Stories about: Britannica.com

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: SFF (small form factor) drives allow you to squeeze more spindles into the same rack space, giving you better performance in the same real estate. As an bonus, using 2.5-inch drives reduces the amount of electricity you use and creates less heat than using their larger cousins, essentially making your storage array less demanding on your wallet and on the electric grid.

Within the next few days, Encyclopaedia Britannica will begin to charge US$5 a month, or $50 per year, for access to its online content, according to the company.

Question-and-answer search engine developer Ask Jeeves Inc. launched its DirectHit Network Monday, an advertising service that blends search with paid placement.

Brittanica.com Inc., the online business unit of Encyclopaedia Brittanica Inc., will no longer provide information at its Web site for free and instead will begin a subscription service for its online content as part of a restructuring announced yesterday.

Britannica.com Inc. confirmed Tuesday that it has laid off 68 people out of a staff of 219. It also said that it would focus on getting people to pay for its consumer and education sites because of the decline in advertising revenues.

In an effort to continue to grow their home market, Sydney-based entertainment and online media company Tribe, has appointed Scott Neilson as new managing director of its Australian On Line Division.

Here's one that may sound familiar. A guy from the marketing department knocks on a network executive's door. "Hey, we're setting up a Web site, and we've got vendors coming in five minutes - want to join us in the conference room?" the marketing guy asks. That's a true story told by Linda Rossetti, CEO of EMaven, a US consulting firm Unfortunately, situations like this are all too common. Never mind the Sharks and the Jets. Today's rumbles are between the Chefs and the Plumbers. The Chefs are from the marketing department. They're liable to whip up an e-commerce effort with little planning, less notice and absolutely no knowledge of the project's technical ramifications. The Plumbers are the IT managers or network executives.

Who would have thought convergence would lead to this? I'm sitting at home, PDA in hand, waiting breathlessly for the next Dennis Miller translation from his play-by-play on Monday Night Football.

Web infrastructure provider Loudcloud Inc. next week will roll out expanded services designed to manage Internet operations for ASPs (application service providers) and other businesses.

Bob Robertson, the man set to replace Bruce Thompson as managing director of Hewlett-Packard Australia, has thrown HP's plans into disarray by taking a regional job with Lucent, where another expat Australian holds the reins. Closer to home some big moves occurred this week

Melbourne-based Impaq Network Services and have teamed up to enable Australian schools to put their curriculum online.