The Latvian Security Police have detained a college instructor for two days of questioning and banned him from leaving the country after his release for making comments, published in a newspaper, about the Latvian banking system and currency.
Friday’s (August 22) concert at Riga was truly awesome. Sigur Rós gave the audience the best songs from the previous albums, but the most positive feelings overwhelmed me upon the kickoff of Gobbledigook.
Today, while exploring the fun and useful addictomatic.com, I found how easy it can be to find information about various topics. I decided to have a look at Latvia from the side, and entered ‘’Latvia’’ in the search window.
It generates a new page containing the most popular news and blog entries, photos and videos about Latvia. The latest piece of news, naturally, is the Olympic gold medal of our BMX rider Maris Strombergs.
I like the music of Travis, but up until now I wasn’t a huge fan, and didn’t know what they look like, so after sorting through the pictures from the Positivus AB event, I went to wikipedia to have a look at the band’s members.
I was somewhat surprised to see that no photo at all had been added to the wikipedia page of the band’s lead singer Francis Healy. Upon checking the history, I found that the encyclopaedia contributors had had problems with image copyrights, so pictures were regularly being added to and removed from this entry.
Continue reading ‘added a photo to wikipedia for the first time’
A month ago, a survey was carried out and information was published on how much the journalists in Latvia read blogs and are affected by them. (7 guru article in Latvian)
Main findings:
- 82% of the surveyed journalists read blogs regularly
- Every fourth media worker reads blogs for entertainment
- More than half (58%) of the respondents claim that they rarely use blogs in their work
- 32% have never used blogs in their work
- 41% of the respondents read blogs several times per week
- 32% of the respondents read blogs at least once a day
- 55% of the surveyed journalists say that they are merely passive observers of the blogosphere, only reading blogs, but never commenting
- 20% of the surveyed journalists are considering the possibility of creating their own internet journal
Continue reading ‘Survey: “Latvian journalists are entering the blogosphere”’
I wanted to buy some original t-shirts for the summer. Went to threadless.com and picked 4 really cool shirts from their huge selection. The total order amount was 22 LVL (~49$) – a good price, especially considering that the chance of meeting anyone with the same shirt in Latvia is very low.
Sadly, it turned out that Latvia was not included in the shipping list – all the neighboring countries were there, but not Latvia. I sent a mail to find out if there was really no way to get the shirts.
Continue reading ‘Latvians committing fraud or Latvia Post making money on the side?’
Research company TNS Latvia has carried out a survey which has shown that a truly impressive number of the inhabitants of Latvia (151 000 or almost 7% of all Latvians) read blogs.
There are 952 000 inhabitants of Latvia which have used internet in past 6 months, but active internet users which have used internet in past 7 days are only 877 000. So that means 15% of active internet users in Latvia read blogs.
Continue reading ‘blogs are being read by at least 151 000 inhabitants of Latvia’
My name is Miks Latvis. I was born, and am living, in Latvia. For almost two years now I have been maintaining the blog onkulis.com. In Latvian, “onkulis” means uncle. Don’t even ask why I have chosen such a weird name, that’s just how it is.
I am actively involved in web project management and development. I work for company which develops web projects. The most successful project (in my opinion) we have made is Internet magazine www.mix.lv, developed in a true web 2.0 fashion. Anyone can freely publish their articles, and readers can arrange them as desired.
In my ‘’free time’’ I am taking distance education courses in journalism at the University of Latvia. Previously I have also spent some time studying computer science and political science.
What will I be writing about here?
I am going to be talking about myself and about the happenings in Latvia that could also be interesting enough for people abroad. I have always been inspired by the idea that there are three brotherly nations living in the Baltic States – Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians. And right now, when internet is widely available and the language barrier has been broken, it is the right time to find out what is going on right across the border. I have noticed that without knowledge of what your neighbors are up to, you may end up reinventing the bicycle. That is why I will try to talk about the fields close to me and present at least a minimal impression of them.
Regrettably, this will be another personal blog without a strictly defined theme, but mainly oriented towards web issues, naturally. So, usually this place will host information about web projects, blogs, photography, running and music news. It will mostly be a good, creative mix. Sometimes translated articles from my usual blog will also appear here. Of course, I will try to prepare information that would be of interest to people outside Latvia.
I also hope that no misunderstandings will arise from the address of this blog – onkulis.com/blog; if you open onkulis.com, everything will be in Latvian there, but it is possible to switch to the English version at the top.
In comments, I would like to hear what are the going-ons in Latvia that you would be most interested in.
My name is Miks Latvis. This is my blog about weblife* in Latvia.
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