Databases have always been clunky bits of software. Often, they don’t find what you are looking for. At other times they produce the wrong result.

They are also leaky and easy to hack. Perhaps their worst feature, though, is that they are expensive to purchase and even more so to develop to a business’s needs.

Hope is at hand, however. It seems databases on hard drives are on the way out, to be replaced by “cloud computing.”

Read John Evans’s article, The Great Database Crisis 2008, over at Syntagma. Here’s an excerpt:

So how is it that a Google search produces millions of results in a fraction of a second? We know they have all of the internet on millions of computers in various datacentres around the world. Could it possibly be done with a massive distributed database threaded over countless Dell boxes?

The answer, obviously, is no. But the surprising fact is that they hold the entire internet in RAM memory. That’s what makes the process so lightning fast.

In a Sunday article which made waves around the blogosphere, The New York Times claimed that internet entrepreneurs, writers and bloggers are keeling over thanks to the strains of the 24/7 global internet culture.

The general consensus on Techmeme.com was that this was nonsense.

The NYT writes :

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December. Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

Of course, to be scientific, you would have to subtract from these few examples the number of deaths and heart attacks in the general population to arrive at a guesstimate of internet publishing’s real rate of attrition.

No doubt there are serious stresses and strains working in the new online environment, but anyone who has worked for newspapers to tight daily deadlines will recognize the same pressures and symptoms.

Try slaving in a factory, repetitively doing the same tasks thousands of times a day. Or surviving the water-cooler politics of office life. Worse, the back-breaking toil of farm work. There are no easy options in “the world of work”.

I think the problem lies, as ever, with meetings, travel, networking and other inconsequentials of the wired-up sector. Networking for the internetizen means Twittering and Tweeting incoherently to hundreds, maybe thousands, of “followers”, mostly without a shred of benefit to the bottom line. Email is another source of stress and should be stamped on ruthlessly, as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch wrote last week.

The Times has this quote from him, “‘I haven’t died yet,’ said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. ‘At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen. This is not sustainable,’ he said.”

It all depends on how you do it, naturally. Some people concentrate only on the essentials, others adopt the “4-hour Workweek” by outsourcing everything from triaging email to washing their socks. But, sensibly, it is possible to contain the stresses of the internet life.

You don’t need to be on top of every development, or go to every conference or gig. Internet entrepreneurship can be very rewarding if you can organize your time appropriately.

So what’s new?

If you run, or are thinking of starting, a business that depends for its income on selling advertising for websites or blogs, you may be missing out on a great source of revenue close to hand.

You probably spend a lot of time chasing up advertising on the internet. You may also use an agency or two which take 40-50pc of the income they generate.

Maybe it’s getting a bit harder out there now, with PageRank depressed and an almighty credit funk hanging in the air like a bad smell.

Here’s an alternative. Depending on the topic(s) of your site(s), try placing small display ads in the business section of your local newspaper or trade press.

Ask readers to consider internet advertising. You might remind them that it’s very competitive with comparable colour display stuff in magazines, or text lines in the small ads.

I stumbled on this field while following up our plans for a local West Country subNetwork. While assessing the potential for local ads, I saw how many national and international companies are present here in Devon. There are also lots of small businesses that trade internationally, often selling produce online, and also bags of computer and tech SMEs, some on the new technology park set up by the university.

It occurred to me that this was a treasure trove of potential advertisers for the Syntagma network, let alone a dedicated local one. As a source of text-link ads and 125s — which we haven’t picked up on yet, but intend to — it’s a veritable goldmine.

Advertisers don’t have to be based in the U.S. — a common assumption online, mainly because volume-wise it’s such an enormous market. But, for a middling sized digital network, there is literally huge potential in your local area.

A New Series on Business Startups — Part 11

Many startups plunge into the marketplace on a wing and a prayer. The young, inexperienced hopefuls have great expectations, but little knowledge of the complexities of the business they are getting in to.

The problem with this approach is that, except in rare instances, the new entrepreneurs will be forced into mimicking what’s already out there, including their main competitors. They will be competing directly with hard-bitten professionals and mature operations. They don’t stand a chance.

One way round this head-to-head gambit is to set up the enterprise initially as a hobby project, rather than a registered business.

The advantages of this alternative approach are many:

* You can win your spurs without too much financial drain or loss of face.
* You can gain expertise by copying the market leaders with little comeback.
* You can mature in the job and branch out from your competitors.
* You can gain respect in the market before making big investments.

This path is especially easy on the internet because entry costs are so small. Syntagma Media was started in this way, first as a tentative hobbyish project to test the waters, then as a semi-commercial enterprise with all profits reinvested for growth. Finally, as a registered business earning good returns for its owner.

Where entry costs are low, it’s always best to reach the comfort zone before fully committing yourself to a real business with all its overheads and legal headaches.

After all, you may not like it once you’ve tried it out for yourself.