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Many well-known users of LiveJournal.com received a message on behalf of Brad Fitzpatrick, founder of LiveJournal.com, who arrived in Moscow recently. In the message they are invited to a "Brad FitzParty" on Wednesday evening. On this same day a press conference will be held at the headquarters of , involving and Barak Berkowitz, CEO of Six Apart, to which LiveJournal belongs.
At the press conference SUP-Fabrik CEO Andrew Paulson and the head of its blog service (CBO) Anton Nosik will talk about the deal, under which SUP receives a licence to support and develop the Russian-language part of LiveJournal. Nosik has previously declared that their company will not go bust even if his "pessimistic" forecast for the growth of the blogosphere on the .ru zone for the coming year fails to materialize (an increase in the number of bloggers from a million to two and a half million and a rise in the number of readers from the current 6-7 million to 15-20 million).
Well-known web-designer Artemiy Lebedev has created an , devoted to his unusual "screen" keyboards. As commercial activity is prohibited in LiveJournal diaries, this hinders feedback from readers. The question of how much these previously unseen keyboards cost remains unanswered. Lebedev promises to start taking orders in December. The second question that bothers Western readers is "why not OLED?!" The criticism of the LCD matrix used in Optimus, comes down to its slow reaction and insufficient reliability.
analysts believe that IT companies in Russia will grow at a rate of 20-25% a year, while telecommunications companies – at just 15-17%. The reason lies in the fact that the mobile telephone market in Russia has reached saturation point, while the IT market is still in its early stages of development. However, the analysts also see obstacles for the growth of the IT sector: in the low level of openness, conditioned by opaque order-placement systems, acute competition and the mass use of so-called "grey" schemes in importing and wholesale selling.
Investment company will use product placement in computer worlds, the residents of which can invest their game capital into unit investment funds. Under agreement with the game, players can use a magic "Bank" to purchase special artefacts called PIFs, which rise in value dependent on the actions of portfolio managers. It is proposed that the portfolio managers are categorized as "magicians". The value of the PIFs will change in accordance with real fluctuations in the value of shares in unit trust funds, managed by Finam. According to executive director Maxim Churin, the Wizards World partnership with Finam is unique for the Russian online gaming market: "and 10% of our audience deal in finance, while 20% are executives".
According to research conducted by , books and stationery products are the most popular purchases made over the Internet by Russians; 56% of Internet users have acquired these items. Second comes household appliances (40%) and then computers (39%). Fourth come music CDs and software, with 28% each and fifth – cosmetics and perfumery (20%), along with cinema, theatre and concert tickets. Food products come right at the end of the list (9%). The most popular Internet book stores are (40%) and (15%). The main form of payment is cash to a courier (74%), followed by credit cards (10%). Only 8% of users have used electronic payment systems.
23-year old Igor Ushakov of the Sverdlovsk Region downloaded the demo version of CMS of the Kaliningrad-based and detected a number of vulnerabilities. He managed to break into the company’s website and download the commercial version of CMS. He then demanded money from the company to prevent these vulnerabilities becoming universally accessible. Ushakov asked for 3000 US Dollars and then a thousand each month thereafter. The law enforcement agencies succeeded in detaining Ushakov and he has been imposed a one-year sentence in a penal colony and a fine of 10,000 roubles.
The St. Petersburg division of Google Research and Development comprises 10 former members of staff from , while the new Google structure is headed by former head of the Russian division of Borland Pavel Feldman. In the summer Borland laid off over 20% of its staff worldwide. About 200 people lost their jobs in St. Petersburg who, in addition to Google, are now employed in local development centres of , , , and . Russia will become the second country after the USA to house two Google development centres; the first was opened in Moscow.
A new section on the WAP portal of the MegaFon mobile operator called "Wikipedia". The operator resolved not to create its own encyclopaedia, preferring instead to use the content of the , only making a WAP gateway to access it. Subscribers can read and edit the worldwide encyclopaedia using their telephone. What is interesting is that access to the WAP site, through which access to Wikipedia is achieved, is a chargeable service, and the subscriber also has to pay for the WAP traffic from his telephone.
The list of countries where citizens can use the payments system has now expanded to 48 and includes Ukraine and Russia. True, citizens of these countries can presently only send money through PayPal, but they cannot top up their account or withdraw funds. Residents of Russia are also unable to receive payments from other users of the system. Of the 17 currencies with which PayPal operates, there is still . The only thing that the system has given Russians is access to Western stores and auctions, including , which owns PayPal.
Tourists travelling by train to the Sverdlovsk and Tyumen regions, many of whom carry laptop computers and other Internet-compatible devices, will be offered an Internet service. Sverdlovsk Railways first offered the ability to access the Internet 3 years ago, albeit then from specialized Internet compartments.
