Gadgetory

it's Wednesday March 14 2012 I'm Bridget Carey on Sina comm and it's time to get loaded after 244 years of printing volumes of books Encyclopedia Britannica will now only be accessed by computer the publisher announced it will focus on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools the 2010 edition is the last print edition of the encyclopedia and has more than 4,000 contributors the set costs about fourteen hundred dollars and sold about eight thousand copies than encyclopedias Sods best sales just before the internet boom back in 1990 but now the online database is much larger than what can be fit into print it's also available through an app on the iPad iPhone or iPod Touch and if you'd like to check it out a prett annika online will be entirely free for the next several days another information database is getting a digital twist known by the industry as the music bible the Billboard Hot 100 songs now calculates the popularity of a song based on data from streaming and subscription music services like Spotify Rhapsody in RDO the streaming data supplements the ratings already being collected for radio airplay and digital downloads Pinterest is getting a few updates the site which is a virtual pinboard of interesting finds and ideas from around the web will redesign user profiles and users will be able to pin videos from sites like Vimeo Hulu and Netflix the Pinterest CEO also announced the company is working on creating an iPad app Walmart introduced a new service that lets customers purchase a digital copy of their DVD movie and then view it on any internet-connected device a customer brings in the DVD they already own to a local Walmart and then they can get streaming access to that movie on Walmart's cloud service for two dollars to get that movie in high-definition though it'll cost five dollars Walmart is the first big box retailer to use this platform called ultraviolet it's aiming to solve the problem of wanting a digital copy of a movie even though you already own the physical disc and don't expect any software updates to AOL Instant Messenger anytime soon the New York Times reports that AOL has laid off 40 employees and it only left some support staff left to look over the instant message service next on the chopping block is the company's patch comm news unit which might lose a hundred employees and if you're planning on staying in line for the new iPad this Friday Apple announced that its retail store doors will open at 8 a.m. to sell the tablet in the US the new iPad will also be in sale at Best Buy RadioShack Sam's Club Target and Walmart and those are your headlines for today I'm Bridget Carey for cnet.com and you've just been loaded