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Wednesday, October 20th, 1999 Media Cynic | Forum | Advertising | Classifieds | Jobs Full Encyclopedia Britannica Now Free Online Britannica.com Inc. has announced that it has made the entire text of the Encyclopaedia Britannica available free of charge within the company's new website. The complete 32-volume set is now available free to any Web surfer, with the site supported by advertisments. Britannica first brought its encyclopedia to the Internet five years ago as a subscription service. In addition to the encyclopedia, the site combines content from newspapers, magazines, reference works, books, and websites. ``This is a momentous day for knowledge seekers everywhere,'' said Don Yannias, chief executive officer of Britannica.com Inc. ``Purchasing the Encyclopaedia Britannica was once a major milestone in a family's life, but today we are fulfilling our promise to make it more accessible to more people worldwide. Now anyone with access to the Internet can use Britannica.com as they wish, not only for the encyclopedia, but for the huge amount of other trustworthy, top-quality information and services we offer.'' American Profile to Launch in April 2000 American Profile, a four-color national magazine with regional editorial content celebrating the interests, values and events of life in America's hometowns, will launch in April 2000 as a supplement for hometown and community newspapers. Publishing Group of America (PGA) will debut American Profile with a Midwest launch followed by consecutive expansions into the remainder of the U.S., segmented into five geographic regions. PGA has hired a launch staff of 20 and initiated a direct marketing campaign to reach newspaper publishers and major national advertisers. Each edition of American Profile will include a broad range of regular features, including regional selections of Hometown Heroes, regional calendars of events, as well as national stories on celebrities with hometown ties, health trends, entertainment, and important current issues. A special regional editorial feature of each issue is a profile of one of America's great hometowns. American Profile Publisher and CEO Dan Hammond co-founded the publication. Its board of directors and advisory group include: W. Pendleton Tudor, creator and co-founder of Adweek Magazine, and Richard Irvine, former president and COO of Straight Arrow Publishing, owners of Rolling Stone Magazine. Bob Atkins, a veteran of the newspaper publishing industry and former publisher of eight suburban and community weekly and daily newspapers, as well as two national publications, Music City News and The Gospel Voice, is also an advisor to American Profile. "A and B markets are well-served with the existing national Sunday magazine supplements. We wanted to focus our efforts solely on C and D markets. Until now, there has been no truly efficient means to deliver these smaller markets. American Profile is a completely new vehicle that delivers those people who make buying decisions in hometowns and communities across America everyday. Because it represents virtually unduplicated circulation, it is a logical extension for brands that are already advertising in the national Sunday magazine supplements," said Hammond. "It also offers advertisers a new, simple and effective method to reach this market segment that has previously been difficult to reach." Chaitime.com Launches Unique Literature Channel Chaitime.com, a South Asian online community, has launched its a culture-specific Literature Channel, to provide a web source for finding the best new literature works by authors from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Bhutan and Nepal. The Literature Channel provides reviews and writer profiles, live chats with authors and chances for members to contribute their own writing to the site. "The channel producers are often the first ones to be reading and writing about these authors," says Bhana Grover, Chaitime.com's founder and CEO. "We strongly believe that writers of South Asian descent need a place where their voices can be heard." internet.com Acquires LinuxToday.com internet.com has announced the acquisition of LinuxToday.com, a website serving the Linux and Open Source communities. LinuxToday.com generates over 5 million page views and is visited by nearly 400,000 unique users per month. "By combining LinuxToday.com with our LinuxPlanet.com site, internet.com now holds a leading position in the Open Source market," stated Alan M. Meckler, chairman and CEO of internet.com Corporation. "The Internet has accelerated the growth of the Open Source movement and internet.com is at the forefront, providing the resources needed for the continued expansion of this development. Our goal is to maintain and enhance our position as a leading destination for content, community and commerce for the Linux and the Open Source