InfoCommerce Group Inc.

2004 Models of Excellence Award Winners

These exemplars are announced to the media and showcased at the annual InfoCommerce conference, the event where the most talented and dynamic infocommerce publishers from around the world meet to collaborate on new ways of doing business. It is a distinct honor to be selected as a Model of Excellence, and here are the best of the best in database information publishing.

2004 Award Winners
	Netvention Inc. Montreal, Quebec	www.netvention.com Julien Benoit, President
Netvention employs proprietary data mining technology to find, extract and harvest business information from Web sites. But instead of trying to collect every bit of information about every business, it focuses on specific types of companies and specific data elements, then structures that data and adds inferential intelligence to create added value. For example, a site with many broken links may be flagged as a poorly maintained site, making it of interest to Web design companies seeking sales leads. Its WebHosting Prospector service, soon to be officially launched, is an excellent example of how adding fielded structure and inferential intelligence can turn readily available public data into premium value datasets.
	Domania Watertown, MA	www.domainia.com Ben Joslin, GM & VP, Marketing
The domania.com site nicely packages a series of public record databases, calculators, and other information designed to attract those interested in buying and selling a home. This valuable package of information is offered free to users in exchange for their email addresses and other registration data which Domania then employs in a variety of customer acquisition and retention programs on behalf of its customers -- mortgage companies and lenders. It's a strong business model, all driven by valuable databases that the company offers for free as a means to get prospective home buyers and sellers to identify themselves.
	Center for Responsive Politics Washington, DC	www.opensecrets.org Larry Noble, Executive Director
The OpenSecrets.org site, operated by the non-profit and non-partisan Center for Responsive Government, believes that voters can sharpen their political insights by "following the money." To that end, they've developed a powerful site, based on Federal Election Commision data, that allows anyone to see exactly who has contributed to which politician. In addition to standard criteria-based searching, the site also does a nice job tying its database to current hot political issues to increase relevancy and interest. Not surprisingly, the site is far more searchable and thus informative than the site provided by the Federal Election Commission, so it adds greatly to transparency in the political process.
	KnowledgeStorm Inc. Alpharetta, GA	www.knowledgestorm.com Kelly Gay, Chairman, President & CEO
KnowledgeStorm continues to represent one of the best examples of a pure online directory. By providing easy and intuitive searching and deep, product-level information on IT products it allows users to make comparisons among products, and has become the Web's highest-traffic business technology search site as a result. KnowledgeStorm also "one-ups" the highly popular pay-per-click advertising model through an approach that delivers actual sales leads to advertisers, as opposed to just clicks. KnowedgeStorm focuses on the very large and very Web-oriented IT market, and has done a very intelligent job of translating the traditional print buying guide to the online medium.
	Omnigraphics, Inc. Detroit, MI	www.omnigraphics.com Matt Barbour, Senior Vice-President
With its HQ Online product, Omnigraphics ably demonstrates that even a product with content as basic as business name, headquarters address, phone, fax and Web site can still benefit from the Web, if its priced well. HQ Online's formula is mixing an editorially canny selection of the most-contacted companies with frequent updates and a streamlined Web application. The fact that it has found a paid audience on the Web points up the gap between "available" and "readily available". Every piece of information in HQ Online is available for free through the major search engines. The value-add is as simple as adding convenience via structured searches and a clean interface.
	Morningstar, Inc. Chicago, IL	www.morningstar.com Joe Mansueto, Chairman, Founder & CEO
Morningstar is well-known for its hugely successful service of rating and ranking mutual funds. Now, it's building out its investment research offerings with Fiduciary Grades, which scores mutual funds on their qualitative aspects such as regulatory compliance, board composition, fund manager compensation, fees and corporate culture. It's a massive undertaking, but will allow Morningstar to deliver a highly synthesized and comparable total picture of mutual funds to its customer base.
	Contact Center Compliance Corp. Santa Rosa, CA	www.dnc.com Ron Allen, Jr., CEO
The new national "Do Not Call" registry sounds simple in theory: telemarketers refer to a "do not call" database to restrict their calling activity. But add in rapid changes, state-level "do not call" databases, and various exemptions and geographic restrictions, and "do not call" compliance rapidly becomes a challenging undertaking. To streamline the process, Contact Center Compliance has built DNCScrub, a Web-based data-scrubbing tool. This is infocommerce at its purest - combine a software application with public domain data to create a product that is automated, efficient and easy to use.
