Free access to britannica.com for bloggers
Last Friday, when I read on Techmeme that the Encyclopaedia Britannica is giving out free one-year subscriptions to publishers, including bloggers, I contacted them straight away motivating my application, and did not think much of it.
Imagine my surprise when later that very day I received an email containing instructions on how to activate my free subscription.
As my readers, now you too have access to full articles on whatever I decide you should learn more about. The articles on individual topics are good if we are talking established, historical facts from the past, a bit less when dealing with very recent topics. For instance, the 998 words on Madonna on Britannica do not mention her forthcoming album Hard Candy, a scattering of which can be found everywhere on the web since yesterday.
However, Britannica puts together Topic Clusters, which are:
'…collections of links to Encyclopaedia Britannica content related to current events. Topic Clusters provide quick access to material online writers may want to use in their reporting and commentary on issues of the day.'
If the link to Madonna above does not work for you, please leave a comment to let me know.
Tuesday 22 April 2008 at 8:35 am
"A scattering"? The whole bloody thing Word to Madonna: If you're going to call a song "Incredible", try to make sure it's not mediocre at best. Didn't you learn anything from "Amazing"?
Tuesday 22 April 2008 at 8:38 am
Oh, and the Madonna link works, but you've got to read quickly, because every five seconds, a box obscures the entry, asking you to register.
Tuesday 22 April 2008 at 8:44 am
hmm, odd. I've just checked out the link from my work machine (windows xp, firefox 2) and i get no overlay asking to register, which i'll agree would be most annoying
Thursday 24 April 2008 at 11:37 pm
Yeah, I also keep getting the ACTIVATE FREE TRIAL thing every few seconds, superimposed on the article.
Wednesday 30 April 2008 at 5:55 am
I still cannot see the registration box, after logging out of Britannica, then clicking on the link to Madonna in this post, from FF2, IE7 and Safari on Vista, and from IE6 on XP.
If you still get the registration box, I'm interested to have more details re. OS and user agent.
We are still talking about the article linked from this post, right? Because if you navigate away from it on other Britannica pages, then yes, you are asked to register.