The Internet and the World Wide Web have taken Russia by storm. There are now thousands of Web sites in Russia covering every imaginable topic: stock trading, blood plasma transfusion technology, travel, and daily news. Electronic mailing lists will keep you up-to-date on what is happening in the Russian community around the world.
If you plan to stay in St. Petersburg for a reasonably long time you might consider getting a local Internet or e-mail account. Listed below are some of the better Internet providers.
TYPNote: The Traveller's Yellow Pages On-Line has a directory of Russian Websites organized by category.
http://www.infoservices.com
Cyrillic Fonts on the Web: Cyrillic letters are not part of ANSI standard, which assigns numerical values to English letters, digits, punctuation, and other symbols for use on computers.
Unfortunately, there is no standard coding scheme for assigning numerical values to Cyrillic letters. As a result, several different coding schemes, also called "character sets", have evolved. For example, the Russian capital A is character #128 in Macintosh Cyrillic, but this same letter is character #192 in Windows Cyrillic.
On the Web the predominant codings are KOI-8r, Win 1251 (CP 1251), and Mac, with Alt and ISO-8859-5 as additional codings. All these codings support English, allowing visits to sites in English or Russian without switching fonts everytime you change languages.
You need a proportional font and a fixed space font for each of the coding schemes you want to view. These can be purchased fonts or downloaded off of the Web. Visit The Traveller's Yellow Pages On-Line for an updated list of font sources.
Using the Web: Using the World Wide Web requires access to the Internet; access is available privately through an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or through a connection at your employer, at the local library or university or at a "cybercafe." Your ISP can also provide you with an E-mail account – a very useful way of communicating with Russia.
The Web is viewed using a Web browser such as Netscape Navigator (http://www.netscape.com) or Microsoft's Internet Explorer (http://www.microsoft.com). This software converts the incoming information into viewable "pages" on your screen. The latest version of both these browsers have support for various code pages. The Web technology changes so fast you should update your Web browser every 3 months.
Every Website has a web address that starts with http://. The Web address for The Traveller's Yellow Pages On-Line for example is http://www.infoservices.com.
TYPNote: Every web address starts with http:// thus we do not always put http:// before the web address.
The last part of the address such as .com, .net, or .gov indicates the type of Website or the location of the Webserver. Websites with .ru or .su are located in Russia.
Internet Service Providers: The ISPs listed below seem to offer reliable connections to the Internet.
