Electronic transactions that interchange goods and services through the medium of the Internet - or e-commerce - is available in several formats from the simplest level of displaying a product catalog to the highest level of facilitating transactions for large quantities and/or very expensive products.

The product catalog for business to business transactions can very similar to on-line consumer purchasing. The buyer adds items to a "shopping cart", gives a credit card number and the order is shipped. For small quantity and inexpensive items, a personal relationship between the buyer and seller is not critical.

At the other end of the spectrum, where large amounts of money and large quantities of products are being bought and sold, more detailed arrangements must be made for bidding and accepting bids, transferring payments, shipping products, and ensuring the quality of the products shipped. An advantage of on-line methods for procurement and metals trading is that it provides a more efficient and productive method of defining, receiving, and processing orders.

A disadvantage of on-line business is that personal contact between the seller and buyer is diminished and can be a problem especially for very specialized items. A question unanswered so far is whether e-procurement can actually provide the cost savings that have been claimed. Another issue that has been discussed is whether suppliers and buyers will be willing to pay the fee to the e-procurement or trading site where that fee comes out of the profit margin for the seller. The extra fee could be prohibitive especially on items with a low profit margin.

If e-procurement means that mining companies deal directly with manufacturers instead of through representatives, the savings in commissions could offset fees to the e-procurement facilitator. The relationship between manufacturer, representative, and customer is very likely to change significantly. However, no matter how efficient e-procurement becomes, I believe there will always be a place for personal interaction between company and manufacturer.

Last month’s newsletter listed a few Internet Web sites for on-line metal trading. The sites from the earlier article are categorized plus additional sites are listed. The list includes currently active sites, as well as several sites that will be coming on-line in the early part of 2001. Most of the upcoming sites are geared particularly toward supplies procurement. The companies starting the new e-procurement sites are small independent companies that have collected start-up capital, or they are companies funded by a consortium of

mining companies. Many of the Web sites run by software vendors provide on-line purchasing of their products, but those sites are not listed here.

The sites are listed in three categories:

Full bidding/auction sites for metals trading, and purchase of large quantities of supplies and high ticket items. These sites offer a variety of services for goods that are beyond the credit card purchase level.

Shopping cart sites used mainly for single items or small quantities.

Information sites that provide a variety of information including links to e-procurement sites.

Iminex - www.iminex.com Iminex is starting a trading exchange for buyers and sellers of industrial minerals. It is expected to be on-line in early 2001. 

Quadrem - http://www.quadrem.com Sixteen mining companies have created an independent, global, Internet-based procurement marketplace for equipment and supplies exchange. The site will be operational in early 2001. 

MachineryTrader.com - http://www.machinerytrader.com This is an auction site for heavy machinery such as air compressors, cranes, loaders, dozers, generators, and other large equipment. There is no charge to register. 

Finning-Auctions.com - http://www.finning-auctions.com This site auctions used heavy equipment and has been in operation since 1995. 

Valitura.com - http://www.valitura.com Three companies are establishing this integrated supply chain market place for the mining and construction industries. The companies are Peabody Group, Arch Coal, and AMVEST Corporation. 

MineDepot.com - www.minedepot.com This site offers free access to direct and indirect supplies purchasing. It has fixed dynamic pricing mechanisms for services, supplies, and new and used equipment. The will be operational on-line in early 2001. 

Geopoint - Global Exploration Data and Field Supplies - http://www.geopoint.com.au Geopoint is an open e-commerce service for buyers and sellers in the global mineral exploration and mining industry. Buyers can purchase products online from participating sellers and search for information about product and service suppliers generally.

Mininggear.com - www.Mininggear.com - The site supplies mining equipment and products. It brings together manufacturers, distributors and end buyers in a cooperative and completely secure interaction. The site will be ready at the end of year 2000. 

Mine-on-line.com - http://www.mine-on-line.com - This site contains sections on careers, the media, mining news, mining companies and site operators, organizations, recruiters, schools, suppliers and a who’s who.

Info-Mine - www.infomine.com - This site offers an extensive amount of information about mines, mining companies, suppliers, software, articles, and just about anything else related to the mining industry. In the Suppliers area, you can also see lists of Web sites that provide procurement services, e-procurement (for supplies and equipment), and commodity trading sites.

I received an email a few days ago from Datamine’s central software development office, asking how their own de-survey algorithm worked. Nobody there seems to know (and therefore they can’t answer clients who asked that perfectly reasonable question) - despite their having used the algorithm in ‘new’ Earthworks software which they are selling. How can a software vendor sell a supposedly new product, or indeed even an old one, without knowing how a vital part of it actually works?