	RestaurantRow Inc. Rye, NY	www.restaurantrow.com Jim Gurfein, Founder & CEO
Who's got the largest national database of restaurants? No, it's not that well-known guide publisher, but rather RestaurantRow, whose ambitious site not only lists well over 100,000 restaurants, with descriptions and contact information, but also offers a service that will make reservations for you at most of them. In addition, restaurants can pay a modest fee to add menus and photos to their listings. As the source for the largest restaurant database, RestaurantRow has also seized on lots of licensing opportunities, including distributing its data through mobile device companies, entertainment and event sites, and even search engines.
	PartMiner Inc. Melville, NY	www.partminer.com R. Christopher Meyer, CEO
Buying guides bring buyers and sellers together, and brokers bring buyers and sellers together. What's notable about PartMiner is that it saw this similarity and has managed to combine the best elements of both. It offers the largest database of electronic components information along with its Supply & Demand Database, which contains over 10 million active lines of inventory from over 6,000 sources. On top of this rich base of research and discovery data, PartMiner then layers an online marketplace where electronic components can be bought and sold.
	Salary.com Needham, MA	www.salary.com Kent Plunkett, Founder & CEO
Salary.com has built a proprietary database containing information on a topic of universal interest - salaries - and then markets it to both consumers and business. Its B2C offering is an advertising-supported Web site. Its B2B offering is bundled with powerful analytics software to create high value compensation analysis tools such as Company Analysis, sold to large corporations which use it to quickly produce complete enterprise pay audits. Coupling proprietary data with powerful analytics software is a sure fire formula for improving productivity and the basis for a winning infocommerce business model.
	Prospect Information Network Daytona Beach, FL	www.prospectinfo.com David M. Lawson, President
Prospect Information Network serves the non-profit/fundraising market with ProfileBuilder, a product that uses both software and third-party content to help non-profits identify wealthy potential contributors on their in-house databases, then rank and profile them. Rarely do we see so many infocommerce attributes in a single offering, one with a clear and compelling value proposition. And given that the philanthropic community appears to be set for a large influx of new givers from the Baby Boom generation, this is another case of "right time, right market." As David Lawson, CEO, notes, "Today, 80% of millionaires are first generation, so there's not a lot of information generally available on them...I see this tsunami of giving coming, and most ot the non-profit world is not ready."
	iJet Travel Intelligence Inc. Annapolis, MD	www.ijet.com Bruce McIndoe, Chairman & CEO
iJet with its Travel Intelligence products, delivers high value as a provider of “travel risk management” services. It combines sophisticated analysis with rapid delivery to help corporate travelers avoid danger and risk on a proactive basis, this in addition to maintaining a continuously updated library of geographic risk reports, all summarized with the company’s own “Security Assessment Ratings.” The company purposely stays away from "tier 1" information - where to go, what to see, what to do - so as not to compete with the travel guide companies. "The dynamic nature of travel-related information is a significant limitation on the value of content provided by traditional information providers - and the reason that our information is high-value." according to CEO Bruce McIndoe. Ddata is only the starting point for the business, he claims. "The factual content is nothing but a raw heap of information. The delivery platform is what makes us accessible, but this is not as important as both the computer and human assessment analysis that are performed." In carving out a new niche - real-time travel information - iJet proves infocommerce knows no bounds.
	Gracenote Inc. Emeryville, CA	www.gracenote.com Craig Palmer, President & CEO
Music is increasingly being marketed, delivered and stored by consumers in digital format, and this creates a huge organization and management headache for end-users. After all, you can’t play it if you can’t find it. Enter GraceNote with its CDDB database, which now powers the popular Apple iTunes software and Music Store, and a growing list of consumer electronic devices. Using its remarkable music recognition technology, GraceNote software can identify a song and associated CD, match it to its database, and return a complete database record with song name, genre, length, even links to the artist’s fan site. Using information to make products much more valuable and more salable -- that's infocommerce.
