DAVE MacNEIL was running a bookstore in 1995 when he first heard about a Halifax company using the World Wide Web to sell computer books.

Curious, he did some investigating and was impressed by what he saw. The effort was rudimentary when compared to the razzle-dazzle of sites today, but for the time he said it was impressive and it persuaded him to try and do the same thing for his shop.

"I’m not saying I had any kind of revelation, but I could see from the beginning the web was going to be a phenomenon that wasn’t going to be limited to a few businesses. I knew this was going to be a big thing for business."

Even with that insight, he had trouble finding a way to capitalize on the opportunity. An advertising web portal set up in 1999 failed to take hold and with the dot.com bust in 2000, the opportunities seemed to be slimming further.

But he persevered. He gave up the bookstore to learn more about the Internet and went to work for a Truro technology/web company. In July 2000 he went out on his own with Web Design Pro...

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