abc.nn.ru was an amateur Nizhny Novgorod website run by the "ABC.NN Team" (The ABC.NN Team). It lived in the nn.ru Nizhny Novgorod domain zone and, in its own description, called itself "The ABC NN Team Site (Nizhny Novgorod)"[1], while its home page carried an advertising banner for "Spasskiye Cheeses" (Спасские Сыры) with a Nizhny Novgorod phone number, "(8312) - 655920"[2]. The first snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated 2 April 2001[1], the last — 9 February 2005. Over these years the site completely changed both its look and its content: from a collection of "freebies," dictionaries, and forums it moved on to a "hybrid mail" service, a humor section, and Visual Basic lessons.

The first version: a forum, dictionaries, and "freebies" (2001)

In April 2001 the home page looked like a typical homepage of a team of enthusiasts: a news column, a mailing-list subscription form, a quick poll, and an "Our Projects" menu. The menu listed "Super Forum," "Dictionaries," "Freebies," "Visual Basic," a "Computer Security: Steganography" section, as well as "For Guests" and "About Us" pages[1]. A separate block offered a choice of themes — "Regular," "Green," "Carrot," "Acid," "Toxic," "Pink Hamster"[1]. Feedback went to admin@abc.nn.ru[1].

As the home page put it, mailing-list subscribers received "news, links, announcements, jokes, and so on. And all of this for free!!!," and it came out "once a week"[1]. The news feed from early 2001 recorded the project's life week by week: on 29 January the "Steganography" section opened; on 31 January, "The FREEBIES section has been FULLY updated! Sponsors and their descriptions, ways to earn money added"; on 10 February, "The site is working again! after being down for technical reasons"; on 21 February — "The Nizgny.ru Network Resource Directory has opened, add your site to our directory"[1].

The site's own description listed its content as follows: a listing of theaters and exhibitions; a forum "where you can find almost any topic"; a "Freebies: sponsors, proxies, providers" section; "Visual Basic: API, examples, lessons"[1]. Among the page's meta keywords, alongside "Nizhny Novgorod" and "NN," were "Spassky," "Spasskiye Cheeses," "ChP Kucherov" (sole proprietor Kucherov), "Cheese," "Shop" — a trace of the same Nizhny Novgorod advertiser[1]. At the bottom of the page was the line "Copyright ABC.NN Team, 2000-2001"[1].

The second version: hybrid mail, humor, and Visual Basic

By 2002 the site had been redone. The footer menu was reduced to a list: "Home | Humor | Visual Basic | Steganography | Hybrid Mail | About Us | Contact Us | Add-on`s for Inlink2," and the copyright line changed to "© 2002, The ABC.NN Team"[2]. The "Humor" section broke down into "Jokes," "Aphorisms," "Stories," "Pictures," "Teletubbies"; the "Visual Basic" section, with the subsections "Win32 API," "Examples," and "Articles," promised: "We will teach you the basics of programming"[2]. There were now three forums: a general one, "Orienteering," and "For Guests"[2].

The site's main proprietary service became "hybrid mail" — "Sending letters from the Internet to a geographic mailbox," that is, receiving an email and then delivering it to the recipient by ordinary post[2]. At the top of the page hung an announcement: "ATTENTION! From 20 October the Hybrid Mail project starts working again. Letters will be delivered starting from the 22nd"[2]. Users could log in with their email address and a "personal identifier"[2]. The poll on the home page was devoted to the same service and explicitly called it a Nizhny Novgorod one: "How do you rate the Nizhny Novgorod Hybrid Mail System?" with the options "Cool!," "...good enough," "What is that?," "No need for such a service at all"[2]. Among the meta keywords of the February 2004 snapshot, besides "hybrid mail" and "freebies," were "In-Link2, In-Link, InLink, Intechnik, InLink" — the same terms the "Add-on`s for Inlink2" menu item was devoted to[4].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site remained purely a phenomenon of the amateur layer of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet: our research knows it from the nn.ru directory listing, but it left no trace of wide recognition. abc.nn.ru does not appear in the final voting table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004[5], no votes for it are recorded in our data, and we have no information on its standing in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru counter (more on the samples — Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating). At the same time, the range of its subjects — freebies, steganography, Visual Basic lessons, jokes, its own resource directory, and a homemade mail service — is a characteristic inventory of the interests of a home site of that era.

Decline and closure

Updates stopped before the site itself disappeared. The "Latest materials" block on the February 2003 snapshot ended with an entry from 21 July 2002 — a note about the Alcatel One Touch series in the "Mobiles: Secrets" section[2]. By November 2003 the list had gained a single new addition — five installments of "A Selection of Quality Aphorisms by Evgeny Kashcheyev" from 27 September 2003[3]. The snapshot from 11 February 2004 does not differ from the November one in any way: the same announcement, the same poll, the same list of materials[4]. The last web-archive snapshot of the home page is dated 9 February 2005; according to our records, from 2005 onward the address hosted a parking page, and abc.nn.ru had no further substantive life.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, 2004 (archive)