A new book is playing into Prime Minister Tony Blair’s efforts to drum up support for e-commerce this week.
Blair is endorsed the
URL2Trade
Directory,
an expensive new book that lists URLs of business resources and explains how
to use them.
“URL2Trade Directory is a prime example of the initiative that the
Government
is looking for in the new information age. We hope it does well,” said Tony
Blair.
At £395 ($652) for 336 pages of URLs, the directory is clearly aimed
at businesses which have not yet discovered the extensive free resources of
the Internet. It does, however, come with a CD-ROM version for easy
clicking.
Sites listed in the URL2Trade Directory enable companies to market
themselves
and generate international sales leads. The goods traded can be anything
from
tractors to lingerie, from chemicals to bananas — say the book’s authors.
Written by Jonathan Cutting, Catherine Bailey, and Richard Sanders, the
URL2Trade Directory contains links to 1,388 business resources on the
Internet, and takes the user direct to the key pages embedded within
each site.
“To date the business-to-consumer side of the Internet – selling goods
and financial services for example – has enjoyed the lion’s share of
the exposure,” said Jonathan Cutting.
“We believe this will soon change as e-business generates a revolution
of monumental proportions, bringing together buyers and sellers in a
super-efficient electronic marketplace. URL2Trade speeds up the process,
directing the business user to some of the best business resources on
the World Wide Web.”
Between them, the authors claim to have 18,000 hours of “business Internet
experience.” They have assembled a wealth of useful information, although,
as many Internet users know, URLs in books can quickly become outdated —
especially if they are embedded URLs which are often subject to rapid
change.
Among the resources listed in the book are details of 355 trade sites,
giving access to over 300,000 business-to-business trade leads per month,
details of 88 official government sites with procurement notices, etc.,
and access to the details of 378 sites featuring online company databases.