	Vault Inc. New York, NY	www.vault.com Samer Hamadeh, Co-Founder & CEO
Vault has built a fascinating business of getting employees to provide the "inside scoop" on their employers using such vehicles as surveys and online postings. It then publishes this information in a variety of formats, including employer guides, individual company profiles and high traffic company-specific message boards on its site. Indeed, the company now even offers information back to human resource departments of the companies it covers. Its business is noteworthy for having attained the holy grail of publishing: getting customers to essentially supply their own editorial.
	Philanthropic Research Inc. Williamsburg, VA	www.guidestar.org Robert Ottenhoff, President & CEO
Philanthropic Research, which does business as GuideStar, maintains a national database of financial and other information on non-profit organizations nationwide. The initial task of building the database was massive; so much so that GuideStar had to help the Internal Revenue Service (tax returns for non-profits are available to the public) organize and digitize its own records so that GuideStar could offer PDF images of actual tax returns. All this effort has yielded a unique database that GuideStar offers to the public, funding sources and the non-profit community in a variety of different formats to meet different needs.
	Weiss Ratings Inc. Jupiter, FL	www.weissratings.com Harold Cochran, President & CEO
Weiss Ratings is a pioneer in the area of developing and publishing totally objective assessments and ratings on over 15,000 financial institutions, including banks, brokerage firms, mutual funds, and HMO's. The company utilizes an easy-to-understand letter rating system designed specifically for consumer use. The company issues two types of ratings. The first rating covers "safety," which reflects an assessment of the future financial stability of the rated organization. The other type of rating assesses the risk/reward trade-offs of investing in a specific stock or mutual fund. The Weiss rating methodology is subtly different from other popular investment rating systems. With so much scrutiny of investment research these days, Weiss appears to be in the right place at the right time.
	Fair Isaac Corporation Minneapolis, MN	www.fairisaac.com Thomas Grodnowski, CEO
Fair Isaac has successfully harnessed the forces that are revolutionizing the information business to create products that provide actionable data. It processes huge amounts of data and then applies state of the art analytics to produce scores and other highly summarized indicators that make it quick and easy for humans and machines to reach decisions, and do so in a consistent, confident way. Having made its name with credit scoring, the company has now transferred its analytic skills to seeking out identity fraud, with its newest product, Falcon ID.
	PhoneScoop Philadelphia, PA	www.phonescoop.com Richard Brome, Founder
This is a remarkably comprehensive database of cellular phone products that reflects its founders deep knowledge of, and passion for, cellular telephony. By acting as a one-stop resource for all things cellular, PhoneScoop has built a loyal and growing audience that in turn has attracted a growing base of advertisers. It's a simple idea from a small start-up, and proof that online success is based on old line principles - defining a need and a market, and serving it well.
	FactSet Research Systems Inc. Greenwich, CT	www.factset.com Philip Hadley, Chairman & CEO
With its recent acquisition of The JCF Group, FactSet moves from content aggregator to content owner with the well-regarded JCF Quant broker's estimates database, which will be integrated into the existing FactSet investment research product line. FactSet's growth stems from its commitment to make raw data more useful and actionable through smart integration and powerful user interfaces . Its slogan, "Turning information into intelligence" should be the mantra of today's successful infocommerce companies.
	StarMine Corp. San Francisco, CA	www.starmine.com Joe Gatto, CEO
We all know that stock analysts and their research have been in the news lately, and that can only be helping the business of San Francisco-based StarMine, which has developed a system that compares analysts earnings predictions to actual company results and then assigns a simple star rating based on their accuracy. StarMine Investor is a limited free service for individual investors that has helped the company build visibility and buzz. StarMine then flips the same database to create a buy-side product that helps institutions evaluate the quality of the research they use, and a sell-side product to help research houses monitor the performance of their staff analysts. It's a simple, needed idea, brilliantly executed.
	ClickData.com Inc. Golden, CO	www.clickdata.com Dianne Lessard, Acting General Manager
The ClickData Direct Automotive product harnesses one of ClickData's gold standard databases containing bankruptcy information with print-on-demand capabilities to create a powerful infocommerce application for the automotive industry. Retail auto dealers with a focus on the sub-prime market specify ZIP codes near their dealerships, and at key intervals during the bankruptcy process, ClickData Direct fires off targeted mailings to these prospects of which 37% will buy a car within days of bankruptcy discharge. So speed is essential, but by coupling fast access of public record data with print-on-demand technology that requires no set-up time or minimum volumes, ClickDataDirect reaches these hot prospects faster than any conventional marketing program could.
