nica.nn.ru was the website of a Nizhny Novgorod firm engaged in vehicle inspection and property valuation. The earliest surviving snapshot of the home page is dated 8 December 2002: the site presented the "Nizhny Novgorod Independent Center for Vehicle Inspection," operating in Nizhny Novgorod at 1 Iyulskikh Dney Street, with telephone and fax (8312) 77-96-92 and mobile 8-2-310-17-93[1]. By March 2005 the same site was being run under the name OOO "Nezavisimy Tsentr Otsenki" (Independent Center for Valuation) — at the same address and with the same taxpayer ID (INN) 5260108608[2]. In the nn.ru directory, from which the domain made its way into the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating, it was listed as "Nitsa — vehicle inspection bureau. Property valuation."

The 2002 site

The early version of the home page was built as a single-page business card with a horizontal menu of five items: "contacts," "price list," "for motorists," "documents," and the postal address "nica @ nn.ru"[1]. As the home page stated, the center provided "valuation services" for motor vehicles, machinery and equipment, real estate, land plots, businesses (enterprises) and share packages, as well as intellectual property[1].

A separate column listed work in the automotive line: determining market value, determining the cost of restoration repair, expert assessment of the quality of components and assemblies, determining material damage from a traffic accident, determining the loss of marketable value from a traffic accident, legal consultation on traffic accidents, repair at an auto shop based on a prepared estimate, and photography of valuation objects[1].

The lower part of the page was occupied by the credentials with which the firm confirmed its right to operate: a license to conduct valuation activity dated 23 September 2002, No. 004987, a certificate of state registration of the legal entity dated 7 September 2002, No. 1025203015375, and a professional liability insurance policy dated 14 October 2002, No. 53-00002-0234; the insurer named was the insurance company "Neftepolis"[1]. Below the credentials ran a "tail" line typical of promotion at the time, made up of repeated keywords — "property valuation," "market value," "car auto vehicle" — typed with the misspelling "immushchestva" among them[1].

The 2005 site

By the snapshot of 7 March 2005 the site had changed both its owner's name and its structure. The menu had grown to seven items: "home," "contacts," "price list," "documents," "nica @ nn.ru," "for motorists," and "for intermediaries"; the last section promised a commission of "10% of the contract amount"[2]. The list of services became noticeably more detailed: alongside vehicle valuation it now included valuation of apartments, garages, private houses and cottages, buildings and structures, dacha plots, and flood/water-damage losses, determination of market and collateral value, business valuation, valuation of share packages and other securities, as well as intangible assets, trademarks, innovations, and inventions[2].

Promised turnaround times also appeared. As the home page stated, for an "express assessment of traffic accident damage" on domestically made cars, an inspection carried out before 12:00 gave a result after 16:30, and one carried out after 12:00 gave a result the following day; for foreign-made cars the result was issued the following day. Assessing damage from flooding of apartments and other premises took 5-7 business days after inspection[2]. The address and INN remained the same, while the telephone numbers changed to (8312) 77-55-09 and 18-03-70[2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site belonged to the business, "services" segment of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet — to the small corporate business-card sites that lived in the nn.ru zone and were listed in the thematic sections of the city directory. It was not a notable resource: according to the combined sample of the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating, its Counter.nn.ru figure stands at 8.0 — against 28,838.65 for the nnov.ru portal in the same sample; no votes for it are recorded in our data. In the surviving results table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004, the domain nica.nn.ru does not appear[3].

Closure

The last snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated 10 March 2007; no later versions of the site have survived. By the time the inventory of defunct Nizhny Novgorod sites was compiled, the domain nica.nn.ru was not responding, and our data contains no trace of the firm having moved to another address. Two archival snapshots remain from the resource — from 2002 and 2005 — from which its appearance has been reconstructed.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Voting results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, 2004 (archive)