ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, June 29, 1996 TAG: 9607010040
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-6 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: ELISSA MILENKY STAFF WRITER
By summer's end, New River Valley residents will be able to make reservations and order food at local restaurants or explore the latest deal on a used car at a nearby dealership - all via the Internet.
Internet Business Technologies, a Blacksburg company that provides on-line products and services, is launching four new data bases that allow computer users to search through local listings for cars, movie times, real estate offerings and restaurants. The entire program is called the "Blacksburg Interactive Community." It also includes a local business search engine called CityConnect, which the company developed several months ago.
"A lot of companies have developed home pages that are just advertisements," said IBT President Robert James. "What we've attempted to do with this is to actually carry out business on [the Internet]."
The data bases will work much like advertisements in print media. Businesses and individuals will pay IBT a monthly fee to have their listings posted on a particular data base.
Some businesses, such as Backstreets Restaurant in Blacksburg already have signed on to the program. The restaurant already has a home page that averages about 1,000 "visits" a month.
Starting in August, people will be able to order a pizza or a plate of fettuccine Alfredo on line from the restaurant. IBT is developing a program that will include sound effects to let Backstreets employees know when a computer order has been placed.
Ipanema, another Blacksburg restaurant, is putting its reservation system on line.
The real estate data base included in this interactive community is similar to one IBT created specifically for Raines Real Estate in January. On the Raines home page (http://www.ibt.net/raines/), users can look up houses according to location, size and price specifications.
Joe Jones, Raines president, said the company recently sold property in Giles County to people from Atlanta as a direct result of the home page. In just five months, the page had 43,000 "visits" - about 400 of which came from Internet surfers in Norway.
"Even if we only have a couple of sales a year, [the home page] will be worthwhile for us," Jones said.
James said he wants to expand the data base service to Roanoke and beyond. He is planning to launch a similar interactive product in Northern Virginia in August.
The Internet address for the Blacksburg Interactive Community is http://www.ibt.net/bic/
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