	FindLaw Inc. Mountain View, CA	www.findlaw.com Deborah Monroe, CEO & President
In the race to capture the attention of corporate counsel at major corporations, FindLaw has upped the ante with its new Thomson Legal Record which helps corporate counsel make better decisions when hiring outside counsel. Thomson Legal Record seamlessly integrates data from West Legal Directory, Westlaw and FindLaw to provide a detailed picture of an attorney's actual expertise in a specific area of law, based on the cases they've argued and the articles they have published. It's a powerful example of how data-text integration can create new, high-value information resources by combining the structure of a directory record with the depth of full-text case and article information.
	SRDS Inc. Des Plaines, IL	www.srds.com Tom Drouillard, President & CEO
The SRDS Media Planning System is a classic infocommerce product, leveraging the venerable SRDS media database with a Web-based application that lets media buyers streamline virtually every aspect of the media planning and buying process -- from campaign scheduling to insertion order generation. By planting itself firmly in the middle of customer workflow, SRDS locks in its customers to both its software and its information. This product is specifically designed to be the "go to" planning tool and historical database, and builds client reliance by offering so much convenience while improving productivity.
	Andale Inc. Mountain View, CA	www.andale.com Linda Hayes, President & CEO
Andale began life offering back-office management software to those selling on eBay, but quickly realized that the transactional data that was flowing through its system had potentially as much value as its software. It packaged this information, which includes such data as average selling price, fastest moving products by category, and much more, into an information product called Andale Market Research Pack. This product is an innovative, highly specialized sales intelligence database that really showcases the potential of both transactional and historical information as part of advanced infocommerce offerings.
	Planalytics Inc. Wayne, PA	www.planalytics.com Frederic Fox, President
While a number of other companies have been focusing on how to give away weather information on the Web with an advertising-supported model, Planalytics has packaged raw weather data into sophisticated applications such as its Web-based Impact product, that measures the specific effects of past, present, and future weather on consumer demand by product, location, and time, and presents it in a format useful to retailers whose store traffic can be profoundly impacted by weather conditions. New features in Impact, such as its "Decision Point" bulletins, are specifically designed to make Planalytics' data more accessible and actionable to its customers, thus improving its value by effectively analyzing its data for its customers so that they need not do so themselves.
	Wanted Technologies Quebec City, Quebec	www.wantedtech.com David Tanguay, CEO
The Wanted Technology business model involves aggregation of help wanted ads, but not simply to toss another job board meta site onto the Web. Instead, its clever Recruitment Activity Monitor flips the model by creating a product for use by recruiters as a competitive intelligence and business development tool. This product offers proof that there's at least two markets for every type of database. With a current and historical database of over 12 million records, this product also capitalizes on the value of historical data which tends to rapidly disappear from company Web sites.
	1-800-Doctors Inc. Woodbridge, NJ	www.1800doctors.com Douglas Nelson, EVP
With all the excitement generated by the Internet, it's easy to forget that other electronic directory media exist, and that the transactional business model didn't originate on the Web. Founded in 1984, 1-800-Doctors started with a telephone-based physician referral service, which it has since enhanced with wireless and Web access as well. The model is transactional; physicians pay to be included in the 1-800-Doctors referral service. It's a wonderful multi-media buying guide application, performing the traditional function of introducing buyer to seller, and with such features as an online appointment capability, it also offers a wonderful convenience that leverages the power of the Web.
	Martindale-Hubbell New Providence, NJ	www.martindale.com John A. Lawler, President & CEO
Martindale-Hubbell's lawyers.com product is a remarkable example of how B2B publishers can, in certain markets, re-purpose their content for the consumer market, using the Web to achieve a level of distribution and use that would never have been possible in print. By going after the consumer market, Martindale-Hubbell is evolving into a true client-development service for lawyers, a much larger and more lucrative positioning than as a staid professional directory publisher, and thus an infocommerce exemplar.
