Since Feb,1 Golden Telecom has launched commercial operation of its Golden Wi-Fi network of 6,700 access nodes covering about 800,000 Moscow households. It offers unlimited broadband internet for less than $20(500 RUR)/month or about $4(100 RUR)/hour for new subscribers. For those who participated in network beta-testing it offers free internet until March,1. These rather low costs are questionned by analysts considering GT's CEO Jean-Pierre Vendromme recent claims to reach $50 ARPU with 300,000-400,000 subscribers by 2010-2011.

Spam percent in Russian mail traffic reaches 70-80% according to Anna Vlasova, the head of analysts group for Kaspersky Lab, who reported on 2006 spam trends in Russian segment of the Web. Generally she admitted spam to become more diverse in subjects - law and audit consultancy, realtors, printing houses arrived - and more criminal. This year also made way for mobile spammers via SMS. Most spam in Russians' mailboxes origins from Russia (22%), US (20%) and China (11%) promoting medicines with Viagra on top and educational offers. Anna Vlasova also pointed at rising 'graphic' component in those messages which now score to 50% of the whole electronic garbage.

Founders of BlogLenta.ru, 'the first Russian blog-based information buro', launched a banner network for stand-alone bloggers Bloglife.ru. They aim to expand promotional opportunities of those who lack advantages of popular blogging platforms, such as LiveJournal.com. By now LJ got about 600,000 Russian subscribers while stand-alones count 8500 only. The network uses Bannerbank technology with 15% comission.

Ad campaign for dating service Loveplanet.ru affiliated with RBC Holding may cost up to $10 mln. According to press it became 5th top-advertiser on TV among mobile content providers including the telecom monsters MTS and Beeline. Yet the representatives of Finam, the major investor of the most popular Russian dating service Mamba, say they don't regard Loveplanet.ru as a competitor to Mamba network by now. Anyway, Mamba is not alone anymore.

Tour operators Orient buro and RVB-Alean group with joint market share 10-25% are investing together about $1mln in a single online-booking service. They release beta in april and plan to have it aunched by september. According to Orient's CEO Anatoliy Gusev the project is too expensive to go for it on one's own. However forecasters suppose thå present partnership signals of companies' future plan to merge, although RVB-Alean disproved this assumption. In any case most players aren't ready to follow these two within the next few years, analysts say.

The police department for cases of high importance in Yaroslavl region accused Andrey Novikov from Rybinsk of public appeals to extremism. The man has been sending emails to few regional newspapers, in one of those he offends local and federal authorities along with whole Russian nation using Al-Qaeda-like figurative style. Andrey Novikov, now under trial, probably to be sentenced to compulsory psychiatric treatment. Apart from 'poetic' details this case aroused some public disturbance on how did police trace Alexey Novikov and whether Russian's personal data within the Internet are open to governmental security services.

St.Petersbourg city police department held 7 raids in retail points between Jan,9 - Jan,23 in the course of antipiracy operation. Plus after a single warehouse examination 600,000 illegal copies of digital products were confiscated while the whole last year activity resulted in 2,000,000 copies. Department spokeman says there's a plan to turn the point of antipiracy efforts to warehouses in 2007. Supposedly the new accent on quantitative results that many regional police authorities emphasize at the moment traces to government's liabilities in front of entering WTO.

Sergey Baidakov, the head of central administrative disctrict of Moscow, presented his personal blog on administration official website. Official statement says he is not only to keep interactive dialogue with site visitors, but also to provide his bio details, rare photos and to share favorite links. In his first post Sergey Baidakov explains that it was online-conference with the district residents last november that inspired him to expand online activity. The other side of officials' blogs multiplication lies in few recent incidents with anonymous bloggers posting under local authorities' names. Sergey Baidakov however declares he's not afraid of tough topics and welcomes comments even without logging in which gives him advantage comparing to Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose personal blog accepts no comments.

Cybercrime growth stopped in Russia, - the head of Ministry's technical operations buro Boris Miroshnikov declared yesterday. He reports 14,000 crimes in hi-tech within 2006, the same number within 2005. "I may state the growth of computer crime stopped in our country", concluded Boris Miroshnikov. It is also reported that more than a half of those cases were about "illegal access to computer data" law, which mostly means personal data from bank accounts.

"The statistics doesn't meet reality", claimed Informzashchita deputy director Maxim Amm, "Actually, the least percent of cyber attacks have been tracked". He advised to consider those figures with scepticism. Experts deny objectivity of Ministry figures for few reasons. According to Infowatch marketing director Denis Zenkin, Russian companies hide 90-95% of such cases because of reputational concerns. On the other hand it has become more difficult to track such crimes considering the growth of hackers' skill. Besides, the number of attacks rises in proportion with Internet growth, according to Cisco's business development manager Alexei Lukatsky. He also explained mentioning US practice that Internet expansion along with tougher cybercrime treatment impacts hackers' effectiveness.

The forum of the Echo of Moscow radio website has been forced to close. Echo of Moscow editor-in-chief Aleksey Venediktov says the forum needs moderating in view of the numerous nationalistically colored messages, but there is nobody available to moderate the forum on a voluntary basis. Radio station representative Aleksandr Pliushchev adds that the website will develop "more modern" forms of communication with visitors, such as blogs. Blog owners – Echo of Moscow journalists – will be responsible for moderating their blogs. The question is just how much democracy will be allowed by this scheme. Echo of Moscow radio likes to talk about its freedom of speech, and forums seem to be a better symbol of it rather than moderated blogs.