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Today the Wisconsin Center for Education Research posts a brief history of Britannica’s Mathematics in Context.

Britannica Hollywood Handheld Edition, a film, actor, and award database for the Palm and Pocket PC platforms has been released. Available from
smartphone.net, palmgear.com, and others.

The product is also available as a Britannica Profiles Hollywood, a CD-ROM for Windows and Macintosh computers.

There’s a brief interview with Jimmy Wales at nPost.com that has this entertaining little tidbit:

Interviewer: Back to the accuracy of the Wikipedia postings. Because it is much more dynamic than other encyclopedias that are out there, it could be more accurate in some areas.

Wales: That is absolutely true. There are quite a few good examples of that. There is a small scandal going on in Germany. One of the questions on the German version of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ was wrong. The show had referenced an answer on the German version of Brittanica, which was wrong. It was wrong on Wikipedia as well, but we were able to update it immediately.

Piercing insight aside embedded in the “question” aside (it could be more accurate, it could also be less accurate, for the very same reason), one should point out that (a) Britannica is spelled B-r-i-t-a-n-n-i-c-a–it’s just not hard to get it right and that (b) while there are versions of Britannica in Korean, French, Chinese, Japanese and a large number of print translations, there is no “German version of Britannica”. Wales no doubt was refering to Brockhaus.

Shame on you, Nathan Kaiser, for failing to do the least bit of copy-editing or fact checking.

As Mathias points out, there have been a couple of reviews of the Encyclopaedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2006 CD/DVD published recently–one at CNet and another at MacWorld.

While the URS is given fairly high marks, both reviews ding Britannica for splitting the different encyclopedias (”Encyclopedia Britannica”, “Student Library”, and “Elementary Library”) into different areas of the application (in screenshots, the three colored tabs across the top)–a complaint we’ve heard from user interface consultants as well. Oddly, this has been a feature of the design since 2003, but this is the first year we’ve heard significant complaints about that. In any event, we hear you. I’ve seen prototypes for the 2007 edition that attempt to address the problem in a couple of ways.

The CNet reivew is also a bit harsh on Britannica’s customer service, which suffered some system failures during the recent headquarters move–not that that justifies the problem CNet encountered, but it may help explain it. I’ve talked to the head of customer service personally and I guarantee you they are ready and willing to prove their mettle.

CRN columnist/blogger Ed Moltzen writes that “Britannica gets it”, with respect to Web 2.0, although he’s seen very little yet.

There’s a new Britannica.com up today, with flashy feature articles, quizzes, quotes, a student center, NYT and BBC news headlines, and more. Here’s a screenshot:

Indian economist Amartya Sen (also here) was named among the world’s top ten public intellectuals in a poll by The Prospect and Foreign Policy. Fellow Editorial Board of Advisors member author and activist Wole Soyinka (also here) was among the nominees.

Pastor Aaron cites EB’s “well done” monthly newsletters. Visit newsletters.britannica.com to see archives of these topically arranged articles, or sign up to have them delivered via email. Thanks for the link love, Aaron!

I have a couple of search ‘bots that track the use of “Britannica” and related keywords in the blogosphere. These frequently find “spam blogs” created by a robot to target specific ad-sense or YPN keywords. These fake blogs will crib content from other sites that seem to be related to their keywords, in hopes of drawing context-sensitive text ads that offer high rate of return. Since Britannica covers a broad set of topics, they frequently copy content from EB’s site.

Today I stumbled across one of these spam blogs that targets, of all things, the keyword “ping pong” (yes, as in “table tennis“). A search on google for “ping pong” currently shows nine “Sponsored Links”, so perhaps that is not such a funny idea after all. (I’m not going to link to it, as I don’t want to reward the behavior.)

This particular entry cribbed from an interesting article from the Britannica Student Encyclopedia on Ping-Pong diplomacy: “an episode that occurred in 1971, as the United States was just beginning to restore normal relations with the People’s Republic of China after more than 20 years. As a thaw in relations between the two countries was becoming evident, the Chinese government invited the United States table tennis team […] to visit Beijing and play in exhibition matches. […] The American team lost its exhibition matches […] but the Chinese team was invited to visit the United States. China’s government also allowed American and Canadian newspaper and television reporters into the country to cover the event. Within a year, Nixon himself visited China, and normal diplomatic relations were restored within the decade.”

Get ‘em while they’re, umm, hot.

• Encyclopaedia Britannica 2005 Full (note that the screenshot is from 2004 if not 2003).
• Encyclopaedia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD