Adoption dream unlikely at Russian orphanage

Moscow, Russia (CNN) -- "Though Oksana is 4 years old, she is much shorter than other children who are a year younger. She barely talks, and yet doesn't hesitate to climb up in her puffy dress to sit next to a visitor on a couch, after flashing an impish smile.
Administrators at Children's Home Number 59 in Moscow say Oksana was found by police, after apparently being abandoned. She was then delivered to a hospital and eventually ended up at this orphanage."

Russian families if they do adopt only want healthy babies with no problems and children that look very Russian with blond hair and blue eyes.

"I'm so angry [at] this dialogue on TV that we should abandon this," Tatarenko says. "Americans and Europeans take children of all ages, with different diseases...."

Read the full story by Ivan Watson at CNN

Облако над Москвой Cloud over Moscow city

Eyewitnesses made a curious video of a very strange cloud hovering above Moscow. The video, which was posted on the Mobile Reporter website, shows a cloud which looks like a huge white-rimmed whirlpool.

The video was made on October 7, on the Moscow Ring Road.

The phenomenon, which many Muscovites could observe in the western part of the city, is an optical effect, meteorologists said.

Read the full story at PRAVDA

Results of the International Type Design Competition “Modern Cyrillic 2009″ announced

The results of the International Type Design Competition “Modern Cyrillic 2009″ were announced last week. The competition took place in Moscow and was held by ParaType with support by the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications of Russia. It was dedicated to the 300th anniversary of Peter the Great’s reform of Russian typography. This event follows the success of “Kirillitsa‘99” which took place ten years ago. The competition judges included well-known Russian designers and font specialists representing leading Russian type foundries and schools of type design. Cyrillic typeface projects and completed typefaces created and/or released after January 1, 2006 were eligible.

Read the full story

New Rules for Russia's Cops: No Bribes or Wild Sex

"Police in Russia have long had a reputation for three things: bribery, cruelty and ineptitude. Now the government is determined to change that image by teaching police that taking drugs or bribes or befriending criminals are probably all bad ideas. At a time when protests are breaking out across the country over Moscow's handling of the financial crisis, the Ministry of Internal Affairs says it has drawn up a new code of conduct for the police and will distribute it to every officer by the end of 2009. The aim: to turn Russia's police into polished professionals.

The code goes into striking detail on how officers should behave both in public and private. Police, it says, should avoid casinos, "indiscriminate sex" and "questionable relationships with people with negative public reputations such as criminals." Drinking on duty, talking on cell phones on public transport, using drugs, offering or accepting bribes and engaging in "gross jokes and wicked irony" are also out."

read more | digg story

Guy Kawasaki: The Power of ‘No Bull Shiitake’

The Commonwealth Club of Silicon Valley
Santa Clara, CA
Nov 17th, 2008

via FORA.tv

For nearly 30 years, Kawasaki has earned a notable reputation as a venture capitalist, entrepreneur and popular blogger.

The former Apple evangelist will share his provocative insights and commonsense practices for succeeding in today's business world.

Kawasaki's "no bull shiitake" approach is a reality check that covers everything from customer service to competition, innovation to marketing - The Commonwealth Club of Silicon Valley.


Everything I Need to Know About Entrepreneurship I Learned From My Comrades in Moscow

Russian telcos to sell 1.8 million iPhones a year

Russian carriers have committed to sell around 1.8 million Apple iPhones per year after reaching a distribution deal with the U.S. company, a Russian newspaper reported on Friday citing sources. Apple's iPhones are not yet officially sold in Russia, but they have swiftly become a status symbol in the Russian capital.

read more | digg story

Russians, Gobble Up Hacked iPhones!

Russian teens SMS

MOSCOW — In the Soviet days, Russians asked their American friends to bring blue jeans, rock records and other Western goods into the country. Today, Russians can buy almost anything they want here, but they are still begging for one item: Apple Inc.'s slick iPhone.

However the iPhone has not been released in Russia officially because Apple is still negotiating with Russian mobile service providers.

Moscow has become an iPhone trader's paradise. Russian Web sites were offering the new 3G iPhone for about $1,200, six times the $199 base price in the U.S. Even Apple's first-edition 8-gigabyte iPhone was going for ($775.00) almost as much at Moscow's Gorbushka electronics market.

