The Russian search giant Yandex, a site of multi-purpose design, has made quite a bit of news as of late. Eight years of growth has allow its revenue to increase from about $400,000 to a reported $167 million in 2007. And as we let known earlier this year, the company, currently comprised of some 1,200 employees, plans to introduce itself on the NASDAQ stock exchange this autumn.

The most recent profile of the company comes from the Times of London, which seems to peg it squarely against Google. In short, Times reporter Mark Franchetti, with Yandex co-founder and chief executive Arkady Volozh taking to the spotlight, paints the company as a serious challenge to the Mountain View, CA-based Web giant on the Eurasian landscape. For one, it commandeers 55% of the Russian market. Google, on the other hand, holds 21%.

The challenges posed by both forces are in fact quite interesting to observe at present. Google just last month purchased a Russian contextual ad firm by the name of Begun, formerly a Rambler Media property, for $140 million. Presumably it was in order to capitalize on solid growth in Russia’s Internet sector as well as invest in a greater percentage of the search pie in the region. At least while the taking is still good, anyway. Though Google holds a portion less than half the size of Yandex, its position is not so firmly set in place as it is in more Western reaches of the world.

Of course, Yandex recognizes this fact, and so it is wasting no time to push hard for its own growth. That goes as much for the Russian market as places outside its border. It was said just this week that Yandex has significantly upgraded its data connections to Ukraine. And earlier still, it make it a point to mention upgrades to its search engine to support so-called world standards and enhance users’ access to video to better compete with the ever-advancing Google.

Yet the growth of Yandex may not impact Google world ranking as much as some, like the Times, have intimated. 33 million Russian citizens are said to be using the Web. That number is expected to nearly double in five years’ time. A sizable figure, for sure. Looking at recent estimates of Russia’s total population, however, which sits at around 142 million, down from a purported 145 million in 2002, the penetration rate of Web services does not nearly match that of Western audiences. The U.S., for example, home to some 300 million people, is over 70% connected, with an estimated 219 million users. Europe as a whole sits just shy of the 50% mark. Germany, Norway, UK, Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden, all show rates similar to that of the US. France is about 55%.

That said, there’s no question Yandex is capitalizing fully on Russia’s measured ascent in Internet development. According to Quintura, a search company itself, Yandex has become something of a household name in its home state, and in so doing intends to go so far as to refresh its logo to an entirely Cyrillic designation, rather than the largely English-language label it has maintained.

Semantics aside, it is becoming increasingly evident that what was for a number of years a very Western-influenced Internet marketplace has internationalized greatly, to the point that actors in China (Baidu, et al.) and, to somewhat lesser degree, Russia, have achieved heavyweight or near-heavyweight status. That goes for search as well as social networking service, video channels, and Web software. And it’s perhaps safe to say that current trends will continue. Of course, it’s highly unlikely that Google will hurt as a result. Virtually all large markets around the world have considerable room left to expand. Only, those of China and Russia have more fresh terrain from which to sow financial largesse, so to speak.

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The closing ceremony for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing has already been underway for some hours now, but if you’d like to follow it all through some good ol’ liveblogging action, we’ve scrounged up several choice picks. For an American audience, relegated to watching happenings time-delayed by nearly half a day, these will surely come in handy.

NBC has no hold over the news media’s reportage of the celebration, as it does with broadcasts of the ceremony in the US prior to its own showing later today, so feel free to  venture over to The New York Times, The Washington Post, or USA Today to get a text-based grip on the big finale happening in China.

The New York Times and USA Today appear to deliver the best reviews of the closer. They’re easiest to follow, while WaPo’s delivery is less substantive. WaPo’s commentary is nice an casual, though, so if you’re looking for a bit of humor to go with the liveblog process, there you have it. No imagery to go along with the jokes, however.

Want images? Visit The New York Times. Quite a nice amount, I think. USA Today hosts one JPEG as I write this.

Across the pond, the BBC has put together some good text for readers. Like WaPo, it is absent of anything shiny and bright to look at, but it otherwise makes for a decent source of information.

The Telegraph packs quite a decent punch, too. And its commentary has that classic Telegraph tinge to it, which makes for fairly entertaining reading.

Collectively, there’s certainly going to be ample overlap in terms of coverage among these various sources, but all told, they make for a rather thorough take of the event. Some of you will naturally prefer video entertainment to finish out the weekend, but this bunch will have to do for now. Surely there’ll be plenty to consume in short order within the folds of YouTube and DailyMotion and whathaveyou.

If you feel it imperative to school us further on the ways in which the closing ceremony can be consumed, either in part or in full, speak your part in the comments. Educate us.

