sota.nnlife.ru was a Nizhny Novgorod thematic website about cellular communication and paging, active in the first half of the 2000s. The title of its home page read "Nizhny Novgorod - Cellular Communication and Paging"[1], and the nn.ru directory described the project as "A portal about Nizhny Novgorod cellular operators, paging companies, phone and pager specifications, instructions, comparisons, tests, tariffs, news"[4]. The site was one of the thematic sections of the Nizhny Novgorod project nnlife.ru: it occupied a third-level domain, was located in the /home/hosting/n/nnlife/public_html/sota/ directory, and loaded advertising banners from the page nnlife.ru/ban.php[3]. The first archived snapshot of the home page is dated August 2, 2002[1], the last — March 7, 2005[3].

What the site looked like

The left-hand menu consisted of seven sections: "Phone Models", "Pager Models", "Cellular Operators", "Paging Operators", "Shops", "Ringtones" and "Instructions for Entering Ringtones"[1]; by 2005 a "Partners" item had been added[3]. The service navigation at the bottom included links "About the Project", "Vacancies", "Advertising", "Project News", "Partners", "Links", "Classifieds" and "Forum"[1]. By April 2003 the forum had been split into four branches — "About Everything", "About Operators", "About Pagers" and "About Phones"[2].

The site's own directory of firms was growing: in August 2002 the home page reported "14 organizations in the directory"[1], in April 2003 — "37 organizations in the directory"[2]; the same number still appeared on the page in March 2005[3]. The bottommost line listed neighboring thematic sections of nnlife.ru: "culture and leisure", "design and advertising", "cellular communication and paging", "website creation and support", "hosting", "internet access", "IP telephony"[1]. Neither a mailing address nor an editorial phone number appears in any of the surviving snapshots of the home page.

The "Events" feed

The middle of the home page held a news feed where Nizhny Novgorod items ran alongside world news. In the August 2, 2002 snapshot, the first item was "MTS Introduces Changes to Tariff": as the home page reported, "Mobile TeleSystems company announces changes to the 'Summer' tariff — cancellation of the additional subscription fee for a second 'Favorite Number'"[1]. Below, under the heading "GSMLIGHT is now one and a half times cheaper!", it was reported that from August 1, 2002 the price of a GSMLIGHT starter kit at the service center and salon would drop to 10 dollars, and an item dated July 10 announced that from August 15 new rules for the "Call Forwarding" service would apply at BeeLine[1]. The rest of that day's news was not local: the announcement of the Sharp J-SH09 phone, the start of sales of the Sagem MY3078, approval of a single-use CDMA phone from Hop-On, the Sony CLIE PEG-SJ30 handheld computer, trials of an experimental UMTS network by "Sonic Duo" with Ericsson, and VimpelCom's purchase of the Orenburg operator "Orensot"[1].

In the April 7, 2003 snapshot the feed consisted of just four messages, all dated March 13 and all about the Nizhny Novgorod operator NSS: the opening of roaming with the German "O2", with the Hong Kong-based Peoples Telephone Company (incoming calls averaging from 1.59 to 2.25 c.u. per minute), with the Kyrgyz network Bitel (from 1.13 to 1.55 c.u.), and with the Brazilian Oi (from 2.01 to 2.73 c.u.)[2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the nn.ru directory the site was listed under "Projects: Internet: Portals and Universal Servers" and had a Counter.nn.ru counter under number 3222[6]. In the June 20, 2002 snapshot of the directory — a month and a half before the first surviving snapshot of the home page itself — the site was already present, but the rating field read "Rating: none"[4]. On September 17, 2003 the entry showed "Rating: 32"[5], and on November 29 of the same year — "Rating: 90"[6]. This left it far behind the section's leaders: in the same list on November 29, 2003, "Nizhny Novgorod On-Line" had 21835, nnov.ru had 17384, and the R52 portal had 7715[6]. How this counter worked and what its numbers meant is discussed in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating; the site itself is a case typical of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of the time — a narrowly themed portal hosted within a larger hosting project.

The surviving results page of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day 2004 vote does not mention sota.nnlife.ru[7].

How it closed

The March 7, 2005 snapshot caught the site already falling apart. In place of the banners at the top of the page were six pairs of PHP warnings of the form "php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Name or service not known" and "Failed opening 'http://nnlife.ru/ban.php?slot=1' for inclusion": the server could not resolve the name nnlife.ru, meaning the project's parent domain was no longer responding by that time[3]. The menu, service links, and the line "37 organizations in the directory" still displayed, but the "Events" feed was empty — not a single item remained under the heading[3]. There are no later snapshots of the home page in the web archive: the last one is dated March 7, 2005[3].

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Portals and Universal Servers" section, June 20, 2002 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Portals and Universal Servers" section, September 17, 2003 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Portals and Universal Servers" section, sorted by rating, November 29, 2003 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)