Prof-Media, which owns leading Russian online portal company Rambler Media and entertainment content magazine publisher Afisha, will merge the two companies. The merged company under Rambler shall have annual revenues of over $150 million and challenge the Russian Internet market leaders Yandex, Mail.ru/DST and Google in Russia. I think that combining Afisha and Rambler would improve operational efficiency and provide Afisha with traffic from Rambler properties.

Olga Turischeva, who became Rambler CEO in April 2009, is going to leave Rambler Media by the year-end. The Rambler-owner Prof Media has appointed Nikolay Molibog as new CEO of Rambler. Previously, Nikolay Molibog was CEO of Afisha publishing house, which is owned by Prof Media.

Afisha publishes leading entertainment content magazines and web-sites Afisha.ru and NightParty.ru while Rambler operates a leading online portal in Russia, Rambler.ru.

Rambler‘s search market share in Russia decreased from 4.9% in March 2009 to 2.6% in June 2010, according to LiveInternet.ru. Rambler‘s advertising revenues declined over the past year. The expenses declined even faster, which improved operational profitability but that may be not enough for Olga Turischeva to stay in. She could re-join Vimpelcom (Beeline) where she worked prior to Rambler.
Read the rest of this entry »

Sadly in just a few days Microsoft’s Bing Cashback program will be closed. The doors on this awesome cash back program will be closed and locked and a sign will indicate that the program is no more. Many of us deal hunters have received some very nice amounts from Microsoft and for that we thank Steve Ballmer and crew. The Bing Cashback program had such amazing promise but sadly was executed poorly and therefore failed.

Last week I grabbed nearly $50 from Bing on my mattress purchase. So get out there and shop – here’s the Bing Cashback stores list.

If you buy anything online and aren’t using a coupon or a cashback site, you are throwing money away on every purchase. A simple example… Office Depot offers 10% cashback on Bing – you buy a $100 whiteboard, you score $10. You buy a ring for your significant other and you can score way more than $10. Keep the money inside your startup and use the cashback for office parties or other fun team events.

Back in May we reported from the MTA Unconference regarding MTA Chief Jay Walder’s comments around when cell signals would be available in the subway underground. It looks like major progress has been made towards allowing you to make and receive calls and to play Zynga games on the subway.

NY Daily News transit reporter Pete Donohue reports that the MTA has finally given the go-ahead to Transit Wireless to begin outfitting all 277 underground stations with wireless connections.

The signals will be available on the mezzanines and on the track platforms but will most likely not work in the tunnels between stations. Naturally we will have to wait until the work is completed and live before testing how far into the tunnels the signals will work.

Donohue notes that cell phone carriers (e.g. Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon) will pay Transit Wireless to allow customers to use the lines. Transit Wireless will share half of the revenue with the MTA.

So get ready NYC…not only will you be able to hear every possible type of music while waiting to jam your body into a southbound 6, now you will also be able to hear conversations of all types and in all languages.

It sure does appear that tech projects are moving faster than ever since Walder took over as the head of the MTA.

Grab a cold bottle of water and check out the latest jobs posted on the CenterNetworks Job Board. Subscribe to the CN Jobs feed and get all of the latest Web industry jobs delivered directly to you.

Featured Jobs:

• Senior Consumer Experience Manager at Nike
• Product Manager at Dow Jones
• Application Developer at Morningstar

More Jobs:

• Experienced Magento / PHP Developer at Style-Direct
• Senior Sales Engineer at Beyond Oblivion
• Manager – Web Designer at Gannett Co., Inc.
• Front End Rails Engineer at BidFire

Employers – Join other top companies on the CN Job Board. Post your jobs today – only $10!

It appears that the microblog service Tumblr is currently semi-down as of earlier this morning. Earlier this month several blogs reported Tumblr’s big growth over the past year pushing the microblog service into the Top 50 sites worldwide. I am able to get some pages on Tumblr to load very slowly but most provide time out errors.

A search on Twitter for Tumblr shows some very upset users (some comments NSFW) about the outage. It’s important to remember that all online services will suffer from some unexpected downtime. I am sure the Tumblr team is working hard to get the service back to full network capacity. Until then, go outside and enjoy the heat wave across the U.S.

The official Tumblr Twitter account notes regarding the outage/performance issues, “A faulty network switch is causing severe performance issues. We’re working with our datacenter to get it replaced as quickly as possible.” This was the first and only message regarding the current performance issues – posted at approximately 9am Eastern time.

Update: 3pm Eastern: from my testing, Tumblr sites are still not loading. No new posts on the Tumblr Twitter account.

Update 4:15pm Eastern: I now receive the following error message when loading any Tumblr site, “Sorry! An error has occurred. This incident has been reported, and we will work quickly to correct any issues. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience. Please feel free to contact support if the problem persists.”

Update 5:00pm Eastern: Tumblr is back – you may continue posting photos, browsing porn and reblogging other people’s photos and porn.

As always please report in if Tumblr is down where you are – either the main Tumblr site or your personal Tumblog.

Related: Our Tumblr coverage including overview video from Tumblr founder David Karp.

I’ve been a big fan of coworking for a long time. I’ve written many times about a variety of coworking topics and locations around the world.  My post about VC-sponsored coworking was viewed negatively by coworking experts back in late 2007 yet today we see a large number of VC-sponsored coworking locations around the U.S. and in other countries. I think the number of coworking locations will continue to grow this year.

Today I learned about a new coworking location that will be opening soon in St. Louis. The space is located in one of the city’s landmark buildings and the photos of the upcoming launch look great. The pictures show a space that is more office-sharing than the coworking concept of one large open desk where all of the members sit together. The space offer work areas and discussion zones.

From the overview, “amenities will include WIFI, coffee, a business address, custom dedicated workstations, classroom area, open collaboration and drop-in space, conference room(s), lounge, kitchen with break table, open art counter space with sink, community library, printing, copy and fax, secretarial services, postage and more.”

The first event to be held at the new coworking space is later this month and is already sold out (there is a waitlist).

Apparently the space boasts 47 huge windows overlooking the downtown core of St. Louis. No pricing is listed on the website but there is a signup form if you are interested.

It’s too bad I didn’t move to St. Louis — I would have been one of their first residents.

This month I moved to a new city and decided rather than hiring a mover which was amazingly expensive, I would give away/sell/donate most of my larger items and buy new when I arrived at the destination. One of the items I gave away was my bed (i.e. mattress/boxspring/frame).

I started to go mattress shopping and found it to be a pain as I remembered it was 10 years ago which was the last time I purchased a mattress. I think there is a mattress cartel in the U.S. as you can’t easily compare prices as every bed has a different name per shop even though it’s the exact same as the previous store. It’s amazing that bedding manufacturers have been able to get away with this for decades. Imagine if the iPad was sold under a different name from store to store.

I started to look online and only one merchant seemed to come up in search results. And after a few searches the company followed me via targeted online ads all across the Web. In fact, even browsing CN displayed ads for this online mattress showroom.

I decided to purchase the mattress from this online merchant and paid for overnight delivery (which was very reasonable at $49). I figured the worst thing that happens is that I have to exchange the mattress for one at a different comfort level. Reviews for the merchant were overall positive although there were many negative reviews but most of those were regarding shipping and what seemed like poor customer expectations for delivery dates.

Read the rest of this entry »