However not all Russian and buyers are all paying astronomical prices for their iPhones. Some buy the phones for themselves when abroad on travel or business trips, while others request them from friends traveling in the U.S. or Europe. Then they pay a small fee to have them unlocked and they are ready to use their new iPhone.

Read the full story at Fox News.

Apple in no hurry to bring iPhone to Russia

"MOSCOW/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Unauthorised sales of unlocked iPhones in Russia and China are flourishing, but Apple Inc seems in no hurry to make deals with operators to sell the nifty device in these huge markets officially.

Despite the iPhone being set for launch in 49 more countries including Honduras and Guinea-Bissau, China and Russia -- home to almost half the world's mobile users -- are not on the list.

Operators in those countries have proved reluctant to hand over part of their iPhone-related revenues to Apple -- a model Apple succeeded in imposing in early deals it made with carriers in other countries, who got exclusive sales rights in return.

"Right or wrong, Apple needs to show good sales volumes. Russia is extremely profitable for it, all the more so because an iPhone shipped from the U.S. market is not serviced under warranty. That saves Apple around $70 per unit," says analyst Eldar Murtazin at Mobile Research Group in Moscow.

Others say Apple is losing out."

"The total number of iPhones brought into Russia in suitcases or sent by courier is seen rising to 600,000-700,000 units by the end of 2008 from 400,000 by the end of June -- a significant number in the context of worldwide iPhone sales."

"Russia's top three mobile operators -- Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), Vimpelcom and MegaFon -- have not disclosed any substantive talks with the iPhone maker."

Read More

By Maria Kiselyova and Sophie Taylor - analysis

Russian Search Engine: Where Google Isn't Goliath

"Want to know the distance from Moscow to St. Petersburg, the best place in town for borscht, or the weather in Novosibirsk? In most of the world you might Google the answer. But a Russian would more likely "Yandex" it. Few outside of Russia have heard of the Yandex search engine, but that may soon change. Yandex has 44 percent of the Russian market -- 10 points ahead of Google -- and is now the No. 2 search outfit in Europe, according to researcher comScore. Yandex is expected to list its shares on Nasdaq this fall, fetching as much as $2 billion. "

read more | digg story

Apple news for the week

The Moscow News is reporting that Apple Hesitating to Sell Its New iPhone in Russia. "At an annual software conference in San Francisco, Steve Jobs, the founder and head of Apple Inc., presented a new model of the popular iPhone communicator for 3G networks. Russia and China may have felt left out, however - Apple does not yet plan to sell the latest version of its phone in these countries. But they should not worry - anyone in either country will be able to buy the fashionable device, no matter what Jobs says. As more phones are dumped on the American market than it can absorb, some of the extra ones will find their way to distributors who unlock them (a simple enough procedure) and send them on to Russia. For Apple, this is a win-win situation: they corner new markets without investing a cent in services networks."

Speedy up Mac OS X for free with Secrets

Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

iPhone is HOT and it seems just about everyone is talking about Apples little phone that could change the way people use their phones check out some of the articles from this week: Why the new iPhone will squash BlackBerry, Selling big business on the iPhone, How the iPhone puts a bomb under mobile networks, Why the iPhone 3G is a gold mine for Apple, even at $199, Why iPhone Wannabes Don't Cut It.

There have been a number of reports this week about security flaws in XP (no big surprise), FireFox, and one possible new one for OS X. I always give the standard warning don't use P2P software and download programs as you will get more then you bargained for with this new little AppleScript.

Illegal iPhones, Apple of Russian Elites' Eyes

There are approximately 500,000 iPhone users in Russia -- a country where the phone is not officially for sale, according to Eldar Murtazin, head of analysis at Mobile Research Group in Moscow, citing data obtained from Russia's cellphone operators. The phones are bought in bulk in the United States, and an 8-gigabyte model sells in Russia for at least $700, nearly twice the price in the United States. Still, the price of an iPhone in Russia has fallen dramatically since its launch in the United States last year, when they went on sale here for $1,800. "Russian people love anything that is forbidden," said Murtazin, adding that iPhone sales in Russia are the third-highest in the world, after the United States and China (where the phone also cannot be sold legally).

read more | digg story