An English guide to Middle Urals

Meet the website AskUral.com — the illustrated English language guide to Middle Urals "backbone" region of Russia where Europe/Asia border is stretched. The capital of the Urals is the glorious city of Ekaterinburg, former Sverdlovsk, which welcomes guests (visit AskUral.com for info on how to visit) and is an expected venue for Expo 2020 World Fair!

Photo by Konstantin Mironov

'The Best Of Russia' photo set

See "The Best Of Russia" series of magnificent photos made in Russia in 2008—2011 at http://live-imho.livejournal.com/160261.html (the original website is http://thebestofrussia.ru/). Very impressive!

Political Wikipedism

In the course of Russia's current political troubles, I propose and promote a concept I call "political wikipedism". This deals with use of Wikipedia (as well as Open Source software) help-each-other experience to achieve political and social improvements in the country. I consider this a real and efficient way to happy life for everyone (Russians nowadays massively express desire for that).

Readers in US, Russia, Germany and India are the most pleased with Wikipedia Article Quality

Read the story "Readers in US, Russia, Germany and India are the most pleased with Wikipedia Article Quality" at http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/11/09/wikipedia-quality/

GNOME woes continued

Oh my gosh... Now, I am close to conclusion that KDE is, finally, better than GNOME 3. KDE beats GNOME... Voilà!

More Alina Bashirova

Two more amazing songs by Tatar pop singer Alina Bashirova (Алина Баширова, Алинә Бәширова). She is very talented, I like her very much!

Ялган (Yalgan)


Sin Ber Elmaysan (Син бер елмайсан)


And also one extra GREAT song, without a video: http://prostopleer.com/tracks/5081279QMDj

Akademichesky residential zone

Akademichesky is an innovative residential zone being constructed in Ekaterinburg, Russia. See the photo album by clicking the picture.

GNOME → XFCE (Unity woes)

God is the witness, I honestly tried to adopt Unity desktop environment for Ubuntu Linux, two times, and failed (Ubuntu forces Unity instead of older GNOME which now doesn't work with fresh 11.10 release). Unity is very awkward to me, and I suspect heavy Macintosh influence in it, and in my opinion Apple Corporation is a greedy sect worse than Microsoft. While I am in favor of Open Source / Wikipedia help-each-other principles (known in South Africa as Ubuntu). After all, I've found that XFCE environment works, possibly, even better than GNOME, so I'm gonna be an Ubuntu XFCE user from now on.

Ekaterinburg Expo 2020 bid blog

Watch the new blog!

http://expo2020-ekaterinburg.blogspot.com

Yes!

Russia to propose Yekaterinburg as Expo 2020 venue

16:33 02/08/2011 Russia will propose the Urals city of Yekaterinburg as a candidate to host the World Expo 2020 international exhibition, presidential Aide Arkady Dvorkovich told reporters on Tuesday.>>

Other news of the day

Alina Bashirova

I have discovered another excellent Tatar Pop Music video, "Sin, sin diep" by Alina Bashirova http://kiwi.kz/watch/wnw7ovtssr42/

Mapping the Russian Blogosphere

Read the announce of the upcoming report on research I participated in:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2010/10/russiaDC

Hosted by USIP’s Center of Innovation for Science, Technology & Peacebuilding, experts from Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Morningside Analytics will present their new research on the Russian blogosphere, while prominent Russia experts and notable bloggers will respond. The research team mapped this extensive social network, analyzing over 11,000 Russian language blogs to understand how politics is discussed, by whom, and if there is evidence of political and social mobilization in the blogosphere. The team also analyzed the blogosphere’s place within the overall Russian online and traditional media ecology, including discussion of top political YouTube videos.

update: Here's the permanent page for the project which now features Russian translation of the report (in PDF).

Хәния Фәрхи «Туган як» (Хания Фархи)

More photos

I have updated my photo galleries with several regional albums. Among the updates are:

Stavropol, Rostov-on-Don, Mirny, Yekaterinburg, Karelia, Sukhum, Delhi, Varanasi

and also the updated Phone Stuck Stock featuring Moscow smog photos; see the entire photo collection here

Myths & Facts

While Russian President Medvedev tells world leaders at Economic Forum in St. Petersburg how modernized and civilized Russia is, see what is going on in Russia in reality:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Russia's_main_airport_faces_high_danger_from_dump_birds

Rostov-on-Don Wiki-Conference 2010 - Meta

Rostov-on-Don Wiki-Conference 2010 - Meta: On May 8 and 9, 2010, the Russian-language IV Wiki-Conference was held in Rostov-on-Don city in the South of Russia. The first day location was Donskaya State Public Library and the second day discussions took place in the Artistic Photography School.

The event was organized with the support from Wikimedia Russia and gathered about 40 participants from different Russian cities. 9 reports were presented and 3 panel discussions held.

Russian language material on the meetup can be found at ru:Википедия:Вики-конференция 2010.

See information on other Russian Wiki-Conferences at Events#Wiki-Conference in Russia.

Did you also know

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Image_with_pinkish_color_banned.jpg

"Description Image with pinkish color banned.jpg
English: en:Green Dam Youth Escort recognizes pornographic images by analyzing skin-colored regions. It mistakenly assumed this image of pink pigs was pornography."

Didn’t you know what...

Moscow Sheremetyevo International Airport has a special warning http://svo.aero/en/flight-safety/brief/ at its website with a special plead for passengers to prevent them from jokes.

"While passing pre-flight inspection and answering questions of the Aviation Security Service personnel regarding your possessions and substances prohibited aboard an aircraft, make sure to refrain from irrelevant jokes, such as “It’s a bomb”, “This is acid”, etc. Such answers are treated as a statement that the passenger actually carries dangerous substances and items, and any such passenger may be deplaned and handed over to the transport police for further questioning and prosecution in accordance with the applicable laws of the Russian Federation, including institution of criminal proceedings under Article 207 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Fraudulent message of the act of terrorism”)."

English analysis of Runet reacting to terror

Here is a brief English analysis of how Russian "blogosphere" is reacting to today's Moscow terrorist attacks: (link).

Aerial photographs of Russia

I like this photo album very much!
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Aerial_photographs_of_Russia

Half a million for Russian Wikipedia

Russian Wikipedia has just passed the milestone of 500 000 articles!

I have announced this in English Wikinews story: "Russian Wikipedia reaches half a million articles".

P. S. Coverage in Wikimedia Blog: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/02/26/half-a-lemon-and-15000000/

update2: another major coverage: http://en.rian.ru/valdai_foreign_media/20100227/158029606.html