Европейский глава SixApart, приехавший на прошлой неделе в Россию развивать блоги и пиарить TypePad, оказался не готов к тому, что в России интересуются только ЖЖ и "Супом".

The website of the Tax Inspectorate in Moscow has posted a blacklist of heads of companies, cooperation with which could lead to problems. The list contains ten names, each of whom is an entrepreneur who has been disqualified or fined by the court for submitting deliberately false information to the tax inspectorate when registering a company. This is not the first time the tax inspectorate has published such lists. In March information was published on the supposed locations of registration of fly-by-night companies and their nominee directors. At that time the list of nominee directors contained famous names, especially that of Georgi Boos, Governor of the Kaliningrad Region and Chairman of the Board of the "Magazin goryaschikh putiovok" [hot tours shop] Andrey Ozolin.

Today the RF State Duma adopted, in its second reading, the fourth part of the Civil Code, to which over a thousand corrections have been received. An important correction that has been adopted is the exclusion of a domain name from the list of protected objects of intellectual property. Previously the draft legislation proposed that it be required of the register to check the domain being registered against existing similar company or commercial names. Nevertheless, problems do remain, as the current version of the draft legislation all the same contains mention of domains. In particular, the registration of a trademark is not permitted if a similar name exists in a domain name.

Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft, visited Moscow on a business trip. During the visit there were a number of meetings with the First Deputy Prime Minister of the RF Dmitry Medvedev, the RF Minister of Information Technologies and Communications Leonid Reiman and the RF Minister of Education and Science Andrey Fursenko. Gates also presented reports to the annual Microsoft Business Forum 2006, he appeared at a seminar with leading experts in innovation and IT, and a seminar with young entrepreneurs and scientists.

"The last time I came to Russia was in 1997, and I did not expect to see such considerable changes", noted Gates. "I was simply delighted at the volume of discussion in which I was able to be involved today with representatives of Russian business and senior government officials. Russia has become economically stronger and this creates a good springboard to move the country on the way to the development of an innovative economy".

On Wednesday 8th November, the 4th international conference "The problem of spam and its solutions" was held in Moscow, organized by Kaspersky Laboratories and Mail.ru. The interesting reports made to the conference including the appearance of Victor Naumov, partner in the legal firm Beiten Burkhardt. He believes that Russia does not have an extensive law-enforcement practice relative to spammers, in connection with the emergence of a new federal law "On advertising", which has been almost unused in relation to spammers. The more "technical" reports discussed new methods to combat spam, including advanced versions of the "Turing Test". On the whole the conference concluded that spam was inevitable.

The Russian company Akella has concluded an agreement with two foreign gaming companies, RTL Playtainment and Strategy First to release several projects of these foreign companies in Russia and the CIS. Among the unusual projects, one highlight is the game Zoom - Paparazzi im Einsatz, which is simulator of journalistic activity. The main aim of the game is to photograph intriguing and delicate situations. Obstacles come in the form of nightclub bouncers, bodyguards of the targets and much more.

Yandex, in cooperation with Nokia, has released a search plug-in for the Mobile Search programme, which is distributed free of charge and which operates on all Nokia mobile devices on the Series 60 platform. It is true to say that the user has to get through a reasonably tough quest to install the programme. "Nokia today actively maintains an audience of mobile users on the Internet. Now they are met there by Yandex", explains Alexei Tretyakov, Commercial Director of the search engine. Alas, though, it is in fact not quite like that: first of all the audience is met by the Yahoo! search engine. Only then, after running the separate plug-in, installing and setting it up, can you actually get to Yandex.