Judging by year-end roundups of events in Western IT publications, one gets to think that these publications fall into two categories, namely those for readers who can count to ten, and those for readers who can count to three. Therefore, wrapping up events of the past year in our journal, we have compiled the world's only digest of the most notable 2006 events in the Russian segment of the Internet, covering all major deals and new projects, court proceedings and governmental programs, main IT conferences and the most noteworthy events in the life of Russian Internet surfers.

The group of companies Rambler Media has announced the release of a new version of the Rambler-ICQ messenger based on ICQ 5.1. The new client is even more integrated into Rambler's social services: Vision video hosting service, Planet blogging platform, and photo gallery service called Photo. Now the client can be used to view videos and receive blog and photo gallery comment alerts. The new release has been a long time in coming. The original ICQ 5.1 client was released back in May. Many did not expect to ever see the Russian version of 5.1 as the ICQ 6.0 client is said to be coming soon.

The website "President of Russia – to School-age Citizens" has added a new section entitled "School of Presidents". Visitors are invited to take a quiz of ten questions. For example, "Imagine that you are President of Russia. You have invited an Arab sheikh over for breakfast to discuss world oil prices over a cup of coffee. What kind of treat would you offer him? What can be served with coffee?" Visitors are offered a choice of four answers of which three are different pork products. Those who successfully pass the test are invited to join the "school". The study course features somewhat more relevant information about the country's administrative and territorial system, presidential powers and functions, and suchlike. Andrey Varlamov, deputy head of the Presidential Press Service Department, says that Vladimir Putin is familiar with the website content.