Where do I find e-business or software-business related ideas?

Markets to consider ...

1) Personal forte', interest, hobby based.

In other words, focusing on areas that you already have a great deal
of knowledge or interest in.

2) Trend based - target markets that are in great demand, and take
advantage of them, though I recommend sub niche targeting (focus on a
closely related field that doesn't have as much competition).

Where to search for ideas - Google Zeitgeist, Google Directory.

Find established businesses that offer the types of products and
services that you may be interested in selling, and study their copy,
content, offerings ... subscribe to their newsletters ... find out
what makes them tick. Using an established model to learn from is
easier than building one from scratch.
Hope that helps ... would be more than happy to elaborate further.

Regards,
Mike Merz
http://www.im4newbies.com/forum/portal.php

The answer to your question can be presented in different ways, taking
into account that you ultimately wish to start an e-business. Firstly,
it depends on the scale you wish to do business and the amount of
investment you are willing to make, which is missing. You need to have
things in your warehouse and you need people to deliver them.

Secondly, e-business market is still not fully saturated and lots of
scope remains in exploring the supply side. It means that a good
method or strategy on how efficiently you deliver your goods to the
consumer can make a big difference for an online retail store also.

At http://digitalenterprise.org/index.html Professor Michael Rappa has
an "E-commerce Site Trend Report" of 2004 which can be helpful.
For web search engine base marketing data please visit
http://www.nua.com/surveys/index.cgi or http://www.clickz.com/stats/.

Regards.