More than 1,800 instances of the government-led abuse of Russian Internet users’ rights for unrestricted access to web-based information last year were brought to light in a muckraking report issued last week by a Russian civil rights group. Agora, an interregional association of Russian civil rights NGOs set up in 2005 to bring together lawyers …
Civil activists expose violations of Internet freedom across Russia Read More
Last week Rambler, a sizable Russian-language portal and a part of the Afisha-Rambler group, launched its new Internet browser that is said to be able to create customized news compilations for each specific user. The browser has evolved from the codes that once enabled Google’s open source Chromium projects, but also incorporates design elements and …
Rambler’s new user-friendly browser offers personalized news filtering Read More
Universarium.org, a month-old Russian online education project backed by leading Russian universities, is offering its first set of full lectures this Monday. Officially launched on December 23, 2013 as a “Christmas and New Year present,” the effort, backed by the Russian news agency RIA Science and the government-owned Agency for Strategic Initiatives, is designed to …
Millions of Russians ushered to free e-education as Universarium comes online Read More
In late December the Zelenograd microelectronics cluster, part of a major innovation and industrial center just outside Moscow, signed a memo of intent with a counterpart in Grenoble, France. The partners are pursuing a dual goal of upgrading sector-related education standards in the Russian region and intensifying interaction in industry-oriented R&D. The Moscow city administration …
Russian and French clusters to pool efforts in microelectronics Read More
Russia’s National Association of Business Angels (NABA), Atom Partners, a Moscow-based investment consultancy and high-tech investor, and RVC, the state-owned fund of funds dedicated to innovation, have presented the results of their 2013 business angel investing study. Tapping into a wide variety of open information sources, the partners found in their report that Russian business …
Schneider Electric, a Paris, France-based global expert in energy management, is opening its own R&D center in Skolkovo, the government-sponsored innovation hub still under construction just outside Moscow. The French company announced the planned center and received residency status in Skolkovo 18 months ago. Under the terms of a cooperation agreement inked between Schneider Electric …
The sizable agricultural and industrial region of Voronezh, some 500km south of Moscow, is expected to host GlassHouse, the first venture accelerator for IT projects in the entire Russian “Black Earth” region along the border with Ukraine. The accelerator will feature a premium-class office center and is designed to foster the rapid development of high-tech …
Voronezh region now has its first IT project accelerator Read More
Earlier this month, Softline Venture Partners, the venture arm of the Moscow-based international software licensor and IT service provider Softline Group, announced an investment of $750,000 in an advanced IT developer, TurboHeads, in neighboring Belarus. ActiveCloud, another Softline Group subsidiary and IaaS/SaaS solution provider, has also participated in the round of financing. The group is …
Russia’s Softline Group invests in Bielorussian cloud potential Read More
Facebook is actively pooling resources to develop apps with 70-80 Russian partners, a major leap forward from virtually no partners at all in Russia a year ago. In an exchange with the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, Julien Codorniou, the head of partnerships at Facebook EMEA (Emerging Markets in Europe and Asia), said a number …
Facebook steps up Russian programming partnerships Read More
Keeping with their prior attempts to keep Westerners as far away as possible from Russians’ Internet activity, Russian secret service agents have recently advised regional government officials across Russia to use domestic webmail services and stay away from overseas ones, such as Google’s Gmail. The recommendation, still off the record, came earlier this month from …
Tripadvisor, one of the world’s largest online travel planning sites, has tapped into Yandex.Maps search capabilities to show customers travel destinations and tourist sights in Russia and Turkey. It is the first international Internet major to acknowledge the advantages of the mapping service of the Russian search giant. The global company believes that with its wide …
Tripadvisor will use Yandex.Maps to guide tourists in Russia and Turkey Read More
RSC Group, a leading four-year-old developer and integrator of high performance computing (HPC) solutions in the former Soviet Union, announced last week that it has set a new world record of computing density of 1 petaFLOPS per server rack – five times greater than the company’s prior record of 211 teraFLOPS per rack set earlier …