De-surveying of drillhole data is an arcane and specialized art. The basic problem is that nobody actually knows the exact three dimensional coordinates of any point along any drillhole - except for its collar location. Too many assumptions have been made in the past and are still made routinely - for example that holes which are drilled vertically actually remain vertical for their entire length.

......

Whichever downhole survey method is used, it is necessary to be aware that it offers only an interpretation - a model - of the real drillhole. No-one imagines that any hole actually follows a piecewise spherical or piecewise spline curve any more than it follows a set of straight lines. It is merely more likely that a curved interpretation is a bit closer to the unknown reality. And the close that you can get, the better your deposit model. It is very easy in a 200-metre hole to have a 10-metre uncertainty in the bottom-of-hole position. This can lead to errors of many thousands of tonnes of ore.

If you're online, you've undoubtedly received "spam" -- unsolicited, untargeted bulk e-mail, typically ads for illegal "Make Money Fast" pyramid schemes, pornographic pay Web sites, quack healthcare remedies, or other come-ons of interest only to the gullible or desperate.

Spam, which conjures up images of fatty, low-cost luncheon meat and Monty Python skits, is nearly universally reviled, the most notable exceptions being the marketers who must manage to snag at least a few unwitting victims to make their seamy endeavors seem worthwhile.

.....

Whether you're e-mailing to prospects or media targets, you're better off using specialized software than your regular e-mail program if you're doing it yourself and contacting more than a couple of dozen recipients.

Programs such as MailKing and UnityMail, both at http://www.messagemedia.com, automate the process of getting your message out.

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Reid Goldsborough is a syndicated columnist and author of the book Straight Talk About the Information Superhighway. He can be reached at reidgold@netaxs.com or http://members.home.net/reidgold.

MINLIBER

GEOBLOCK

GEOLMARK

SoftwareMine - Watch for a new, updated SoftwareMine section on Info-Mine. The new SoftwareMine will list mining and geology software suppliers and contain descriptive information. It will contain expanded links to software and other Internet sites, newsletters, articles, and vendor press releases. A SoftwareMine button will be installed on the main page. This new improved section on Info-Mine will be available mid-November at www.infomine.com.

E-demos - It seems a lot of new words are being coined these days and many of them have "e-" in front of a perfectly normal word. E-demos is one of the new ones, and this new technique provides virtual presentations that are interactive real-time test drives of software. Haestad Methods is using the Internet to show potential customers how their software works and increase confidence in the buying decision. To begin, you register a time to view an interactive on-line demo. When a time is scheduled, you log into a special site and the demo begins. The demos on the Haestad site run for about an hour. Haestad also provides on-line training. For more information visit their Web site at: http://www.haestad.com/ Haestad Methods, 37 Brookside Road, Waterbury, CT 06708 · USA Voice: +1-203-755-1666. Fax: +1-203-597-1488

APCOM'02: Computer Applications in the Mineral Industries. March 11 - 13, 2002. Phoenix, Arizona

Water and Air Pollution Conferences

19^th World Mining Congress November 1-5, 2003. New Delhi India.

AMM (American Metal Market), the daily journal of the metals industry will host this conference. The sponsor-driven event will showcase the latest achievements, products and services for e-commerce in the global metals markets. It will be a one-stop research center, shopping mall and demonstration area. In addition, there will be numerous "how-to" workshops presented by vendors in their area of expertise in the ferrous and nonferrous industries.

Admission is $95 for both days, but pre-registration is required. To register, please contact Jennifer Elliott @ 1-800-238-2578 or 630-320-7456; fax 630-320-7340; e-mail jmelliott@cahners.com. SPACE IS LIMITED! The Roosevelt Hotel is located at 45 East 45th St. (near Madison Avenue). Phone: 212-661-9600. 

TK Solver is a mathematical modeling application that runs on Windows, Unix and Macintosh platforms. It is a rule-based, declarative programming environment highly suitable for engineering/scientific applications. Over a product life of almost 20 years, TK Solver has retained a unique core technology while evolving into one of the most bulletproof off-the-shelf products in the software industry. Many engineering handbooks and college textbooks have been computerized using TK Solver. ....

For more information, contact Universal Technical Systems, Inc., 1220 Rock Street, Rockford, IL 61101-1437, USA. Tel: (1) 815-963-2220 (800-435-7887). Fax: (1) 815-963-8884. Email: sales@uts.com. Web site: www.uts.com

MANTRA offers a process control system with advanced process control capabilities that provide improved process performance and reliability—due to proven process functions developed over 50 years in DCS-based process controllers. MANTRA is a complete, modular control system consisting of powerful CPUs, a mix of intelligent analog and digital I/O modules, and bundled engineering and application software which includes control logic programming, HMI, and loop optimization tools. The controller supports both local and remote I/O links, and is peer-to-peer network-ready on the Ethernet. ... 