	TrueAdvantage Inc. Southborough, MA	www.trueadvantage.com Jaret Christopher, CEO
True Advantage is all about sales intelligence, and through a combination of aggregated third-party data and original research, it monitors companies for certain types of events and changes that are likely to signal a pre-disposition to buy, then immediately puts this information in the hands of its clients in the form of sales leads. While event-driven business-to-business sales prospecting is hardly unknown, we're impressed with the way True Advantage is using new technology and multiple data sources to deliver such leads with both sophistication and scale.
	StarCite Inc. Philadelphia, PA	www.starcite.com John Pino, CEO & Founder
StarCite has intelligently merged some of the best elements of the traditional buying guide and online marketplace model to create a new powerhouse serving the meetings and conventions industry. Meetings planners can plan meetings, search for venues, issues RFPs, identify suppliers, broker unused space, even handle event registration, all from a single site dedicated to streamlining and simplfying the busy life of the meeting planner.
	Bankrate Inc. North Palm Beach, FL	www.bankrate.com Thomas R. Evans, President/CEO
Bankrate.com is the quintessential data-driven product. If it impacts your wallet, Bankrate is there with regular updates to help consumers intelligently and proactively make sound financial decisions. Bankrate leverages this base of broad-interest data through raw data sales, licensing, co-branding deals, and advertising on its site. Add into the equation Bankrate's successful transition from a print newsletter publisher to a successful, high-traffic Web site, and you'll see why Bankrate made our list.
	Plaxo Mountain View, CA	www.plaxo.com J. Todd Masonis, Founder
Our biggest frustration with Plaxo? Trying to categorize it, which is of course a sign that Plaxo is doing something novel. It's also doing something important, by creating a whole new approach to directory maintenance. Plaxo is not a content company as such. It helps its several million users automatically maintain their personal contact databases through innovative technology and a unique peer-to-peer database maintenance concept. It's innovative, it's progressive, and it's potentially a disruptive business model that is growing rapidly.
	LinkedIn Ltd. Mountain View, CA	www.linkedin.com Reid Hoffman, Chief Executive Officer
We're typically not impressed with online networking services because they invariably seem to devolve into dating services. Similarly, we've never been impressed with volunteer databases where people are supposed to list themselves and maintain their information because good intentions do not guarantee good data. But Linked In, a social networking service built on a volunteer database, has actually built something that works by imposing and enforcing standards and rules for its service. Plus, it's a rare example of successful viral marketing. By leveraging its network of senior executives, the service has grown exponentially, and without cost. The key here is, it's managed to keep its professional focus, and this encourages people to list themselves and maintain their listings. The result? A remarkably rich and deep database with an infocommerce orientation: helping people make useful business contacts by leveraging "the friends of their friends."
	Homestore, Inc. Westlake Village, CA	www.homestore.com W. Michael Long, Chief Executive Officer
Homestore's Realtors.com site offers one of the single most significant databases on the Internet, listing over 2 million homes for sale nationwide at any given time. The listings are drawn primarily from over 800 MLS (Multiple Listing Service) databases around the country. In addition to timely and valuable content, the Realtors.com site is loaded with impressive capabilities to merchandise the listed properties, most of which generate advertising revenue for Homestore. Beyond this consumer-oriented site, Homestore has also developed a set of software tools for real estate agents that leverage the Realtors.com database thererby and further insinuating itself into the daily workflow and business processes of the real estate industry.
	eMarketer, Inc. New York, NY	www.emarketer.com Geoff Ramsey, Chief Executive Officer
The eStat Database produced by eMarketer is as clever as it is powerful: an aggregation of statistics on e-business and online marketing from nearly 2,000 of the nation's leading research organizations, all organized into a searchable, downloadable database, and optimized for use in presentations, spreadsheets and word processing documents. The cleverness of the database is in part its functionality, optimized for fast access and ease of use. The other part is that it is largely gathering and reselling statistics that these research organizations have made available for free, making it all the more critical that it deliver a strong value-add component.
