A conversation with ...
Venture capitalist foresees continued growth
W. Scott Miller has been a venture capitalist since 1991, putting institutional funds into about 30 start-up companies, all of which he describes as successful.

Talk of the bay

• Building to a top 20 ranking
  The Tampa Bay area ranked 18th among the top 50 home-building markets in the nation, with 14,011 starts and 9,082 sales during 1999, according to Builder magazine's annual survey of single-family construction.
• Is Echelon chief ready for a move?
  It's been three months since Echelon International Corp. was sold, but employees still wonder: Will chief executive Darryl LeClair stick around?
• On the lookout for missing money
  It took nuclear engineer Jeffrey T. Hawkins 11 years to discover that Florida Power & Light Co., his former employer, owed him $653 for a 1989 business trip he took. Without help from Katie Couric and a Web site called MissingMoney.com, he may never have collected.
• A bad vacation surprise from Bank of America
  Mark Mangold of Clearwater had his family's summer trip to Cleveland planned down to the final step: deposit his check in an ATM late Friday and take out $300 for the road.
• Pay up, Florida tells online shoppers
  Congress may have passed the Internet Tax Freedom Act, but the Florida Department of Revenue isn't letting online shoppers off the hook so easily.