movement. At the same time, we continue to serve the needs of other platforms and the Internet industry as a whole." Andrew Davis Named Editor-in-Chief of Teleconference Magazine Advanstar Communications has announced that Andrew Davis has been named editor-in-chief of Teleconference Magazine, a publication for the conferencing industry. The magazine, which was established in 1981, covers technology and applications for audio, data and videoconferencing. Keith Gallagher, Publisher of Teleconference Magazine, said, "We are delighted that Andrew has joined our editorial team. Andrew is extremely well known and respected and has tremendous cache in this industry. As a magazine we have enhanced our editorial content and with Andrew's guidance we will be able to take this magazine to the next level of editorial excellence." Davis has published over 200 articles on multimedia communications, image and signal processing, videoconferencing, and technical computing in various industry magazines and trade journals. He is also well known in the conferencing industry as a contributing editor to the TeleSpan newsletter. He holds BS and MS degrees in engineering from Cornell University and a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard. Audio Book Club Changes Name to MediaBay, Inc. Audio Book Club, Inc. has unveiled its new corporate name, MediaBay, Inc., in a move designed to better reflect the company's strategic focus as a provider of spoken word audio content and products in hard goods and digital download formats both online and offline. The name change encompasses the company's online growth strategy including the launch of MediaBay.com, its content and commerce media portal. Commenting on the name change, Norton Herrick, Chairman and CEO, stated, "Since founding Audio Book Club six years ago, the Company has evolved and grown significantly. The change in our corporate name reflects the growing importance of our MediaBay.com portal." Sookoo! Launches Business Strategy Search Engine The Sookoo search engine is now beta testing its specialized search service. Sookoo focuses on a specific content area, Business Strategy, and aims to link to only quality, active sites. Sookoo's SearchFusion method combines relevance technology, intervening knowledge-of-content, and page-site qualitative criteria to serve a higher caliber of relevant links to a greater depth into search results. Sookoo's SookooScout feature will scout the directory for pages that are related to this listing. SookooScout links are provided with each website listing result. Money.net Launches Financial Community and Resource Money.net, a new online financial news, information and community has launched, offering free real-time stock portfolios on the Internet. Money.net has formed strategic alliances with DigiTrade, a division of Thomson Financial (portfolio technology and applications), Delphi (community), Stockpoint (ticker data), Reuters (real-time news) and Real Media (advertising). Information available at money.net includes market information, personal finance articles, interviews with financial professionals, market indices, historical charts, earnings forecasts and reports, market analysis and commentary, company data, company profiles, and sector news. Users can also access weather, general, sports and entertainment news. NetRead Inc. Launches Publishing Website NetRead, Inc has announced the launch of its website at Netread.com, which provides publishing information and services. Currently, all of NetRead's services are free. Ultimately, NetRead will offer a service for distributing books in multiple formats through a variety of channels. The company was founded by Pete Alcorn, a veteran of educational publishing, and Kent Lindstrom, a Senior Manager at Deloitte & Touche LLP. The company plans to provide free information, helps people and businesses connect, and offer services that make book publishing practical and accessible. NetRead believes that many types of books, which have been blocked from the market by traditional economic and practical factors, will soon emerge. Around the Web ASME Elephants On The Move MediaWeek Bluemountain.com in Play For a Billion Time Daily Britannica Now Rules the Web BBC News Demographer Warns That New Readers Must Be Captured Editor & Publisher If Magazine Uncovers Realities, Talk Celebrates Banalities sfbg.com More News Hounds are Hopping Onto the Net Business Week 'New Novel' Writers Dies Washington Post NY Daily News Editor To Step Down Professional Publishing Revenues Near $13B Media Central Web Sites' Techno Tattle Has H'wood Rattled Variety Who'll Be WSJ's Next Editor? NY Post The Worst Jobs in Journalism? Editor & Publisher Click here to return to the homepage of The Write NewsTM Click here to subscribe to our free weekly email newsletter.  www.writenews.com Copyright © 1997-2010 by Writers Write, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