	Internet Movie Database, Inc. Incline Village, NV	www.imdb.com Col Needham, Managing Director & Founder/CEO
A subsidiary of Amazon.com, IMDB hews to the philosophy of its parent: become a one-stop shop, and good things will happen. IMDB now has information on over 375,000 movies, with up to 30 pages of data on individual titles. What is especially noteworthy is that IMDB has successfully applied many of the advantages of Web-based publishing, most notably in the area of collaborative editorial. Much of its data is contributed by volunteers, and it has managed to commercialize this data while preserving the "community" on which it depends to produce it. Basic access is free to maximize site traffic; IMDB derives revenue from database licensing, advertising and now a paid subscription professional edition of the database. Despite the fact that Amazon is a major movie retailer, IMDB purposely downplays its links to Amazon to maintain a strong sense of community, since IMDB depends heavily on user commentary and editorial additions. At the same time, IMDB has cherry-picked the best of Amazon’s technology and marketing practices.
	Trip Advisor, Inc. Needham, MA	www.tripadvisor.com Stephen Kaufer, CEO & Co-Founder
Recently acquired by Barry Diller’s InterActiveCorp., TripAdvisor capitalizes on the huge consumer demand for rankings, ratings and recommendations, but uses technology rather than its own staff to construct its rankings, based on an automated assessment of what is published about each destination on the Web. Now the sixth most popular travel site on the Web, TripAdvisor generates revenue through pay-per-click marketing programs on its site.
	EuroInfoPool Stockholm, Sweden	www.euroinfopool.com Hans Axelsson, Sales Director
A young start-up, EuroInfoPool has become one of the largest providers of European business information virtually overnight, with a simple but effective strategy: offering a common interface to the official corporate registration databases of 12 major European nations. European companies are legally required to file detailed information on its operations and finances , so detailed company information is more easily available than in the US. What's unique about EuroInfoPool's approach to content, is that the company does not maintain its own database, but instead retrieves it from the appropriate official database each time it is requested. Hans Axelsson, Sales Director, draws this analogy: "When some one asks for 'a glass of fresh milk', our competitors would use a bottle that they have had in the fridge...[ while] we literally go milk the cow." To round out the picture, EuroInfoPool has layered in company credit reports from a commercial, third-party source. Since European companies are legally required to file this information and provide far more detail on their operations than companies in the United States, this common interface provides quick and easy access to a robust dataset with many applications.
	Wendover Corporation Haverford, PA	www.wendovercorp.com Larry Dillon, President/CEO
The Wendover Technology Marketing Reports product is a winner, not just financially, but as a proof statement that customers will pay premium prices for deep and actionable content. Wendover Technology Marketing Reports is a powerful database that offer directory style contact information that goes much deeper, with up to 30 executive contacts per company, and a detailed look at each profiled company's IT infrastructure and even their current internal IT initiatives and buying needs. Wendover adds to these deep profiles an unparalleled level of currency, cycling through and updating its entire database on a quarterly basis.
	WAND Inc. Denver, CO	www.wandinc.com Ross Lehrer, CEO
The WAND online directory model is powerful and highly innovative. Publishers utilizing WAND implement its sophisticated, multi-lingual product taxonomy, which offers over 1 million distinct product attributes. In addition, while each participating publisher has a search interface customized to its needs with a distinct look and feel, all listings are centrally hosted by WAND. This creates a powerful network effect, where users of any single WAND database have access to the entire WAND database, allowing each participating site to offer more data to users, and improved traffic and visibility to advertisers. It's an intriguing solution because it allows smaller publishers all the sophistication, database coverage and traffic of much larger publishers by centrally pooling listings and applying a common taxonomy.
	CoStar Realty Information Inc. Bethesda, MD	www.costar.com Andrew Florance, President & CEO
CoStar is proving the subscription-based online data model is alive and flourishing. Their secret to success: deep data. CoStar employs over 500 field researchers, who have built into its flagship product CoStar Property Professional, incredibly detailed information on commercial buildings -- over 100 data elements per building, over 1.4 million building photographs, video tours of buildings, even aerial photos to show the neighborhood! Then, CoStar layers in analytical reports and sales support tools for subscribers. Not surprisingly, this deep and completely searchable database is becoming the daily work companion of a growing percentage of commercial real estate engines.
	Health Grades Inc. Lakewood, CO	www.healthgrades.com Kerry R. Hicks, President & CEO
Health Grades has undertaken the daunting task of developing methodologies to rate health care providers (hospitals, physicians, nursing homes, etc.), then package and deliver this information to consumers via the Internet. Its Physician Quality Reports represent a huge undertaking to provide background information on nearly 600,000 individual physicians. Not only has Health Grades developed a proprietary methodolgy to enable their clients to measure and assess healthcare quality, it is selling these reports as well, providing concrete proof that consumers will purchase information online -- and lots of it.
