While Eurasianet hits a lot of the highlights, they missed the moment at 2:28 when the journalist asks, “You said in an interview with Karavan that you would mercilessly put people in prison? Maybe that was a mistake?” There’s a good 5 second pause before Kasymov answers that he might have misspoken but that we have too much disorder and corruption and criminals have to be dealt with harshly. Worth seeing through to the end when the flowers start flying (If this looks staged to you, there are rumors that it took 4 takes to get it right).

What is amazing is that the journalist, while respectful, does ask some difficult and aggressive questions of the then-head of the Customs Committee. Hard to imagine that happening in today’s environment.

While I may have hurt Kasymov’s chances for winning, his Patriot’s Party did join the 2020 coalition to keep the President in power until 2020, so he presumably won’t be too upset if he loses to the incumbent. And in the interests of equal time, here’s a brief summary of all the candidates’ platforms.

Thanks to Chris Merriman for bringing this to my attention.

A little like Yelp for Kazakhstan, Pomidor (which means “tomato” in Russian) lets people put up reviews and stories of their experiences at different businesses in Kazakhstan. It needs a little more work–be nice to have a rating system and a more advanced navigation system to find businesses more accurately. It would also be good to have author profiles. At some point, the businesses themselves will notice this site (if they haven’t already) and start putting up fake positive reviews.But since Kazakhstan doesn’t really have a Yellow Pages and most businesses don’t have a strong web presence or freely available information, this site is very much needed here.

There’s already a lot of content, and it covers everything from restaurants and cafes, to furniture stores, to banks and telephone companies, to companies that offer Santa Claus actors for parties!

I certainly will try to find some time to put up a few good and bad reviews. I should note that the site is in Russian, and I assume they would expect reviews to be in Russian as well. Maybe the expat community should organize an English-language review site from the perspective of foreigners.

However in December of 2010 there was a lot of noise about the Prime Minister’s insistencethat all Ministers have an iPad, and Arta announced at that time that they would release their own tablet computer. A press release from that time says it should be on the market in March of 2011 with a price of $500. Unlike the iPad, the device will be aimed at business users.

A prototype featured:

ARM-Cortex-A8 processor to 1 GHz, 10.1-inch display (resolution 1024×600 pixels) and 256 megabytes of RAM…operating system Linux. Built-in flash storage device that is used for storing programs and data, has a capacity of 8 GB. Extend it by using memory cards microSD. Communication capabilities include Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, as well as support data transmission on mobile networks of third generation (3G)

iPads cost around $1200 in Kazakhstan (in the US a 16GB iPad with wireless only connectivity costs $500 and the top of the line 64GB with WiFi and 3G costs $829) and one wonders how so many government officials are able to afford one on their publically paid salaries.

In any case, check out the presentation for more details and pictures of the Arta Tablet (which I will continue to call a KazPad unless they threaten legal action against me. It would be nice to see some screenshots of more than just the homepage. The fact that there’s no photo of any apps running or anyone doing anything with it is a bit suspicious.

I do wish our computer programmers would spend more time coming up with original ideas rather than copying or riding on pre-existing services.

Perhaps if you want to pirate Ralph Lauren, not only the style and the logo, but also the photoshoots in advertisements, perhaps you could bother to make your website English. When I open a website in Turkish, chances are I’m not going to believe it’s actually a US made product, no matter how many times you say the word “US”.

Caveat emptor. US Polo Association has nothing to do with Polo by Ralph Lauren. Just so you know.

By the way, I tried “Olympic medals” and that worked, so don’t be limited by socio-economic data.

And this one is comparative. Just enter the country you want to compare it with.

Finally, one for ranges of years:

Don’t blame me if the information isn’t available. Wolfram Alpha compiles the info. If anyone has an idea for a cool widget, feel to share it here, or go make your own!

EDIT: permanent page for Wolfram Alpha Widgets is now here!

I’m sure the rumors will start about who is funding it and in what way it is biased. But as the government Kazakhstan is accused of restricting local press freedom more and more, these alternative news sources should be flourishing.

The latest episode, which I’ve embedded below, covers a few subjects I haven’t really discussed: Mukhtar Ablyazov’s accusations of corruption on the part of Timur Kuliabayev and the strike in Zhanausien.

Shooting down Kabanbai-Batyr

It will be interesting to see if the game is competitive on its own, or only sells from a sense of patriotism. I for one would buy it just to encourage Kazakhstan’s computer industry. And I’d love to hear from people who are into “Need for Speed” or other racing games, is there anything innovative in Astana Racer? Does it bring something new to the genre?

• “The idea sounds great. It would be interesting, although what can we expect from our programmers?”
• “I love the idea. But this game will be great if it will be possible to speed without limits, or tickets from the police and overall to be able to break the rules. Me, I would love to drive a car in the square in front of Kazmunaigaz.”
• “With regard to the music, I am against using Kazakh music. I don’t want to speed listening to the Kazakh song, Kyzdaray.”

Although some of us who drive in Astana aren’t sure why driving at top speeds with no regard for the rules or other drivers is at all something new. Drivers seem to do that all the time, without the use of a computer!

EDIT: Check out this forum entry before buying the game. I bought it and tried it out and my video driver keeps crashing and I’m not the only one. The creators
seem to be working on it, but for some people it seems to be buggy.

Other people are obviously running the program with no problems however.

So what’s the best domestic airline for getting from place to place [in Kazakshtan -KZBlog]?

There is one small one that’s kind of unusual. They tie a huge eagle on your wrist, put you on a horse that gallops around 30 miles per hour then abruptly stops at the edge of a steep abyss, and the eagle takes over.

I suppose I could see it if hawk hunting was something that looked really strange or was completely unheard of in the world outside Kazakhstan, but it’s not. The only thing I will give the article credit for is that it makes fun of Kazakhstan but never once mentions Borat!