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I Belong to the Nation with the World’s Most Engaged Social Networking Audience. So How Does It Feel?Yesterday

Yesterday the web measuring company comScore decided to publish the results of their study of the social networking field in Russia. Their research shows that Russia has the most engaged social networking audience in the world and I could not resist the temptation to share some thoughts as someone who lives and blogs on the technology from Russia.

The engagement is measured by comScore in terms of how much time people spend on social networking websites and how many pages people view on such sites and in Russia the numbers are highest with people spending 6.6 hours on social networks and viewing 1,307 pages per user per month. For comparison, in the US it’s only 4.2 hours and 477 pages.

And it’s not only that: 59% of all the internet users access social networks here. What’s more, I myself know people who are not even internet users yet they do have accounts on social networks. For example, my friend once created an account for her mother on Odnoklassniki because her mother wanted to find her former classmates but her lack of computer knowledge resulted in my friend doing all the communications on the network with her frie

ProProfs Polls Launched as a Powerful Online Polling ToolJuly 1

Come to think of it, it is truly fascinating how quickly one can get a respond from a huge community online - no matter what the question is. So it is no wonder that there are so many tools out there that make it possible to arrange polls around the web and embed them as widgets to your own websites, blogs or individual blog posts.

Today yet another service, ProProfs Polls, is launched that looks like a good addition to the market for a number of new interesting features it offers. I have already mentioned ProProfs here on Profy when I reviewed their tool for quizzes creation as a YouTube for quizzes. Today they are launching yet another tool - this time for online polls.

Anyone can create a poll for free and embed the widget anywhere but the real difference is that ProProfs already has a dedicated community of 120 thousand registered users that you can also engage in your poll to get a broader range of opinions. Of course it is obvious that the large community of people already focused on knowledge and information is a huge help to anyone who is looking to get opinions on some serious topic for a research.

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Are You Guilty? Top 10 Dumbest Things People Do with Their ComputersJune 30

Today Support.com, the company that specializes in remote support, has published their list of top 10 strangest things that people do with their computers that lead to pitiful consequences for their personal machines. It looks like common sense is still the only way to avoid doing things like these yourself but anyway I think it’s worth taking a look at.

1.       Paying attention and doing everything that is recommended in all the pop up windows that appear when you browse the web because unfortunately too many of them prove to be dangerous as they disseminate viruses and other malware.

2.       Ignoring Windows updates. This is certainly not applicable if you use a Mac but to many users receiving and installing the updates is irritating due to the huge sizes of files that sometimes arrive and the need to reboot your computer. Unfortunately if you are on a Windows machine, you need to keep in mind that the operating system has too many security holes so you should be grateful whenever Microsoft offers you an update that could fix a thing or two - so ignoring them is certainly not wise.

3.       Opening attachments to emails without thinking. It is quite logical that your antivirus software will hardly protect you of all the current threats as some new threats may arrive right to your inbox before they get known to antivirus teams.

4.  

OwlRead – a Google Reader for TwitterJune 25

Are you happy with your Twitter client? If so, you probably should stick to it and don’t even read this post further because switching to a new application from something you are already comfortable with should take some serious advantages offered by the alternative. I would not say that OwlRead, the new Twitter client I have discovered is really stunning and a must-have for anyone who uses Twitter, but if you are not 100% happy with what you currently have, it may well be worth checking out - at least for its broad and interesting features.

So OwlRead is quite an interesting result of work of one web developer who is also an avid Twitter user. The idea for OwlRead was born because he had a certain set of requirements to a Twitter client that no existing clients could fulfill. And what do web developers usually do in such situations? Right, they develop the tools they need themselves, secretly hoping their startups will get mass adoption as well and will make the creators rich and happy.

So what is so special about OwlRead that I now think that you should check it out? First of all, it supports grouping of Twitter users. If you follow numerous people (like a few dozens or a few hundreds - I am certainly not talking about those people

In Russia Open-Source Software Gets Official Support from AuthoritiesJune 24

The position of the Russian government has been clear for some time now: it is no good for Russian citizens to study and work using commercial Western software (developed and supplied mostly by Microsoft). Quite a number of arguments support the open-source trend, including the high prices that send many users to download pirated software and the threat of developing our advanced technologies in various scientific fields working on Windows-powered computers which does not feel particularly safe.

This last argument may sounded paranoid yet it is definitely an interesting trend when you see a government actually supporting free alternatives officially. There have been failed attempts to actually do something to turn the trend into reality but they were never a success. Yet today we see yet another example that seem to be more reasonable.

The thing is that authorities of one of the Russian regions now offer Linux for download from their own website. The operating system is also accompanied by various additional applications that should make a user more comfortable in his or her switching to the open-source software.

The thing is that in Russia not everyone enjoys unlimited internet at all so you have to pay for every file you download - and the larger the file, the more expensive it will be for you. This is viewed as one of the limitations that prevent mass users from downloading open-source software and at least comparing it to commercial software to mak