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If it’s Bebo that you prefer to the larger social networks of the world, but want to enjoy the equivalent of Facebook Chat within your own friendly circle, how’s this. Bebo’s Emma Carlsgaard let it be known that a feature dubbed Bebo IM is now live. You can interact with contacts much the same as you would with a standalone instant messaging service.

The functions involved are simple enough. Chat with one or more persons. Block people you dislike. Report vagrants. All that fun stuff. Some words of warning, though. Site members who’ve responded to the announcement are largely unimpressed. A number of users complain of its being dysfunctional. Others want it shut off. Only a minority of respondents appear to enjoy what’s come of Bebo developers’ labor.

The IM option is relatively inconspicuous. It’s open by default and and sits in a partially collapsible box in the lower right corner of your browser window. Simply click on the miniaturized icon representing an IM contact list and you’re shown a summary of your friends. Click a name and start talking. Close any open windows when you’re done.

If the initial user commentary is anything to go by, you may encounter buggy operation. But you may not, so give it a try, we say. Nothing to download, after all. There’s definitely merit to the popular suggestion of keeping with your preferred IM service for the simple fact that it is what’s known. Oppositely, Bebo had to deliver an answer to Facebook’s own service one way or another. Whatever the case, it seems some extra time in the cooker likely would’ve ensured a more celebratory debut.

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I love books. They’re second to music in importance so far as media in my life is concerned. But I like the physical variety. Ebooks don’t appeal, and I’ll tolerate an audiobook now and again only when I’m on the go. Yet, when I read earlier this year that Amazon was rumored to be developing a new Amazon Kindle device tailored specifically for textbooks, according to Andrea James of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, I thought that might prove useful. And then I thought different. I still do, to be honest, even with assurances delivered Friday by an analyst at McAdams Wright Ragen, Inc that efforts for such a release are underway.

I can understand why ebooks have their devotees and newfound adopters, particularly given the ease of use of the Kindle’s design in form and in function. Carrying multiple volumes can be tedious. So there’s really no question of if they will really hit the mainstream in the way the MP3 and the iPod did for music. It’s only matter of when.

But for academic publications, there seems particularly little need for an “Amazon Kindle Big,” as it were. And I imagine demand won’t be high, either. The reason being that students already invest in the ideal coursework tool: a laptop computer.

No, not everyone is privileged to own such a device. They still carry a premium for a number of K-12 students and undergrads and postgrads alike. But given the option to spend considerable dollar amounts on a digital reader in one form or another, a laptop is most certainly the logical pursuit. They’re relatively easy to manage via a school network, they’re free to display and transmit data in all sorts of formats over the cloud, and they’re multifunctional. (Consume and produce.)

Something from Amazon of the Kindle’s making would strike me as an extravagance, and hardly practical.

The original Amazon Kindle has taken on a sizable customer base, according to readings by analysts and researchers over the last several months. Not immense, by any means. But I think the company can sustain that proprietary economy for a while longer. Maybe even indefinitely, if it continues to grow at its current pace for years to come. And we can place Amazon’s Sprint-powered WhisperNet for that. A wireless storefront with no mandatory monthly fee will do that for a product.

Still, for education purposes, Amazon will have a potential flop on its hands in its large-size foray. Let’s be clear. There was no Kindle before Kindle in the casual reading market. There is, however, a panoply of portable computers big and small that have been proven most useful for the scholastic set. And if Amazon goes full-on with this new attempt, and it is deemed a non-seller, its smaller sibling might unfortunately feel a spillover of bad vibes. And I would hate to see that. Wouldn’t you?

(Image credit: Santarosa.edu)

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Joe Biden, who has been named Barack Obama’s choice for Vice Presidential nominee, took his seat in the Senate in 1973, representing the state of Delaware.

Who is he?  How does he stand on the issues that matter the most to you?  Where can you learn more about him?  Did you know that not only did he try for the Presidential nomination this time around, but he also tried in 1988? We’ve put together a list of nine resources on the Web that will help you learn a little bit more who he is and how he tends to lean on the various hot button issues.

General Sites

Congressional Bio - A short bio from the official website of Congress.

Federal Election Comission Records - Records about Joe Biden maintained by the Federal Election Commission.

Joe Biden’s Official Senate Page - Joe Biden is currently the senator from Delaware, and you can visit his official site for more information about the issues that matter to him.

OnTheIssues.org - A quick bullet point list showing you how Biden has voted and stood on some of the key issues.

Washington Post Voting Record - A record of Joe Biden’s Congressional voting record maintained by the Washington Post.

