br23 blog - minsk, belarus

I’m shocked. My dad just called from Minsk an told me that I won the main award at the 4th National Web Content Contest, organized by TUT.BY. This is the most popular Web award in Belarus, excluding the professional contests among graphic Web designers.
Br23 blog won the first place in blogs category, and the grand […]

I sent an e-mail to Microsoft about it several years ago, but since then nothing has changed. If in your browser settings you chose Belarusian as the first language (variable HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE or Tools | Internet Options | Languages in Internet Explorer), then all the materials on support.microsoft.com would always appear to you in Russian. Even […]

I think that Google Print is a wonderful project! And I totally agree with PC Magazine columnist John C. Dvorak that it should be nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for doing this, instead of getting all the flak from the publishers and writers…
Much Ado over Google Book Search
The fuss over this book-search initiative is idiotic […]

Belarus: Opposition Politicians Embrace Internet, Despite Digital Divide
With newspapers, radio, and TV under state control, the Belarusian opposition is using new technologies to get their message out — in particular the Internet. All the candidates campaigning in the 19 March presidential election have launched websites, with many users taking part in online discussions. However, these […]

In order to bring some order, I’ve deleted some links and added several new ones on the right pane of this blog page. In case you know of any good blogs about Belarus and Eastern Europe in general, please, let me know. Also if you are a fellow-blogger and would like to exchange reciprocal links […]

I’ve heard that Google agreed to self-censor its search results on Chinese Google (google.cn). Although I couldn’t repeat this behaviour in my own browser (google.cn immediately redirects to google.com), some of my friends in Google Talk confirmed that when you search Google Images for “Tiananmen” it only shows nice fountains and buildings on that square. […]

I have long ago given up on my paper organizer, and finally I’ve bought two palm PDA’s for myself and my wife. It’s a cute (see photo), simple and cheap model. Unfortunately, it is much cheaper in the U.S. than in Europe. I bought it for about $140 each, and in the States you could […]

23 (imdb entry) is a great movie. It’s a German production, and I decided to watch it on a Saturday evening almost by accident, just because I always look out for my favorite number. And I think I just discovered another dimension to my own internet identity, with some strikiing similarities…
“The movie is based on […]

Google.by is owned by unknown cybersquatters (as it appears, they are most probably related to a Minsk web studio ActiveMedia). I first wrote about it in July 2003 [1]. At first, they had a graphical interface totally different from Google and their own database, which appeared to be just a tiny index of several thousand […]

Almost by accident I’ve received six back issues of “New Scientist” from 2002 which I read yesterday and today with great interest. I was quite surpised to see that even short-term forecasts in science don’t seem to hold up. Here are just a few funny ones that I’ve spotted:
• Cloning. The January issue predicts […]