It’s been a long time coming but Armenia now has an official authorised Apple Macintosh store, selling Ipods, Ibooks, Imacs, and pretty much everything else they make. I checked out the price of a 30GB Ipod, and it hits $405, which is pretty much exactly the same as here in the U.K.

Obviously the average Armenian citizen is probably not going to spend this on what is ultimately a glorified walkman, but still, I guess it’s at least a supplier of Macs and mac products in Yerevan for the design/media industry… and I guess another one of those proud “we have a ‘…..’ store in Armenia now…!” sort of statements..

As far as I am aware very few Armenian media outlets use mac, which is the standard for most here in the West. Only reporters from Armenia Tv I have noticed carry branded Ibooks around with them, but even the core processes there are done using pc’s. We’ll see what happens I suppose…

YEREVAN, March 28. /ARKA/. Armenia ranks 96th among 122 countries in the Network Preparedness Index says the 2006-2007 IT Global Competitiveness Report prepared by the Economy and Values Research Center.

According to the report, the strong points of Armenia’s network preparedness are the companies’ capability to apply new technologies, availability of scientists and architects, as well as the number of patented inventions and discoveries per each million of residents.

Among the weak points are high prices for Internet communication, the number of subscribers and on-line services.

I personally take it as a failure for a country which announces IT as a strategic aspect of economy, to be on the 96th place.

So here it is, the long awaited Armenian language pack for Windows XP. If it can be implemented correctly, as has been planned in Armenian schools and government institutions, we should see an acceleration in development of software in the Armenian language.

It is quite a novelty to see desktop being called a “Seghan”, and “Meknarkel” doesn’t have quite the same ring as “start”. I think “Sksel” would have been better But I guess we should be using refined Armenian…

Why not have a go at installing it? It only takes a couple of minutes, and it’s easily removable. It’s here.

Wow! I spoke of my dream of having Armenia covered by a technology such as wimax which is a long range computer networking technology. In short, it is like taking your current home wireless router and giving it 10,000 times more power. Today, Cornet seems to be announcing plans to move head with wimax installation.
more…

I was very happy to see that Air Arabia is now serving Yerevan! In my opinion, this is a very important link for business. The fact is air links equate business expansion and opportunity. If you look at most any major economic development initiative in Europe or America, there is an emphasis on having air links with business hubs. Air Arabia has many links with up and coming business centers which could truly add to real, knowledge economy expansion in Armenia.

Why do I see this as such a good thing? The main reason is the fact this past week we saw a huge issue made about the lack of skilled technology professionals in the developed world and even more of a surprise was the projection of a huge shortage in India. Just imagine if Armenia can continue to increase its knowledge work force especially in high technology to become a destination for knowledge work! A cheap air link with the knowledge centers of India could boon well for true economic expansion. Of course the jewel in the cap of the Armenians is the fact that Armenians are excellent linguists, picking up languages easier than most due to the difficulty of Armenian. Couple language with increasing technical know-how and we have a strong mix for future growth!

This is a wonderful thing! I hope that Armavia sees the competition and picks up its own expansion. Yerevan could become a hub of engineering excellence and if served by solid air links it could grow tremendously fast! Here is to open borders and expansion of ties!

Microsoft has opened its office in Armenia, with the well-known IT specialist Grigory Barsegyan appointed as director. The office will be officially presented, after a number of organizational and technical preparations. CIS HUB Director John White and CIS Business Development Manager Yuri Omelchenko paid a short visit to Armenia recently. Mr. White, who is responsible for big corporate projects, donor organizations and education, has kindly agreed to give an interview to ARMINFO.

Would you tell me please what are the functions of Microsoft CIS HUB?

The key function of Microsoft CIS HUB is to support Microsoft’s business development in the CIS, that is, in the countries where there is no developed Microsoft business. In the CIS, besides Russia, we have big offices in Kazakhstan and Ukraine, which are some kind of autonomies, while in Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Belarus we are actively working to develop our business. Grigory Barsegyan is our new man, whom we have appointed to direct the Microsoft Armenia Office, and we are here to help him to start up. Now he has to solve some small administrative tasks to lay a basis for our future business in Armenia. We hope that in the coming months this all will be solved and we will organize a special event to publicly announce the opening of the office.

more…

MICROSOFT OPENS OFFICIAL REPRESENTATIVE OFFICE IN ARMENIA
ARKA News Agency / May 17 2006

Official representative office of Microsoft Corporation was opened in Armenia on May 16. Director of the Armenian representative office of the company Grigor Barseghyan said coming
plans of Microsoft in Armenia envisage enlargement of the circle of its partners, instruction in high technologies and cooperation with the RA Government.

