How Does Anyone Keep Up?

By Bill Fick

A couple of weeks ago in my column about music resources on the Internet, I confidently declared that on-line record stores had not yet appeared in Russia. Just a few days later, I stumbled across a brand new site called "CD-Express" (http://www.cd.ru), which offers 5,000 Russian pop and classical titles for delivery, and realized that I had been wrong.

This is just one example of how difficult it has become to keep up with the explosive growth of the Russian Web, to say nothing of the Internet as a whole. One of the questions most often posed to me by readers of this column is how I, as an observer and commentator, can ever hope to stay abreast of the latest new websites, events, and trends.

Aside from what I experience in my everyday work, the short answer is that I read other observers and commentators.

One of my favorite resources is the "New York Times on the Web". In addition to making available the full text of every issue before first edition hits the street in Manhattan, the Times has created a special "Cybertimes" section covering the Internet and other new technologies (http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/cyber/indexcyber.html).

Subscription to the New York Times’ web, by the way, is free if you register your user ID from a U.S. Internet host. You can then login from anywhere in the world, curl up with your computer during Sunday brunch and forget completely where you are.

Cybertimes coverage, some of which never appears in the paper itself, is interesting and incisive, with superbly annotated links to other sites.

Even more importantly, the editors effect a sensible mix of crucial news and big-picture overviews while keeping the overall size of the section manageable enough to read completely every day.

By contrast, the daily turnover in Yahoo!’s Internet news section (http://biz.yahoo.com/news/internet.html), which collects stories from multiple wire services and other sources, will leave your head spinning. While a comprehensive daily reading would be a full-time job in itself, a quick glance through the headlines often yields an important or surprising tidbit.

The "Internet Life" E-zine (on-line journal) at http://www.internetlife.com presents more readable, mass-market fare organized much like a real magazine. Aside from topical news, features and site reviews, regular sections include web design tips, introductory navigation help for Internet newbies, and a "useful site of the day" which is added to a growing collection links for the practical-minded net surfer.

The company behind Wired magazine which, in many ways, brought the virtual world into mainstream print media, also supports a collection of quality E-zines, "observer" sites and navigation tools. "Hotwired" (http://www.hotwired.com) highlights a collection of features and regular columnists in a format slightly too trendy for its own good. "Wired News" (http://www.wired.com/news) organizes its information with a more conservative graphic look in sensible categories such as "top stories", "business", "culture" and "politics". Finally, you can scan teasers from the latest print issue of Wired itself at http://www.wired.com.

E-zines and the role of net obozrevatel, which translates as "observer" or "commentator", have started to appear as a distinct genre on the Russian network landscape as well.

An e-zine called "Zhurnal.ru" (http://www.zhurnal.ru) is the flagship of the genre in Russia, and it has quickly become one of the most popular sites in the country with tens of thousands of "hits" per day. (Note, each individual visitor to the site generates multiple "hits", which represents a single file of text, graphic, etc. transmitted. Thus the total number of actual viewers of the site is actually somewhat less. These numbers, however, are nonetheless very impressive in Russia’s nascent on-line market and reflect genuine advertising potential.)

Zhurnal.ru offers a collection of thoughtful articles which address a monthly theme as well as a weekly network news roundup, games, humor, a daily recipe, and more. A fellow by the name of Mukhin (derived from the Russian word for fly, as in the kind that buzzes around the barnyard) regularly rates websites by awarding them up to five flies, as opposed to stars. Most of the text to date has been published in Russian only, but gradually the creators are starting to include English translations of their material.

Cityline, a new Internet Service Provider in Moscow (http://www.cityline.ru), has attracted a good deal of attention (and, probably, customers) by featuring two Web review publications on its home page. "Paravozov-News" presents a daily collection of links and commentary with a sharp edge of irony and wit, while "Vechernyi Internet" (which translates as "Evening Internet") provides a more staid assessment of industry developments and news.

Finally, a young woman named Katya Detkina has emerged as a unique female voice in a world still often dominated by male computer jocks, with her network commentary and annotated links at http://www.kulichki.com/kadet.

The proliferation of these "observer" sites around the world reveal the Internet as a highly introspective medium. While it would be silly to spend all of your time on-line simply reading about the net rather than experiencing its diversity directly, quick occasional surveys of these resources can turn up some real gems.

One of my recent favorites is the "Stop-Tsereteli" on-line petition drive at http://www.average.com/stop-zereteli. If you, too are horrified by the proliferating monstrous monuments of Mayor Luzhkov’s court sculptor, add your name to the list and hope for the best.