> Multi-lingual addresses

> Indian pre-paid ban

> Review: Borderlands

> IM for newbies

> In video: Funny ads

> Zuma vows to do more

> EU disagree on climate

> Ancient urns found

> FB gets new privacy

> Happy birthday internet!

Today, 10 February 2010

› Eskom burns whistleblowers

› 'ANC does not kill people'

› Simelane's spelling blasted

› The people versus Julius

› Victory delights Smith

Yesterday, 09 February 2010

› Strike three, Mr President

› Cooked head discovered

› Zuma apology 'unwelcome'

› 'Illegal' traps blasted

› Madiba to grace Parliament

Malcolm: We've got Mike Cooney in the studio to talk about EngNet. If I didn't know any better I might think that it was English on the net, but that's not what we're talking about, is it Mike?

Mike: EngNet has basically been designed to make the Internet a useful tool for the engineering industry.

Malcolm: Are we talking about civil engineering, mechanical engineering - what kind of engineering are you concerned with?

Mike: All types of industrial engineering, including civil, electrical and mechanical engineering. We also break it down into industries where guys can look for, for instance, the power transmission industry. But it really is for the industrial market, for the heavier side of industry.

Malcolm: Is that your background? Mike: I come from an electrical engineering background in industry. That's where the need for EngNet came from. I started using the Internet as a tool about four years ago but it didn't work very well, purely because you couldn't find things and engineering companies weren't using the Internet effectively. So that's really where the business plan started for EngNet. Development started about four years ago, and about 16 months ago when the market was right we launched EngNet and it has worked really well.

Malcolm: So your users are people within the engineering industry who are looking for information.

Mike: There are two aspects. There is the buyers' guide, which helps engineers to find products and services to buy in the engineering industry. If you look at Yahoo, for instance, they've got a wonderful search engine but it's very broad. What we've done is categorised our search very specifically for engineering products, and this works very effectively. For instance, if you're looking for a specific product such as an electrical motor, there are so many motors out there that we've designed it so that you can look for a very specific model of motor on our system. And it's categorised to help you find it very quickly. If you type in motor it will give you specific categories that you can click on and drill down to exactly what you want, and find the companies that supply that motor.

Malcolm: So it will give me options right from the low end of the scale with a small motor all the way through to something that will drive my head shaft for mining gear.

Mike: From the civil engineering point of view we'll go from building houses on one end all the way to building multi-story buildings, as well as petro-chemical plants. On the electrical side it's really from any industrial application such as a motor for a pump used in a mining application, to an electrical transformer used to generate electricity for a building.

Malcolm: It sounds like a very specialist site. Is it e-commerce enabled as well?

Mike: No, not at the moment. We have the facilities and it is designed to be e-commerce enabled in the future. We run surveys with our users to try and establish when they would be ready to use e-commerce facilities. We find it very difficult with the media out there, because there is a lot of media hype surrounding e-commerce. There are also some other advanced features in EngNet, which we find aren't being used effectively because people aren't familiar with the technology yet.

Malcolm: I don't want to be disparaging here but is it in fact a sort of huge electronic brochure in that case, with you as the connecting point?

Mike: We are the connecting point. We've taken the stand that the brochure should sit on the company's own web site and we'll simply link to the company. But we do provide vital information on each company.

Malcolm: So you're the facilitator?

Mike: Yes. What we do have is a feature called price or information request. If you want one specific motor and there are 40 companies that supply the motor, you can fill in a quick form, push a button and that enquiry will go out to every single company. You can also be selective if you don't want it to go to all the companies. Talking from experience, that kind of enquiry would take you half a morning and it's now going to take you five minutes.

Malcolm: Yes, finding the right information is the hardest thing in the world. Mike, it sounds really interesting. Let's have your web address.

Mike: We have a number of them. There's www.engnet.co.za, there's www.engnetglobal.com because we really have a global reach and then there's www.eng.co.za.

Malcolm: Okay, so if you want further details you know exactly where to look. Thanks very much Mike.