According to the Vice-President of Microsoft in the region of Central and Eastern Europe Vahe Torosyan, opening of the corporation’s office in Armenia is of great importance for the country, especially in the light of recent success in the sphere of economy of the republic and
particularly in the IT sphere.

The Chairman of the Union of IT Enterprises Hovhannes Avoyan said opening of Microsoft’s representation in Armenia will enable Armenia to take its deserving place and use elaborations of the corporation in the proper way.

Microsoft Corporation was founded in 1975. At present it is the world leader in the sphere of software development and servers,service rendering and elaboration of Internet-technology.Its production is being sold in more than 80 countries of the world and was translated into more than 45 languages. Microsoft’s representative offices exist in CIS countries as well, including Ukraine, Kazakhstan,
and Azerbaijan.

Another awful day for Armenian aviation as news arrived that 2 Armenian aeroplanes have beentotally destroyed in a fire that broke out in Brussels airport this morning.

The planes ( one Armavia, and another smaller company ) were undergoing maintennance checks. Both have been seriously damaged.

I worry that this could be spelling yet another disastrous end for the Armenian national carrier.. Previously Armenian Airlines went bankrupt, and now the owner of Armavia, Michael Baghdasarov, has stated that the company will suffer serious losses as a result of this fire.

President Kocharyan has sent Serge Sargsyan, Defense Minister, to Sochi to investigate the plane tragedy. This is cited as the worst in Armenia’s history. Mr Kocharyan has also declared today a National day of Mourning, and two more official days are scheduled for Friday and Saturday.

President Putin also reportedly discussed the issue with Kocharyan today, declaring it a joint Russian-Armenian tragedy. The deputy director of Armavia was on board, as well as a number of influential businessmen, and many Armenian civilians , as well as a number of Georgian and Ukranians.

Once again, I hope we can all offer condolences to all victims of this terrible tragedy, and their families.

On a personal level, reading the list of the perished , number 1 on the list was a man with my surname, Azarian and the same first name as my Uncle.. (luckily it wasn’t ) It really brings home how personal this feels. May everyone rest in peace.

I love my new birthday bunny Nabo.

ArmeniaNow has a great interview with the Armenian creator of the Nabaztag.

Via Notes from Hairenik, the Armenian Freenet, which has been around since 1997 (I myself was one of their first 1000 users!!), is in the middle of a crisis. It has always been funded by UNDP. UNDP no longer wants to fund it. I’d bet that there is something going on — either there was only a 10-year plan for support OR UNDP needs to put more money toward Millenium Development Goal attainment.

I’m doing a little research to see what’s up.

Garo’s page has more information on the current situation. Thanks Garo for sharing the news.

UPDATE: One explaination may be that 2005-2009 is a new funding cycle for UNDP. The guide to UNDP activity in Armenia, located here, is of some assistance in understanding.

- they mention the PRSP and MDGs… very important. How do they justify the freenet in terms of poverty reduction? Since that is the worldwide development focus at this time, a lot of their funding has to go towards it. (I’m not saying that I agree with that, but this is the way that development aid works.) Here’s one illustrative quote:

“…goal of reducing economic, social and political inequality by focusing on three national priorities: a) laying the foundation for sustainable socially-oriented growth; b) promoting accountable, transparent and effective governing institutions; and c) supporting sound management of natural resources.”

The rest of the document reads like a anthology of songs in praise of supporting PRSPs and MDGs.

The last 2 pages of the document give a basic budget for UNDP Armenia activities.

As such, I can see, sadly, why the freenet can’t be funded anymore by UNDP. Don’t blame them - blame the World Bank, IMF, and the UN for having this be their development agenda… at least in this era of development they’re actually talking with the government and NGOs about planning and implimentation.

Garo gives more information about possible brainstorming on other sources of funding. It doesn’t look like any of the major funding agencies are going to be able to put it on their plates… perhaps a private donor will come out of the woodwork? I can only hope so.

This product has been bragged about for awhile, but is finally here:

And an Armenian word enters the mainstream: welcome to the Nabaztag!

Now this new version of the Internet-connected 9-inch-tall Wi-Fi Bunny has learned how to talk and sing, and will certainly annoy you to no end, reminding you that your stocks are dropping, you’ve got no mail, it’s raining outside, you’re blind and your dog is dead. Looking for some bunny-love via Wi-Fi? Shell out $114 for the privilege.

More details

UPDATE: I couldn’t help it. I bought one as a birthday present to myself. It is cheaper in Europe than in the US. I will bring her home with me, certainly.