Social Networks

Joe Biden Facebook Fan Page - Show your support for the new Vice Presidential candidate.  You can also view his group on the network.

Joe Biden Flickr Photostream - See pictures of Biden at various public engagements and see a bit more of the man behind the scenes.

Joe Biden MySpace Page - Left over from his Presidential bid, there isn’t much here right now, but that will probably change with him back in the spotlight.

Joe Biden YouTube Page - A collection of appearances of Biden on various media outlets.

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You may need to keep an open mind when first making your way over to Husbands & Dads, a new site which had its officially launched this week. It’s not the most visually exciting place on the Web to visit. But it is a small startup looking to fill the space “a notch above” your run-of-the-mill men’s mag, at least in terms of subject matter, and it is actually quite interesting if taken seriously.

Of course, it likely would’ve been more apt for the creators of Husbands & Dads to take a stroll down Public Release Lane back in June, when the specially-named day of the patriarch had actually been celebrated. But what’s done is done. And if you’re of the sort that considers every day the day of the dad and a woman’s other half, Husbands & Dads might be your thing.

Most every bit of Husbands & Dads is intended to deliver on the site’s title. From the front page to the various sections to the user forums, everything it carries holds well to its core theme. Nothing like what AskMen, Maxim, FHM, Men’s Health, GQ and others provide. Here, things on the whole are very much aboveboard. If the wife isn’t one to offer on your birthday a copy of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit collection, she likely wouldn’t mind stumbling into your home office unannounced and see you trawling this place.

Yes indeed, Creators Cory Huff and Jeremy Biser aim to fill the “responsible” niche. Child rearing, marriage tips, casual entertainment, video picks from around the Web. The kind of stuff you’d expect to see in such a place. Their chosen chosen tag line - “Where it’s cool to be a family man” is no mistake. Keep in mind, there isn’t much archival matter. This experiment is no doubt fresh out of the oven. But what it does have is unquestionably worthwhile. Again, the design is something that could use adjusting, but given the type of content provided to visitors, it’s rather easy to look past any such shortcomings.

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There are a number of topics that make the rounds in the tech blog world semi-regularly. One is VoIP. This has been the case throughout the summer, when names like Jajah, Gizmo, and Skype have either made news themselves or been associated with stories emerging from new developments. So what I’d like to consider now is where you currently see VoIP and where it is headed in terms of mobile use.

Earlier today, Om Malik of GigaOM fame followed up a story published Friday concerning 3G and its use by a minority of US and mobile phone users around the globe with a short exposé about Nokia and a disturbance in its implementation of VoIP/SIP software on a number of smartphones. Together, they make for interesting reading. And in my own observation of the market, I in turn feel its a good time to ask what one can make of the mobile VoIP scene. Is it healthy? Underrepresented? Underdeveloped? (Poll after the jump.)

Yes, there interesting items floating around the mobile atmosphere. The 3 Skypephone, which just had design refresh in the UK, is something to watch. Fring, a surprisingly adept software provider, gets increasingly attractive with each passing update. But broadly speaking, does VoIP have a chance to move off the desktop and provide the average user with reliable functionality that could effectively replace the traditional way mobile telephony has come to be over the past decade or so? And if so, how distant is such a paradigm shift?

As an advocate for efficiency and popular accessibility, I tend to take the role of the optimist. VoIP simply seems the logical next step. If Skype were to turn itself into the next [insert big wireless carrier name], so to speak (in terms of an elementary, pick-up-and-go user experience), that would be something to behold, for sure. Right now though, there are still some hurdles to push past. And I’m one to think it’ll be several years ‘til we see some momentous change, at least in the US. For one, infrastructural advancements haven’t kept pace with achievements on the end-user front. Second, the carrier wars don’t make for collective forward motion. The best one can really hope for is more heated competition to speed progress along.

That said, I put the question to you. What’s your take on the fate of mobile VoIP?

When will mobile VoIP go big?
( polls)

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Back in the latter half of June, I asked a fairly simple question concerning NBC’s Olympic foray on the Web: Will costs outweigh rewards? I imagined that the broadcaster might have to apply red tape to its cost-profit report. Perhaps a whole lot of it, even, particularly given the sheer volume of live and on-demand coverage promised to potential Web viewers. That being said, there’s a number now being floated by eMarketer concerning NBC’s in-video advertising that seems remarkably small. A $5.75 million kind of small.

A report in today’s Wall Street Journal by Emily Steel references eMarketer’s estimate on advertisement revenue to be tallied once all is played through and Beijing sends the last of its international guestlist back to their respective places of origin. The Internet researcher appears to lay some of the blame on NBC’s strict delivery deal with Microsoft and the Silverlight plugin requirement. A number of participants in a Mashable poll made known their aversion to the plugin, so eMarketer’s assessment could very well be accurate.