MANTRA HMI also offers multi-lingual support. For more information contact ControlSoft, Inc. 14077 Cedar Road, Suite 200 Cleveland, OH 44118 USA phone: 216-397-3900 fax: 216-381-5001 e-mail: info@controlsoftinc.com Web: http://www.controlsoftinc.com/index.shtml

This new software is designed to organize, analyze rock drilling and blasting systems. The system has the following features:

Visit the webpage at www.geocities.com/cansirt and download the trial version. For more information contact M.Can Celiksirt - Vural Erkan, Dogus Const.&Trading Co. PO Box 46,33060 Icel-TURKEY E-mail : cansirt@superonline.com Phone: 90-324-3597546. Fax :90-324-3597234

MapEDIT vectorization automation system creates digital vector maps of cartographic materials scanned raster images. A scanner, computer and MapEDIT is used for fast and accurate creation of high quality digital maps through interactive raster image processing.

...

The vector maps and the databases created with MapEDIT can be exported to exchange formats acceptable to most GIS and CAD systems. MapEDIT 4.0 works under Windows 95/98, Windows NT.

Download a test version from http://www.geocities.com/gistools/. For more information contact Alexander Mikhailov e-mail: bwatts@sprint.ca. Toll Free Number (U.S.) 1-877-272-6239.

A Critical Chain approach is used for this project management software. Single and multiple project or Enterprise versions are available. in virtually any situation. Prochain® Scheduling is a scheduling and decision support tool which aids the understanding, implementation and institutionalizing of the Critical Chain approach. 

For more information contact ProChain Solutions, Inc. 12910 Harbor Drive, Lake Ridge, VA 22192 Voice: 703.490.8821. Fax: 703.494.1414 Web: http://www.prochain.com/

This program runs within the graphics environment of AutoCAD to provide a flexible mine design tool. The software uses a sophisticated drawing management system to organize information such as geology, planning, survey, stope model, drilling and blasting information in order to efficiently manage complex mine drawings. Each information type is broken down into individual components that can be assembled at will by the user. ... 

For more information contact Geostat Systems International Inc., 800 Chomedey Blvd., Tower C, Suite 500, Laval Que. Canada H7V 3Y4. Tel: 450-973-6561. Fax: 450-973-6070. Toll free: 800-474-6561. e-mail: info@geostat.com. Web: www.geostat.com.

This visualization package facilitates interpretation by integrating exploration data in 3D. It was designed by geoscientists with extensive exploration experience, with the aim of allowing simple, rapid assimilation and integration of all exploration data in order to produce meaningful and dramatic 2D and 3D images for interpretation and presentation purposes.  ...

A wide selection of interfaces have been developed for this software. Web site contains more information as well as a free demonstration to download. For more information contact: IGM Ltd, Joel Holliday, 15 Friars Close, Shrivenham, Swindon, Wiltshire, SN6 8BW UK. e-mail: ContactUs@igm.cc Phone: +44 (0)1672 519090 +44 (0)1793 784711 +44 (0)1235 524729. Fax: +44 (0)1672 519090 e-mail: joelholliday@contactbox.co.uk Web: www.geoexpress.co.uk

The EOS Data Products Handbook Volume 2 lists the science data products available from the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS). The products contribute to science research in the understanding, analysis, and monitoring of global climate change. It contains products available from satellite instruments. Visit http://eos.nasa.gov for more information about how to obtain a printed or electronic copy.

ArcPad 5.01 is a new release of ESRI’s mobile mapping and GIS solution that can download an image or map layer via wireless technology.It can act as a client to ArcIMS Internet mapping and GIS software. Data is downloaded to ArcPad using a TCP/IP connection such as a wireless local area network, cellular phone or wireless modem. Support for a number of global positioning system receivers is provided. It can run on PocketPC and Windows. A free evaluation copy can be downloaded from www.esri.com/arcpad. For more information contact an ESRI office or call 800-447-9778. Outside the U.S. local ESRI distributors can be found on www.esri.com/international.

ESRI has been awarded the National Mining Association 2000 Chairman’s Award for Excellence in Mining Education. The award was for the programs it maintains in K-12 schools, community colleges and other sites for educating the public. The award was presented at MINExpo in Las Vegas in October.

Applied Analysis Inc. has an on-line informational newsletter, focused on the spectral remote sensing industry. Gene V. Roe Ph.D. Director of Marketing/ Business Development, Applied Analysis Inc. 630 Boston Road, Suite 201, Billerica, MA 01821 978-663-6828 FAX: 978-663-6389 Web: www.discover-aai.com