LinguaLeo emerged last week as the winner of the annual BIT competition, Russia’s primary innovation and entrepreneurship contest with entrants from all across the country. LinguaLeo is a web service that teaches foreign languages using popular TV serials, books, and contextual dialogues.
The Moscow city government has signaled its preliminary approval for a five year city informatization program on Tuesday. The draft proposal of the program concludes that the whole initiative would cost 329.5 billion rubles, about $11 billion –a quarter of the city’s annual budget – and would be rolled out from 2012-2016. Following a series of public …
$11 billion to be poured in Moscow e-city development program Read More
Russia’s national telecommunication operator Rostelecom inked an agreement earlier this month with Sitronics, the country’s largest producer of microelectronic devices, to produce microchips containing the electronic signatures of Russian citizens. These microchips are to be integrated to conventional banking cards, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported.
Yandex and Rambler have teamed up in an bilateral exchange of search and advertising services. Starting today, Rambler’s search services will be powered by Yandex and Rambler will join Yandex.Direct, Yandex’s Ad Network.
National telecommunications operator Rostelecom, state-owned fund of funds Russian Venture Company (RVC) and Moscow incubator Digital October are to launch Knowledge Stream, a distance learning project for students, news agency ITAR TASS reports.
St. Petersburg – In addressing participants at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum last Friday, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s speech did not reveal any substantially new position regarding his government’s now established stance on modernization, but innovation was nevertheless put forward as the first and foremost theme in the President’s address. “Modernization is the only way to address …
VTB Capital Asset Management announced last week it has invested in COMDI, a leading player on the Russian video conferencing market. Founded in 2009, COMDI specializes in web conferences as well as online training and broadcasts. Before this round of financing, COMDI was funded by its founders and an undisclosed business angel.
The client base of Tricolor TV, Russia’s leading satellite TV provider, rose by 10% between January and April 2011, reaching 8 million subscribers with 85% purchasing TV packages., The company expects to increase its subscriber base to 10 million households by the end of 2011, announced Tricolor TV General manager Vyacheslav Mordachev last week.
During a visit to Kazan yesterday, Google Russia representative Vladimir Dolgov praised Tatarstan for its Internet penetration rates, which stand among the highest in Russia. Having noticed the large quantity of schools with Internet connections and local WIFI hotspots, Dolgov said that Tatarstan “has all the necessary foundations for further development of Internet and online …
Tartarstan confirms momentum on Russian Internet scene Read More
Leading Russian mobile operator MegaFon announced on June 10 that it has acquired NetByNet, a fixed broadband Internet, digital TV and IP telephony operator. The value of this transaction is approximately $270 million with the final amount depending on financial performance of the company in 2011, MegaFon explained.
Prominent Russian venture fund Almaz Capital Partners has provided a round of financing for Tallinn based online dating service Flirtic, the latter reported in a news release yesterday. The undisclosed amount will be used for the development of Flirtic in Russian and English speaking communities.
Microsoft has denied any intention to hand over Skype encryption algorithms to the FSB, Russia’s Security Service. At a press conference held yesterday morning, Microsoft’s representative in Russia, Nikolai Pryanishnikov, made an ambiguous statement about such a possibility, saying “I would be glad to do it” after Skype is integrated into the company, reported several …
Microsoft waffles, then denies offering Skype encryption code to FSB Read More