The Wall Street Journal notes that NBCOlympics.com users’ inability to view and share content across various external sites would limit the audience NBC might otherwise have attained. In fact, this clash of interests among NBC and Web users proved to be a notable issue, particularly in the area of YouTube, where a race to take down footage of Olympic games before they were broadcast in delayed-release on NBC stations drew the attention of the blogosphere as well as the mainstream press.

A sports advertising benchmark cited by the WSJ for the world of Web-streaming video was CBS’s ability to garner some $23 million in total revenue throughout the three-week-long NCAA March Madness college basketball tournament. Do watch for the key words “total revenue,” however. The presentation of in-video advertisements is only one part of the picture at NBCOlympics.com. (Albeit a sensibly important aspect of the entire portrait.)

The thing is, if CBS and NBC were to juxtapose viewerships, one would still see eMarketer’s premonition as somewhat unfortunate. CBS offered a figure of 4.8 million viewers. NBC, meanwhile, claimed to have nearly as much in its opening day, with 4.2m. And just this past Wednesday it issued a figure to the tune of 6.2m unique users.

We’ll certainly have to wait until events complete wrap up to offer a definitive take on the effect NBC Olympics has had. While I have voiced some negatives about NBC’s online delivery of events, I think my initial impression - that the deal will be seen as an aid for the company - will be realized in the weeks ahead. Though maybe just barely.

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I’m still waiting for my text message.

As the world now knows - courtesy of CNN’s Twitter feed, and now countless channels elsewhere - the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, has chosen the veteran legislator from Delaware, Joe Biden, to accompany him on the ticket for the final months of the 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign. Speculation was palpable in the latter half of the week, Friday especially, but the guesswork has since been officially validated. And all it seemed to take was some well-financed, Big Media-driven investigative savvy.

I must say I’m not surprised that the cart came before the horse on this one. As if the Obama for America campaign could really keep it shut all the way to Saturday morning, when it planned to distribute via mass SMS and email the senator’s pick for VP. Logic doth prove such an experiment’s success unlikely, if not impossible. If you do a good amount of pestering and sort of a Sudoku-esque cancellation of the no-goes, eventually you’ll get something. Indeed, if you happen to be an outfit such as CNN, well, doors tend to open, willingly or unwillingly.

That being said, the promotional push being attempted was a smart one. The guy gets press for putting the people first, he gets said people to commit their digits, the giftwrap gets torn prematurely, and everyone’s abuzz. Voilà. The man knows how to market himself.

It really is interesting to see how technology has pervaded the political scene the last year or so. Far more than 2004 and 2000, for sure. At those moments, online interaction was brewing, but it was not booming. The most highlighted stories to come out of recent elections past were the funding efforts taking place on the Web. Now there’s thunder. Now there are the social networking and social media components that have taken stride in ways that seem increasingly critical to the candidates’ success - Barack Obama’s especially.

His campaign’s drive to lower the bar for access to information has gripped millions of people around the country. The most current example is of course the grand text-email login. He convinced a vast swath of the population to offer their cellular connections to his promotional engine, and it’s doubtful that he will do nothing but prosper further from it.

Yes, grumblings about deflated followers will naturally be amplified over the weekend and could even loiter around a bit longer. The bandwagon, after all, which was en route to what they thought would be a special celebration via their inboxes, was prematurely shown billboards screaming a secret they’d wished to know before the press could deliver its affirmative fill. Alas, the spell was broken, and quite a few folk will let that be known in the coming hours - including myself and Mashable’s commander in chief.

But soon enough Denver will be ablaze with talk of hope, unity, strength, and messianic worship of the Washingtonian kind, and the “botched” mobile messaging play will be a boo-boo on the heal. All in all, this whole spectacle makes for yet one more hefty bump for Obama. He gets press for thinking of you, lucky you; breaks your heart a bit; presumably does his rockstar thing in front of 80,000 or so disciples (with some opposing apples littered amongst the many); and continues on as he has done since June, likely none the worse for forgetting to send you 160 characters before letting slip to those gorgeous news people over there.

Technology is fantastic, is it not? No one can argue with that. Especially when it is used effectively. Funnily enough, Obama didn’t have to make good on that front to make his latest splash. What’s the saying? All’s fair in love and war?

(Images: BarackObama.com)

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Joe Biden is Barack Obama’s running mate, as delivered by the high-tech means of a text message, and CNN’s Twitter feed.

What’s the tech crowd’s gut reaction? YES or NO on Obiden? The comment form is all yours.