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Contributors
Marce Edwards is the business editor. She has been at The News Tribune for seven years and has written about technology and big businesses in the South Sound including Weyerhaeuser and Russell. Before moving to Tacoma, she worked at The Idaho Statesman in Boise. She is a Northwest native who likes to garden and refuses to use an umbrella. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and two kids.
C.R. Roberts is a Tacoma native. Before joining The News Tribune, he worked as a freelance writer and part-time cowhand on a cattle ranch in Northern Idaho. He writes about small business, personal finance and other business issues.
John Gillie writes about the aerospace and airline industries, commercial development and consumer issues. During his 30-year-tenure at The News Tribune he has covered issues as diverse as the Native American fishing rights disputes, crime and the courts, the wood products industry and energy. He lived in Tacoma with his family for 25 years, but now lives in Kent because his wife heads a five-state non-profit foundation headquartered in Ballard, and it only seemed a sensible compromise to make considering their workplaces are 40 miles apart.
Kelly Kearsley has been a business reporter at The News Tribune since 2005. She covers the Port of Tacoma and international trade. Being born and raised in Spokane she’s used to living in cities with inferiority complexes and, in fact, prefers it. Prior to working at The News Tribune, she spent three years as a reporter for The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon and another year working stints for The Associated Press and Seattle Times. She graduated from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and miniature schnauzer.
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From The Associated Press:
Microsoft Corp.'s digital encyclopedia, Encarta, might have pushed its printed competitors off the shelves in some homes. Now Encarta itself has fallen victim to changes in technology, made all but obsolete by the likes of Web search and Wikipedia.
Microsoft said it will shut down the online version of Encarta in October and will discontinue sales of the PC software by June.
Encarta was first sold to computer users as a CD-ROM-based encyclopedia in 1993. Critics questioned some of Microsoft's editorial decisions, including the fact that Encarta's dictionary had a photo of Bill Gates and not one of John F. Kennedy. But the electronic knowledge base was an early example of the advantages of digital content over the printed word. Encarta was quickly searchable, and could pack more images, plus video and sound.
Encarta gained a further edge over bound volumes in the early days of the Web because it could pull down updated content while its printed competitors' articles grew stale.
But CD-ROM reference materials quickly turned to relics as high-speed Internet access spread, Web search improved and ventures like Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia compiled and constantly updated by volunteers, gained credibility. Microsoft's free and premium versions of Encarta suffered.
"People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past," the Redmond, Wash.-based company said in a statement on its Web site.
The company said customers with subscriptions to its premium Encarta service will get a refund for fees paid beyond April 30, but will be able to access the content with their user names and passwords until the service goes off-line. Encarta Japan will shut down on Dec. 31.
