Bilingual search matches home hunters with property

Published: 12:00am, 14 Dec 1999

BEST CORPORATE/SME/FINANCIAL SERVICES SITES That a company promoting the property market received the Best Corporate site award should not come as a surprise in Hong Kong.

Centanet Company's bilingual Web site www.centanet.com provides free, daily updated information on the local property market as well as detailed descriptions of buildings, price trends, comparison charts and recent transaction records.

A well-designed search function matches potential buyers with property. For example, native English-speaking teachers can find listings of residential properties to lease under district or secondary school name.

An online 'Lifestyle Magazine' called Property Fans, including regular updates of interesting property and lifestyle-related articles, will be launched shortly.

The Chinese-language Web site of The Commercial Press (HK) www.commercialpress.com.hk - providing information on culture, education, books and art - received an honourable mention.

The finalists were Turner International A/P & Time Inc Asia, Hong Kong Dragon Airlines and IBM China/Hong Kong.

Selecting the Best SME site from among nearly 50 entries was tough, said James Liu, chairman of the judging panel and chief executive officer of the Hong Kong Industrial Technology Centre Corp.

The award went to Traveller Services (HK) traveller.com.hk for its convenient online site providing corporate and private travellers with comprehensive information and travel management services.

Neat features include a section promoting special packages and an automatic currency converter.

So difficult was the choice that two companies received an honourable mention: Jeweller M. S. Elec tronic Emporium's www.mspearl. com provides details of its pearl products. Customers not only buy online, but also learn how to choose and take care of pearls.

Fortel Technology's comicinema. com was designed for comic fans with the pioneering use of technologies such as FLASH - the Web standard for graphics and animation.

Hong Kong's first online stockbroker Boom.com won the Best Financial Service award for its convenient and inexpensive online trading services.

Boom.com was the first Securities and Futures Commission registered securities firm in the SAR to provide trading of both Hong Kong and US-listed shares as well as mutual funds on the Internet.

Two other finance companies received an honourable mention: e- finance.com.hk and gecapital.com.hk from GE Capital Finance.

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