Profy

Most of the time Russian news agencies are not particularly eager to cover the latest gadgets (especially those introduced on another side of the ocean). The reason is simple: these novelties are rarely something that many people in Russia are actually interested in so why bother covering them if only a handful of people will want to read about such news.

Now imagine my surprise when the first thing I saw on TV yesterday morning was Steve Jobs introducing iPad - that was a story in the Russian news that went live mere hours after the press event took place in California. Honestly, I did not expect Russian TV to react so promptly to an event that did not really sound like anything remotely interesting to the vast majority of people in Russia...

Yesterday both the blogosphere and traditional media were engaged in a discussion about the rumors published in the New York Magazine about one of the largest newspapers, New York Times, finally being close to making the decision of beginning to charge online users for their news. This is hardly actually news given that we've already heard such rumors before and we still don't get any clarity about the model to be used here - or when this model will be implemented...

Every time that something appalling happens, I can't help but gasp at the numerous ways various scammers instantly come up with to make some quick profit on such situations. Unfortunately the latest Haiti earthquake is no exception this time - and I have just received a proof of it myself in my inbox.

Of course it is totally understandable that many people around the world are now willing to help Haiti relief and many do help with their money sending donations to various charities working in the country...

Some of you may remember that late last year the blogosphere was engaged in an animated discussion over decision of Mail.ru, one of the leading online portals in Russia, to replace search technology by local Yandex with that of Google.

Yandex (which is the leading search engine in Russia with a market share much higher than that of Google) has been the search technology of choice for Mail.ru for the previous 3 years but expiration of the contract provoked new negotiations with potential search partners...

Today the news agencies, mainstream media and the blogosphere are all abuzz about Google's decision officially announced earlier today regarding the company's intention to stop censoring search results on Google.cn, the search giant's destination site in China. Back in 2006 Google was heavily criticized for their decision to agree to implement censorship on the site at all - but since it was the only way for the company to enter the giant (and growing) online market in China, the decision was that censored search was better than no search at all...

The New Year vacation is normally the time when I reevaluate the results of the previous year and consider plans for the upcoming year. This year these thoughts are more or less focused on various tech-related aspects for two reasons. The first reason includes me getting an iPod Touch as a gift and spending probably too much time in the App Store downloading and buying apps - and then even more time playing with them on the gadget...

Can you imagine going to YouTube following a link on Twitter to watch some video recommended by a friend as a funny one (though NSFW) and since you are not at work, you feel perfectly safe clicking the link to watch it as this is exactly the activity you want to be involved in right now. And all of a sudden, instead of seeing the familiar player interface loading the video itself, you are served an error message reading something like "Sorry, this content is not available at your location at the moment. You will be able to watch this video in 2 hours...

Due to some urgent work I had to finish over the week, I have left my email inbox unattended for a few days - which normally results in a huge overload and a few hours to sort everything out as a result. This time is no different other than it is Christmas day today on the web (I mean the English-speaking portion of the world wide web here, of course) so there are some difference that I have noticed that I could not ignore and decided to share here.

First of all, my spam folder is full of holiday wishes - both from the real companies I know for some reason and from spammers...

The situation with Apple iPhone in Russia is a very peculiar one but Russian mobile carriers still seem to believe in the geeky gadget - believe in it enough to arrange for the new model, iPhone 3GS sales in Russia even despite of the disaster with the previous model, iPhone 3G.

The very first iPhone model was never officially sold in Russia but Russian users still managed to buy their gadgets from various online stores that brought the devices in illegally here. iPhones were brought here in suitcases full of the gadgets - and easily found the buyers on the gray market...