Livejournal is the main platform for Russian-speakers to blog on - on all topics. It also has a very healthy political community. Much larger, however, are the number of people who use the internet to meet and chat online. In fact, online dating is such a common practice (really, super, ridiculously common), that it’s made it’s way into pop music. One of the most popular songs is “Electronic Love:”
Hands down, the Russian favorite chat client is ICQ. I remember when i started college in ‘98 in the states we were all using ICQ. Then when I came back from France in ‘01, everyone had shifted to AIM. Well, overseas they’re still on ICQ. Runet also has its own versions of the most famous sites, such as википедия, RuTube, and VKontakte.
Runet is very well developed, and at least as woven into the lives of young Russians as Americans.
“Nobody bought the cake, so he’s going home in the trolleybus. But to who??”
This drawing reminds me of my first days and weeks in Russia. It captures the darkness (literally, the reverse of the “White Nights”), desolation, loniless, and sense of displacement, the sense of being absurdly out of place, and not knowing what to do about it.
The Russian internet community has a wealth of amateur photographers, and I’ve started a new site, Russian Photos, as a way to bring some of their pictures to the English-speaking world.
Generally drawn from the photography community Fotki.Yandex.Ru, these pictures will help open another window on the riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.
It’s updated several times throughout the day, so make sure to check it often!
Owen | Humour, Russia | Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
I signed up for a Yandex.ru account the other day, and when I received the confirmation email, I noticed a piece of standard text that differs slightly from the English.
Normally, on a confirmation email, something is written along the lines of “This is an automated message, no response is required.” In Russian, however, it’s “Это письмо написано роботом. Отвечать на него не нужно.” (This letter was written by a robot. No need to respond.)
I have in my head a vision of a robot, sitting behind a desk at the Yandex headquarters, writing all these letters . . . and getting very upset if someone responds! Although, maybe he’s kind of lonely just sitting all day, writing letters to people and never getting any responses back. Sounds like a good premise for a CGI movie.
Does anyone use Google Chrome? I just downloaded it, but haven’t given it a whirl yet. I like the minimalism, but I also have a bunch of add-ons for my Firefox that I find essential.
This is the beauty of the free market in action. Not only is there a credible challenger to Internet Explorer in Firefox (and Opera), but now Google decides that even that competition isn’t enough, and throw its hat in.
What is Europe? It’s actually a harder question to answer than it seems. Europe is both a political, cultural, and geographic concept, and Europe’s boundaries within each one of those categories are far from clear.
I have heard several people say, “country x is the geographical center of Europe.” I most recently heard it from some Belorussians. Apparently, enough people have made competing claims that the great Wikipedia has decided to help sort it all out.
Here’s a map of some claimants, though not all.
Some claimants to the Center of Europe
Some of the proposed locations also have neat monuments. I love random monuments/architecture like this:
If you’re looking for information about the military in the future, Lex Libertas is your number one destination. Type in Military 2011 on google, and Russian Military to Have New Uniforms by 2011 is the very first post to show up. I must have tagged it pretty well, because I haven’t found any other post to come up first with such a generic search. Maybe that “All in One SEO” optimization plugin was worth it!
Update: Uh, that post was number one, until this one superseded it. Wow, the power of tags. I’m only four years late getting on this train . . .
