adult ed classes here.

I live in a small town in south India.
Can anyone suugest any interesting
export possibilities to
your part of the world ?

Does your small town manufacture anything, such as crafts?  People buy a lot
of jewelry here and other handmade items such as embroidered clothing.  You
would have to find someone here to work with.

Someday I'm sure we will be importing a lot of manufactured goods from
India, as there are lots of skilled workers, plus low labor costs there.
Right now anything that India produces is likely to compete with low cost
Southeast Asian exports, that are made more attractive by the currency
depreciations.  A problem for India has long been that transportation
costs are very high.  In part due to policies and lack of infrastructure,
and also because--chicken and egg problem--there isn't enough trade volume
to make it worthwhile for shipping lines to establish services.  Most
visible imports are craft type things, as Keesan said.  I might look at
some data and report further.  What kind of stuff do you or your relatives
or friends know how to make, or buy?

This response has been erased.

I have a long-sleeved shirt from India that actually has long enough sleeves.
Indian women are thinner than Americans, the clothing made there would
probably not fit most Americans.  My best fitting shirts are from India or
China for that reason (I am long and narrow).  They would have to be made to
different patterns for export to here.

I am a business student and i have a project to do as part of my course here
in india. i have to think of a viable new venture and prepare an entire
business proposal on it. there would be stuff like demand estimation,
marketing strategy, revenue forecasts etc... anyone out there who has a good
idea on which to start on may contact me. plis to contact within the next week
at rahul_balyan@hotmail.com

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