About

posted on 05 February 2008 11:34

Blocks and Files is an IT storage news-led website featuring every bit of storage news it can get its hands on. The main geographies it covers are North America, Europe and any other English-speaking area.

Blocks and Files is a unit of Lean & Mean Ltd.

About Lean & Mean

This business was originally founded to produce high quality published books without the overhead of traditional publishing operations. As Marketing On Demand Ltd.¹, it published its first book, Buying & Selling Porsches², in 1998, and its first mountaineering guide, under the Void imprint, Swiss Rock: Granite Bregaglia, in 2000. After publishing several guides in bound book format it progressed to online or internet-distributed eBooks in PDF format, and has since produced in excess of 100 guides covering motoring, outdoors and niche lifestyle activity topics.

Contact Details

Lean & Mean Ltd., 4 Barnfield Avenue, Shirley, Croydon, CRO 8SE, UK.

Tel: +44 (0)208 662 1176

Activities

Lean & Mean has four lines of business:

1. Publishing sportscar buying guides in eBook format.

2. Publishing mountaineering guides, in both print and eBook formats.

3. Publishing lifestyle and walking guides in eBook format.

4. Publishing IT storage news online through www.blocksandfiles.com.

	More than 65 sportscar buying guides, including Ferrari, Porsche, BMW, Jaguar and many other marques, sold as eBooks through eBook wholesalers.
	Alpine rock climbing guides supplied as printed books via Cordee of Leicester, England, and as eBooks via online sites such as Needle Sports.
	Walking and other general activity guides.
	Independent IT storage news and views.

Blocks and Files

Lean & Mean became aware that it was possible to both speed up storage news editorial cycles and broaden the scope of storage news. These are the key attributes underlying the Blocks and Files news site.

The founding editor is Chris Mellor who has extensive online publishing and storage writing expertise. He was the founding editor for BTC's Storage magazine, the UK's first dedicated print storage magazine. He joined IDG's online Techworld in late 2003 and edited its storage knowledge centre, with added involvement in its green IT section from 2007 onwards.

In early 2008 he founded the Blocks and Files storage news media operation.

Editorial and writing staff

Martin Edwards, news writerr

Majid Soltani, staff reporter

Paul Warren, staff reporter

Wendy Matthews, staff writer

US representative: Tony Mellor, Santa Cruz, CA.

Contact Details

Blocks & Files,

4 Barnfield Avenue, Shirley, Croydon, CRO 8SE, UK.

Tel: +44 (0)208 662 1176

Please send storage news-related e-mails to editorial@blocksandfiles.com.

Website-specific queries should be sent to webmaster@blocksandfiles.com.

Blocks and Files is pleased to discuss embargo arrangements and finds them mutually useful.

Corrections

Blocks and Files will be pleased to receive comments and/or correction requests for matters of fact in its articles. We will treat all such requests seriously and deal with them promptly. We value highly the relationship we have with storage product and service suppliers and their agencies and aim to keep it strong and healthy.

Supplier-provided material

Apart from press releases in the Releases section, Blocks and Files writes its own copy. If suppliers and/or their agencies wish us to consider supplied opinion - or other - pieces then we'll be pleased to do so and choose to include them as openly supplier-attributed articles if we think, in our editorial judgement, that they are interesting. We may request sub-editing changes. Apologies if this sounds patronising.

Sponsorship and Advertising

We'll be pleased to receive and discuss any sponsorship and advertising proposals. The site exists to make money be providing an audience of people, knowledgable in IT storage matters, to potential sponsors and advertisers.

We aim to be information-led first and foremost, which means that potentially distracting material such as initial advertising display pages preventing access to the site for a few seconds, are, regretfully, not wanted.

We provide a simple, flat-rate sponsorship and advertising structure with no advertising sales team or customised solutions to meet your overall communications needs. Apologies again but we can't do that.

The sponsorship rate is obtained through e-mail. We prefer half yearly or annual contracts for these please.

Sponsorship button blocks will be displayed on each page in a randomised sequence of sponsors. These will be hot-linked to the sponsor's own site. Sponsors will also be able to use the site for white paper distribution and the provision of quarterly opinion pieces.

Cross-links

We'll be pleased to receive requests and consider them.

Reprints, Copying and hosting of articles

All the material on the site, except the press releases, is our copyright. Please apply to us for copying or re-distribution rights for a feature or report. We'll be happy to discuss this.

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^{1 Note. The original Marketing On Demand Ltd. closed down. The current Marketing On Demand Ltd is a completely separate company.}

^{2. Now out of print.}

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^{Lean & Mean Limited is a company registered in the United Kingdom, as company number 6536459.}