TODAY

In a Portuguese restaurant, the chef will de pleased if you praised his food and told him it was "bom". That's "good" in Portuguese. A word of caution: If you want to live to be a 100, never utter this Portuguese equivalent in any other foreign or local restaurant you go to, however tempted you may be to show off your smattering knowledge of Portuguese. It may just freak the chefs and all the other staff.

Learning a foreign language is fun, though I personally feel that showing it off is even better. If you're intent on picking up new, foreign words between coffee breaks, Clue Word (www.Clueword.com)'s multilingual word word puzzles in 11 languages may be helpful. It has a wide variety of interactive puzzles-WordMatch, hangman, anagram and crosswordbeing the more popular ones.

Hooked on this site (www.Clueword.com) for the past two months, it will not be an untruth to say that I have learnt more than a smattering of Afrikaans, Danish and Swedish. And all I wanted to do was kill time while waiting for lunch breaks!.

The team behind this site is businessman Abdul Rani Haji ahmad, 35, who holds a Masters in Engineering and Business Management and his good friend and former office collegue, Azhan Haji Azmi, 31, who has a computer science background. Together with their friend , Mohd Farihan Abdul Rani, the trio spent many Friday nights in Abdul Rani's house brainstorming over tea and cakes. The idea was to create a unique website, one which would capture and sustain the interests of all ages and walks of life. The site also had to be self-sustaining. "We were venturing into the unknown, without any prior experience in designing or maintaining a website. All we were sure was that we wanted a successful website that would capture eyeballs and attract repeat visitors. That would be our bragging rights to all our friends and favourite foes," said Abdul Rani.

The trio did their "homework" as well, skimming through IT publications and surfing the Net, to see "what’s out there", as Azhan Haji Azmi simply puts it. "From our informal research, we discovered that games work. But we didn’t want it to be some mindless game, like punching and shooting and promoting terrorism. We wanted to promote something positive," said Abdul Rani, "and we believe, that in our small way, we are helping to promote multi-culturalism," quips Azhan who designed the site.

Last April, it went live. Both Azhan and Abdul Rani devote much of their time to the website and manage ClueWord dotCom Sdn Bhd, which Abdul Rani, formed as its CEO last August with an initial investment of RM 10,000. Azhan is the chief technical officer in charge of site operations. Farihan contributes to the site by finding new words for the database whenever he has the time.

"The banner ads and affiliate marketing is just enough to cover the monthly operational costs, which we watch very closely," said Abdul Rani. He explains that the company’s aim right now is not to make a profit but to ensure that the site has quality. "This is very important if we are serious in staying on the Internet scene for a long time," said Azhan. "We’re very fortunate we are the only listing in Yahoo! search portal for the keyword "multi-lingual word puzzles". We’re also listed at the top in search engines, Alta Vista and Google," boasts Abdul Rani. While early players may have a head start, Abdul Rani is not resting on his laurels. In the business world, anything may happen. "We’re finished if foreign language houses decides to compete with us on the Net, offering similar multi-lingual games."

The company has two pressing objectives at the moment - to expand their database, now numbering more than 50,000 words and to increase its email subscribers, who receive free, daily word puzzles via email. At present, there are about 7,000 subscribers, mostly from US. "When we get at least 10,000 subscribers, we may then be able to entice advertisers to place their ads on our email newsletters. We’re looking at this as a major source of revenue for next year," said Abdul Rani.

Abdul Rani and Azhan agree matter-of-factly that their business model will not make them rich. "We think we may be able to break-even by year-end next year. As it is, we’re very happy. We never thought we would have this many subscribers in such a short time. We get an average of 50,000 page views every week, and we’re really proud of this," said Abdul Rani. The longest ever spent on the site was 1000 minutes. "We didn’t realise that our site could be that entertaining," said Azhan. "It’s a great achievement for us," he adds. "We can now brag to all our IT savvy friends that, we too, have a great portal and we have the stats to back it up," said Abdul Rani.