Thomas Register
www.thomasregister.com
Strategists striving to conquer new product development and e-commerce challenges may find this free Internet version of the directory of US and Canadian manufacturers and distributors useful. Summary information associates thousands of company profiles with products, services, and brand names. Geographical- and product-focused filters can help narrow search results. Results reflect online company catalog availability, company web- site addresses, online product procurement routes, CAD drawing availability,gratis fax literature sup- port, and email contact links. Eligible site visitors are invited to submit electronic requests for free copies of CAD drawings and technical data on CD- ROMs, which were developed by Thomas Publishing Company in partnership with Autodesk.
ElectricalSearch
www.electricalsearch.com
This vertical industry resource successfully draws attention to the electrical marketplace. Capitalizing on Internet indexing strategies, it provides comprehensive, unbiased facilitated search, retrieval, and connectivity to hundreds of resources including professional societies and conference events. Features also include links to market assessments, news briefs, press releases, and full-text journal articles. Its powerful search engine enables a wide range of inquiry options including various query operators, index fields, wildcard characters, and date delimiters. Topical searches can be executed simultaneously across all categories or in each of; the pull-down menu choices: Associations, Contractors, Distributors, Engineers, Manufacturers, Publications, Services, Standards & Codes, and Utilities.
Consumer Reports Online
www.consumerreports.org
In its continuing unbiased sentinel role for product reliability, the nonprofit Consumers Union maintains this informative database. Safety alert reports, product recall warnings, and online procurement wisdom are among the features freely provided. Product recall notices can be browsed by category, as well as searched by various 'identifiers (e.g., manufacturer model number, keywords). Links connect to US Government home 'pages for additional cautionary pointers. For example, health consequences are bared in Food and Drug Administration postings of recalls, a1erts, and warnings about regulated products such as computer-controlled biomedical equipment. The Consumer Product Safety Commission ~ink uncovers press releases announcing recalls for over 15,000 product types. In addition to sounding the trumpets when products are defective and providing free consumer advice as described above, this site also offers fee-based access to the full text of Consumer Reports magazine.
iPing
www.iPing.com
Site visitors can benefit while at home, at work, pr elsewhere from a growing suite of resourceful options that combine the advantages of computer and telephone technologies. At no cost to the user, the following advertiser-supported services are available: Mr. Wakeup, Ms.Reminder, Mr.Notify,Ms.Follow-up, Dr.Dose, and Mr.Dollar. Menu-driven interfaces facilitate keying-in initial scheduling for telephone calls, as well as subsequent ut4 editing of alerting service parameters. Actual web-to-telephone notification messages, which are referred to as "pings," are delivered anywhere in Canada and the US. Future plans are to extend services to other countries. Common features of each service include: advertiser-produced audioclips from 5-15 seconds delivered with each user defined message; time-zone adjustments prerecorded telephone-generated voice messages and computer synthesized text-to-speech; and multi- He and repeat calls. Each service also has distinguishing features that enhance use. For example, Mr.Dollar provides market and financial news at timely intervals, Mr.Wakeup brings rousing early morning news headlines, and Ms.Follow-up tracks package deliveries.