In early days of email we were thrilled with its speed and reliability, far superior to "snail mail" but there's always somebody who has to go and spoil things for everyone else. In case of email it was purveyors of namesake of a certain pork-based substance. They became such a nuisance that large teams of robots had to be employed to keep them under control.

As porkers got smarter, robots had to become smarter still. At first, everybody agreed that stringent measures must be taken to defeat porkers. Ever hear phrase "throwing baby out with bath water" or "the cure is worse than disease"?

The number of spam merchants multiplied over and over. Eventually, only way of controlling them was for every email user to have his or her own robot to filter their mail. I did not want a robot filtering my mail but I didn't have much choice: nobody was allowed an email account without a robot to monitor its use. Every time I log into my email, I pause and listen for faint metallic scraping and a slight pneumatic wheeze as robot wakes and prepares to filter my mail. No matter how quiet I am, he always knows and is instantly awake and alert, ready to do his job. I did not request robotic help, don't want it, don't need it but robot is here to stay.

I think my robot is like paranoid android in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: slow moving and depressive, so I call him Marvin (not to his face, of course). I don't suppose my Marvin feels that censoring my mail is a suitable occupation for a robot of his caliber, any more that his namesake thought attending car park at end of universe was a great career for a robot with a brain size of a planet. On my part, I am sure that I am old enough to take full responsibility for my own correspondence. There is no need for Marvin to wear out his circuits on my account but it appears that we are stuck with each other for duration.

The extent of Marvin's power first caught my attention when a regular newsletter which I enjoyed failed to arrive. Delivery just stopped altogether.

I asked my email provider if there was a problem with this particular mail and they said there was nothing wrong with my mailbox, it must be a problem with sender. I asked sender why delivery had stopped and they said it hadn't, it must be a problem with my mailbox. I gave up and just resubscribed myself to newsletter. Every time delivery stopped after that I wondered what else I might be missing in way of interesting mail.

Are you aware of reason why most people fail in their online ventures? It is because most of them don’t know and more importantly are reluctant to command language and gadgets of web. Put it simply, they are uncomfortable with technology internet uses.

Just floating a website and starting a business is not enough. This is crucial first step, no doubt. One has to work further on his business to succeed. The lack of web knowledge might prove to be a handicap.

Please allow me to be clear. Let me be heard loudly and oppose those who say opposite. To succeed online one must equip himself with technical know-how.

If one does not know technological part experts can be hired but they come at a price which is almost always unaffordable by a starter of small business. So this choice is always out. There is no other option left than to know how to do it yourself. Earlier you realize it better it would be.

When I started my online home based business I was a novice on net. Plethora of new terms like HTML, FTP, POP3, email aliases, bandwidth, cgi, php etc. etc. etc. did not make any sense at all.

I tried working by approximation but that made me uncomfortable. I could not make small change in my site that I always wanted to. Every now and then a new or old term would appear again and I was left in a state of confusion.

Because I was uncomfortable I could not concentrate on my business. I could not focus where I should have been. Lack of vocabulary and technical knowledge always held me back. I was a businessman who was not confident of what he was doing. I kept incurring losses until my slumber was broken.