Hot StuffMillions of people: How do you get to them? Endless opportunities: How do you take advantage of them?

It used to be that the ubiquitous "hot lists" were more hype than hot. But these days, who needs hype? Sure, the hype is full-blown and millennium-powered. But for once, the pure reality is many degrees hotter than the hype.

Consider one of our hottest trends, e-commerce. What can we say about e-commerce that isn't surpassed by the technological miracles we see daily? While much of the furor over the year 2000 is egocentric vapor, the Internet will prove to be our rock-solid legacy. It's our version 2.0 of the Industrial Revolution, with one major improvement: The revolutionaries aren't factory-running capitalists-they're entrepreneurs running corporations from their desktops. E-commerce isn't merely hot; it's history in the making.