	GlobalSpec LLC Troy, NY	www.globalspec.com John Schneiter, President
Our first second-year Model of Excellence winner, GlobalSpec continues to evolve, this year launching The Engineering Search Engine, a powerful and sophisticated companion to its existing parametric product search database. Coupling a high-end buying guide with a vertical search engine is an aggressive move by GlobalSpec to make its site a true information destination for engineers. In addition to significantly boosting site traffic, it introduces a host of new opportunities for advertisers to reach this highly targeted market.
	HighBeam Research LLC Chicago, IL	www.highbeam.com Patrick Spain, Chairman & CEO
HighBeam is staking out the gap between expensive, high-end content aggregators such as Factiva and LexisNexis and the free search engines. Positioning itself as "an online research engine for individuals," HighBeam is keenly aware that a growing number of business executives are purchasing individual subscriptions to online information services, and expects to benefit from this trend. Beyond clever positioning, HighBeam offers a simple yet powerful user interface, access to a growing list of useful data sources, and a long-term focus on tools to make data not only accessible, but useable.
	GlobExplorer LLC Walnut Creek, CA	www.globexplorer.com Robert C. Shanks, President & CEO
In a remarkable achievement, GlobExplorer has not only aggregated detailed aerial and satellite photographs that cover most of the planet, it's made them uniquely accessible through a database that correlates each image to latitude and longitude, allowing their integration into all types of value-added applications from real estate to government and defense. In addition to developing this one of a kind database, GlobExplorer has also developed technology to compress and deliver images quickly, making them accessible to anyone with a browser and even a relatively slow Internet connection.
	All Media Guide Ann Arbor, MI	www.allmediaguide.com Vladimir Bogdanov, President
If you want to sell music, video or computer games either online or in a retail environment, you need product information, lots of it, because consumers need to find specific titles, want background details, need recommendations and more. In the best of all worlds, all this information would be maintained in a highly accurate, completely searchable database, and that's exactly what All Media Guide offers: remarkably detailed and current databases of all movies, all music and all computer games, in a database optimized for searching, with enough detail to satisfy anybody, and lots of cross-linking to make recommendations easy. AMG currently maintains over a billion pieces of information in database format. All product descriptions are original editorial content, and all records are classified with a proprietary taxonomy. Not content with mere data, AMG has now launched what it calls SonicGuides, audio music clips attached to each music database record to further enhance the buying experience, and has already added 5 million tracks from over 300,000 CDs.
	Vertex Inc. Berwyn, PA	www.vertexinc.com Jeff Westphall, CEO & President
Founded in 1978, Vertex has been committed since its inception to taking the labor and manual effort out of tax compliance. In most cases, the work starts with large and constantly changing databases of tax rates and rules, which have to be carefully structured to be useful in an automated environment. That's a big enough job in its own right, but Vertex has long understood that it can and should deliver more than raw data tables to its customers. That's why it continues to push for higher levels of automation, control and customer value. Its new O Series software product perfectly addresses these objectives. It's a platform-independent, Internet-based software program that relies on object-oriented techniques and Web technologies such as Java, HTML, XML, and SOAP, and allows corporate users to centrally administer sales tax, use tax and value added tax collections through a single platform and interface, and fueled by the unique Vertex rate and rules databases. Vertex O Series software is an excellent illustration of how software can be seamlessly married with data to provide high-value business process automation.
	HotelGuide.com Lucerne, Switzerland	www.hotelguide.com Bruno Gabriel, CEO
Beginning in 1991 with a print directory for travel agencies, HotelGuide followed the natural evolution from CD-ROM to the Internet. Not content merely to offer an "Internet edition" of its database, HotelGuide grafted on a smooth e-commerce front-end to allow direct reservations from consumers, simultaneously changing from a B2B focus to a B2C focus, and throwing itself into direct competition with the well-known airline reservation systems, which are increasingly moving into hotel reservations as well. Despite all this, HotelGuide.com has found real market traction, and has managed to co-opt several putative competitors, no small task for a small independent player operating globally.