Any ideas on a good Armenian name? I already own a (real) cat Bachig.

After having so much fun at the Girl Geek Dinner last week, I am going to attend the plain ol’ regular for everyone Geek Dinner on Monday. Once again, any readers in the London area interested in attending, just let me know!

Not Armenia-related, but certainly fun - tomorrow I will be at the London Girl Geek Dinner. Any geeky female readers in London want to join me? (Crickets chirp.) It is at the Texas Embassy - the best TexMex dining in London. (More crickets chirp.)

I guess I don’t have any geeky female readership in London.

I met some of these ladies at the Global Voices Online conference last month. Should be fun!

London geek dinner
girl geeks
geeks

Last week I showed a language map of Glendale.

Now I learned how to do language maps for all of the US - states, the entire country, by county, by zip code.

Check out the Modern Language Assocation’s website for more fun.

The other day I posted about how much I love Unicode for Armenian.

Pat Hall, one of the fine people that I met at the Global Voices Online conference last month, has posted about it as well.

Check it out!

A blog in Armenian! Very cool.

Hakob Gevorgian is trying to blog in Armenian. Check out his blog here. He’s using WordPress as well.

But what’s really interesting is the ideas about translating blogging terms into Armenian. Here’s what he’s done:

Ժամանակագրություն is blog (journal)
հաղորդագրություններ is comments

Well done Hakob!

Let’s welcome Hagop to Blogrel. Hagop has been blogging for years at Cilicia.com’s Diaspora page. He joins us for a little California flavor. With SoCal being such an important center of Armenian life nowadays, Hagop will provide an interesting perspective.

Cheers Hagop!

And, on a related note, like Harmick, Hovakim, Levon and Hagop, if there is an aspect of Armenianness that you think would be fun to blog about, let us know and we can see what we can do. Specific feature blogging is some of the most popular stuff on this site!

I stumbled upon a neat blog posting about a woman who really didn’t know about her Armenian heritage suddenly learning more about her roots.

I have been asked to not in any way publish the contents of the manuscript, but I will share some facts revealed by it. My great grandfather was Harootune Avedis Minassian. He was born in Sivas, eastern Anatolia. At this point I’m sure my more astute readers have figured it out. The name of the country is not Armenia, but Turkey. The reason for my great grandfather’s leaving all this behind, in 1886, was so he could become a doctor. [source]

More is in the blog post, but this is certainly a cheerful blog on Armenian Christmas! Check it out.

Unicode is a technology industry standard with a goal to provide the means by which text of all forms and languages can be encoded for use by computers.

This means a standard — not what all of us that type in Armenian usually have to deal with… “Do you have that font? Do you have a Mac? A PC? Microsoft Word? Armenian NLS?”

This would be a way for Armenian to be used on computers just like Latin-based letters are. No more questions. No more Armenian written in Latin letters.

I think that Unicode hasn’t yet taken hold in Armenia because of that NLS program. I have it on my computer too, but all I want for Armenian Christmas is to only use Unicode.

Here’s the scoop with Armenian Unicode:

- Microsoft Windows XP and 2000 come with Armenian Unicode (there is limited Unicode support for Windows 98se and NT 4)
- Mac OS 10.3 comes with Armenian Unicode (a Unicode Armenian keyboard layout for Mac OS 10.2 can be downloaded from http://quinon.com/files/keylayouts/)

both are preinstalled. The ArmUnicode site can help you figure out Windows if you’re not familiar with setting up other language support here.

These are the fonts that work with them (download them here or here):

Windows:
Arial AMU
Arial Unicode MS (comes with MS Office)
ArmNet Helvetica
Caslon
Chrysanthi Unicode
CN-Arial
Code2000
Everson Mono Unicode
Fixedsys Excelsior
FMBF Bardi
FMBF Notr
FMBF Tahoma
FMBF Wien
FMBF_Hanragitaran
Free Monospaced
FreeSans
Hindsight Unicode
MPH 2B Damase
Roman Unicode
Sylfaen (comes with Windows XP)
TITUS Cyberbit Basic

Link to Windows Keyboard Support Download

Mac (a lot of the Windows-based TTF fonts will work on the Mac too, but I haven’t tried them all myself other than this one):
Mshtakan

Unix:
Caslon
ClearlyU

The Matenadaran’s using Unicode, so why don’t you? You can learn even more about Unicode and Armenian here.

NO MORE OPENING ARMENIAN WEBPAGES AND NOT BEING ABLE TO READ THE MESS!