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Encyclopedia Site Overloaded

By Associated Press

Published: Wed, February 27, 2008 - 7:21 am Last Updated: Wed, February 27, 2008 - 7:41 am

Short URL: http://wkrg.com/a/10810/

WASHINGTON (AP) - The people who put together an Internet-based
Encyclopedia Of Life had hoped their new site would be popular. But
it may have ended up being a little too popular. The computers
supporting the site ended up being overwhelmed and the site ended
up crashing for a while. Organizers of the site say it logged 11.5
million hits over 5 1/2 hours, including two hours of down time
when it made its debut yesterday. The site features Web pages
devoted to different species of life on Earth. It launched with
pages for 30,000 species and eventually will have more than a
million pages. Encyclopedia founding chairman Jesse Ausubel
acknowledged the site has been "overwhelmed by traffic" but
declares himself "thrilled" with the response so far.