CHICAGO (Reuters) – Frustrated that she couldn’t find her lipstick, keys and other essentials in a stylish new handbag given to her as a gift by her son, Anita Crook came up with a solution. In 2005 she designed the Pouchee – a pocketbook organizer that Crook expects will fetch her close to $2 million in revenues this year.

“I couldn’t find any way to organize it and I thought, well, you know, maybe I could design something,” said Crook, 63, who began the company out of her home in Greenville, South Carolina with $10,000 from her savings and the conviction she was filling a need. “I don’t look at myself so much as an entrepreneur as I do a problem solver.”

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Last summer, Melody Jamali lost her 21-year-old son, Eric. Her pain was heightened by the impersonal service she received while selecting an urn to hold her son’s ashes.

“I was appalled, absolutely appalled,” said Jamali, who was overwhelmed by the stress of it and wound up settling for a vessel that had little meaning. “It was just a transaction. It was the height of insensitivity.”

By Deborah L. Cohen

(Reuters) – Philip de Souza, founder and president of data security firm Aurora Enterprises, believes in ghosts.

After trying for weeks to persuade his small team of in-house engineers to blog under the company’s fold, de Souza went looking outside for ghost bloggers who could deliver compelling prose on security and related industry issues for his L.A.-based firm.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Philip de Souza, founder and president of data security firm Aurora Enterprises, believes in ghosts.

After trying for weeks to persuade his small team of in-house engineers to blog under the company’s fold, de Souza went looking outside for ghost bloggers who could deliver compelling prose on security and related industry issues for his L.A.-based firm.