Back in the mad days of the dotcom boom, it was hard to open a newspaper without seeing some techno-pundit predicting the death of the workplace as we know it. In the high street, too, shops would be replaced by a virtual world of ruthlessly efficient online malls.

These were, mostly, fantasies. The idea that we would buy everything — groceries, clothes, even homes — over the net stole millions of pounds from the pockets of gullible investors and kept a number of web “entrepreneurs” in Porsches until the repossession letters arrived. A few web malls have proved extremely successful, of course — Amazon, the PC firm Dell and travel giants such as Expedia being the most obvious — but if you peer behind the scenes, you will invariably find a conventional company working from a conventional office.

There was one revolution, however, involving people we never much notice: individuals and tiny businesses who were sufficiently smart and flexible to spot something that had eluded the big boys. If you want proof, look at Clare Jane Webb’s shed, which is sited, curiously, in the front bedroom of her house in Walthamstow, northeast London.

Webb is an actress, and, since graduating, she has worked in a variety of jobs between professional engagements, once as a runner, delivering tapes to and from clients, for a London sound studio. It was there that she spotted a business opportunity.

We’re all familiar with voice-overs in radio and television commercials, which aim to persuade us to buy. This vast industry was traditionally based around the sound studios of Soho, where popular voice-over artists lived so as to be available at short notice. What Webb realised was that technology was making it possible to run her own online voice-over business from home — provided the equipment she used was good enough.

“The problem was money,” she said. “Usually, a home studio is built from brick, inside an existing room. It can cost £6,000 for the building work alone. I wanted to spend the money I had on equipment, not on the construction.”

The answer? She bought a garden shed, installed it in her spare bedroom, soundproofed it herself, ordered an ISDN data line and spent £4,500 on the best microphone and ISDN desk she could afford. Then she asked a pro- fessional web designer to run up a fancy website with audio examples of her work — www.clarejanewebb.co.uk — sent out a mailshot and waited for the phone to ring.

Only months after the shed’s installation, Webb is working from home daily as a voice-over artist for clients up and down Britain. “I’ve done ads for Boots, Ikea, garden furniture, cars ... all sorts of things, for the BBC, the Discovery Channel, E4 and lots of local radio stations. I took a big risk with the shed. People said it wouldn’t work, but it’s fine. I made a point of buying very good equipment. Once people hear the kind of mic I’m using, they know I’m serious.”

The way the web changes your job can surprise even those who know technology inside out. Julian Storer is a professional computer programmer who, over the years, has worked for a number of companies specialising in audio. A keen guitarist, he wanted to record straight to his desktop computer.

“The software I looked at was awful — and too expensive,” he said. “I thought it couldn’t be that difficult to do something better than this.”

A year ago, the result of his endeavours quietly slipped onto the web — a brand-new music-sequencing program called Tracktion, selling for £50, a fifth of the price of the competition, by download only from his website, www.rawmaterialsoftware.com.

What happened next took Storer completely by surprise. Tracktion was, in a sense, hijacked by its users and turned into a piece of software that never sits still. An established website for computer musicians, www.kvr-vst.com, reviewed the program and offered him the chance to run a free user forum.

Word of mouth through the forum resulted in the rapid emergence of an army of fans. Tracktion has also been licensed by the US music-hardware giant Mackie to work with some of its products. And — the ultimate compliment for any software developer — Storer briefly found the copy protection being hacked in Russia, which he moved swiftly to correct.

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