Britannica 2002 unleashed by CMM

Cyber Multimedia-the exclusive national distributor for Encyclopedia Britannica-recently held a nationwide unleash of the version 2002, of the said CD. Along with the event, were also announced the result of the dealer schemes that CMM introduced for the months of July, September and October 2001. With this launch, Britannica has become the first CD-ROM to have a 2002 version.

The new version is packed with comprehensive articles (85,000 to be precise), 56 million words, smarter and effective search engine, new photographs, videos, maps, animations and panoramas. Apart from these enhancements and additions, Britannica has also introduced its online service that offers free update for a year. There also guaranteed free gifts in the pack which range start from a value of Rs 300 and go up till Rs 45,000.

There after were announced the awards for the dealers scheme that said, 'Britannica khareedo, Singapore jao' which CMM introduced in July this year. It was based on the number of pieces any dealer sold in the said period of three months. The award as finally won by Gaurav Gupta of CD-ROM with 150 units. Apart from him were other eight people who got the award.

The event started with the unveiling of Britannica 2002 CD by Pradeep Gupta, MD, Cyber Media India Ltd and Alok Wadhwa, MD, Encyclopedia Britannica. There were also presentations made by Gupta on the current IT scenario and industry a whole and by Wadhwa on the vision of the company for coming years.

The CD revolves around four courses-begin, explore, learn and create. To begin with, it has new data for the year 2002, new media and ability to update both content and program with Update Center. In the same, there is Britannica A-Z, which is an enhanced version of exploring information.

In the explore arena, it has results from Encyclopedia Britannica and all media titles in Britannica 2002. Web's Best searches for the websites when connected to Net, which are selected, rated and reviewed by Britannica editors for quality and usefulness. The Dictionary has about two-lakh definition from Merrian's Webster's collegiate dictionary, 10th edition.

The articles in learning stream have articles from World Atlas, Timeliness and Visual Tours under the categories as Content, media, Topics and Web. For learning about places, World Atlas takes you around the world with 1,300 detailed maps. One can zero in on regions, or select any map from drop down list.

Similarly there are many other segment, which make this latest version, a complete user's experience.