sphone.newmail.ru is the website of the "SPhone Telephone Directory" program, which distributed telephone databases for Nizhny Novgorod and the surrounding region. As the home page stated, the program contained databases of apartments and organizations — "more than 350,000 subscribers" — a database of Nizhny Novgorod pagers, telephone area codes for the regional centers and district centers of Nizhny Novgorod Region, as well as databases of telephone numbers for Dzerzhinsk, Arzamas, Zavolzhye, and Pavlovo[1]. The site lived on the free hosting service newmail.ru; the signature at the bottom of the page — "Copyright © SPhone 1998-2002" — dates work on the directory to the late 1990s[2]. The first snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated May 25, 2002[1], and the last is dated August 10, 2010[3].

What the program could do

The main difference between SPhone and a printed directory was its ability to search on incomplete data. As the home page stated, it was a "telephone directory with a large number of search capabilities," and it gave this example: "you can search for a telephone number if you remember only the third and fifth digits, or an apartment, knowing that its number is greater than 24"[1]. Besides searching the ready-made databases, the program, according to the description on the same page, allowed users to "create and edit databases in notebook mode"[1]. A separate section of the site, "Creating Databases," was devoted to building one's own databases[1].

What the site looked like

In 2002, the menu on the left was divided into two blocks. The first, "SPhone," led to the pages "About the Program," "History," "Creating Databases," "Download," "Sending SMS Messages," and "Universal Calculator." The second, "Other Programs," listed the same author's other creations: ColViewer, AutorunConstructor, AntShell, Crusher, Tamagochi, Politics2. A separate item, unrelated to the software theme, was the page "Paintings by Ivan Vorozheikin"[1].

By October 2003, the page title named the city outright — "SPhone Telephone Directory - Nizhny Novgorod" — and the menu had grown. The earlier sections were joined by "News," "Software List," "For Authors," "Hardware Prices," "Prices for Cell and Cordless Phones," and "Links"; the item about sending SMS had been shortened to "Send SMS," while "Paintings by Ivan Vorozheykin" stayed in place[2]. In none of the surviving snapshots did the home page give a postal address or a telephone number for contact[1][2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet

The site was listed in the nn.ru portal catalog with the description "SPhone Telephone Directory. Nizhny Novgorod, Dzerzhinsk, Arzamas, Zavolzhye, Pavlovo," and in the surviving summaries of the Counter.nn.ru rating it corresponds to a score of 477. The site does not appear in the published table of voting results for Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet 2004[4]. For the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of the early 2000s, this combination was typical: a directory program with local databases, a page on free hosting, and an entry in a portal's catalog.

How It Closed

Between 2003 and 2007, the site ceased to exist as a directory, but the address remained occupied. In a snapshot from September 16, 2007, the address opens to a generated pseudo-scientific text, "Caesura as Stress," with an admission at the end: "The article was created on the basis of materials from the site http://vesna.yandex.ru"; alongside it is a registration form for mailboxes in the domains pochta.ru, front.ru, hotbox.ru, land.ru, pochtamt.ru, and rbcmail.ru[5]. The same text appears in the last snapshot, from August 10, 2010, except that in place of the mail form, links at the bottom now read "Mail," "Fun Stuff," "Photo Links," and "Jobs," along with a mention of the QIP.ru hosting support service[3]. In other words, the vacated page on the free hosting was taken over by an automatic placeholder that had nothing to do with the telephone directory. The domain no longer exists; no snapshots after August 2010 survive in the web archive.[3] For more on the counter.nn.ru rating, see the archival study of the rating.

Home Page Through the Years

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2010 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Voting results of Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day, 2004 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, 2007 (archive)