Web watch

All aboard the ark

Catering Ark is the brainchild of two former Army caterers. It features wine lists and recipes, and sells cookery books alongside new and secondhand catering equipment. There's also a guide to napery for waiters who don't know their arum lilies from their triangle blocks. Jobseekers can post up their CVs for £9.99. The Ark also links with other Web sites. www.cateringark.co.uk

Log on for a new job

Jobseekers can save themselves hours of surfing time, promises alljobsUK.com, which claims to be the only dedicated entry point to every recruitment site on the Web. Visitors can search for recruitment agencies and consultants, employers and on-line publications advertising jobs by town or region. Web links, addresses, and even maps are provided, along with access to other resources, such as trade associations and colleges. Alljobs says it has had 300,000 hits in its first three weeks.

Dial a diner

US-based menus.com has linked up with BT's Genie Internet to launch a restaurant search service for Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) mobile-phone users. Browsers can look for restaurants by region, post code, type of cooking, proximity and price, and read sample menus. From next year, consumers will also be able to search for restaurants by initials. www.wapmenus.com

Buyer's guide

Fancy owning a floating restaurant in Llangollen or a stainless-steel art deco diner? Well, these are just two of the businesses up for grabs at BusinessesForSale.com. The site lists more than 12,000 businesses, with a strong bias towards the UK and North America. The businesses for sale list their price, turnover and assets and, at the last count, included some 2,910 restaurants and 1,121 hotels and other holiday accommodation, along with 830 cafés and 595 bars and nightclubs.

BTA beats the competition

The British Tourist Authority's internet site, which last year attracted 3.5 million visitors, has been applauded by readers of the Observer and the Guardian, who voted it the Best Travel Web site in the papers' Travel Awards 2000. The BTA Web site offers more than 70,000 pages of information including details of 30,000 cities, towns and villages, listings of accommodation, attractions and events, and links to more than 1,000 sites.

www.visitbritain.com

First stop for news

A round-up of the major hospitality stories in the weekend newspapers is now available every Monday morning on Caterer & Hotelkeeper's Web site.