Took off from a train and went directly to the south vestibule. In a lot of brochures said that it’s really big. Hm, it appaered that not that big, actually.

“Sportivnaya” station is kind of old one. Was bild in 1975 (after 22 years when Moscow metro was founded). It was named “sports station” because of stadium near by. And interesting fact: near the station there is no (at all) stops of public transportation.

Even south vestibule is not big, but a lot of people skip that door. They just pass it by. Like in spy movies: behind that inconspicuous door there are a lot of secrets.

For example how much electricity is Moscow metro spend on? Answer: 52 million kilowatt/hour per day.

Or what people do in metro during night? Answer: from 1AM till 5AM teams of workers prepare, clean and repair metro stations for next day use.

So, prepare your 5 kopek coins and let’s get started! By the way it’s real sign and it was hanging in 60-s before the turnstile.

So, just for beginning some posters, motors and old train models. Pretty obvious – it’s V. I. Lenin – man who founded the metro and also was the leader of the country. The whole name of metro is “Moscow metro of V. I. Lenin”.

Sign says: “we are builing the best metro in the world.” And they really built the best metro in the world.

Poster says:“Metro for 3 years!”


Poster says:“Metro was build by the whole country!”

Old picture of tunnel constriction.

Poster says:“Yes for metro” or “Metro exists”. Good motivational slogan by the way.

Poster says:“Test ride. 31 December 1942.”. Probably, one of the most famous pictures about Moscow metro. During the Second World War metro was used not only as a transit (honestly, for me that was a huge discovery).

Some parts of the metro was used by army. On the picture (unfortunately behind the glass, I hate museums behind the glass) is armored train combating with plaines, comes to the surface from metro tunnel.

During the war Moscow metro was used as air-raid shelter. Generally, then metro was being build one of the goals was to create a bomb shelter for Moscow.

Long times ago people had invitation to the metro, like to a theatre. Only for one ride.

Or you had to show an admission. For the metro workes were special admissions. This one is for passanger.

Some of this equipment is still can be found on stations.

Another interesting theme is badges, awards and souvenirs devoted to the metro

Badge of depot: I really like “M”‘s arrows.

And Gmail logo was invented in Moscow metro.

Another rich thing is tickets. To be honest a lady became really nervous and suspicious when for 15 minutes I was circling around a showcase with these tickets. It seemed she gets used to see boys who interested in trains models. Well, we will see some soon, but now tickets in a chronological order. Well, close to it.

St. Petersburg tickets are here too.

So, let’s finish with paper and go to technical part. It’s pretty interesting. Let’s take a look at the tunnel. In the museum there is only a part of it (to be more exact only some wires, semaphore and third rail (contact rail)).

Third rail I can name as one of the best invention ever. It support the whole metro system, truly speaking. A train has a contact with third rail which brings electricity to the train. During night repairing third rail is turned off.

Other wires (on the walls) for semaphore, railway points and speed limit system.

Wow! The train model. One of the most common train in the metro now.

And this is a view of a «Еж» or «Еж-1» train booth (old trains). In the natural size.

And this is a very special thing – I called it “thing with which the engineer makes ahhffhshsh sounds”. Yep, public announcement radio. Kind of it

Me with this thing. I said to passengers that our train did not go further, and tried to call Lenin. Now lack. I honestly pressed all buttons, but no one answered me.

Well, let’s return back to techy things: this is an old control terminal on station “Kievskaya”. No one uses them now.

The sign says: “Don’t touch.“. I add: just read. These controls are used for switching railway points.


Speed limit 90 km/h.

This is speed limit system used in tunnels to prevent a crash of trains.

If a train is gonna catch up a train in front of it, the system will limit it’s speed or event stop the train for several minutes.


And this is time table. Hard to understand, right?)

Time is located on the horizontal (9:00 am), station names are on the vertical. And trains are moving along the diagonals. These tapes are prepared for each season. If, due to human factors, the train goes faster then scheduled the electronics “catch” it and do not let it go any further.

And this one of the first turnstile. Still working. You can feed it with 5 kopeks coins.


Likes counter.

Modern control at station “Novogereevo”

Just interesting lamps.

Sign near the entrance.

While I was spending such an interesting time in Moscow Metro museum Moscow city was living like it usually do…

… and a lot of these people even simply don’t know about existence of this cool, interesting, free and educational museum. They just pass it by. And only real spy can find the true way to it. I strongly recommend you to play a secret agent for a little bit investigating secrets of Moscow metro.

I have already had some experiense of using noIdentity apps. To be honest my favorite financial app is MoneyBook. I haven’t found better app yet. Also I have been using ListBook before iOS 5 and Reminders app were released. So, when guys from noIdentity shown the new version of ListBook I was intrigued: is the new ListBook better then Reminders? And two week gave an answer to this question.

Design

Let’s begin from UI. It became simpler and clearer but at the same time more pleasant to use. Big buttons and dots, nice combination of brawn, beige and green. In Remainders Apple uses more textures, more colors (white, red, brown, gray and black) and different controls structure.

ListBook (left) and Reminders (right)

As Steve Jobs said — “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” and the new ListBook has some benefits in comparison with Reminders. Firstly, it’s gestures. For example a simple swipe to the right shows all lists that you have. Swipe to the left and the delete button will apper.

And one of my favorite feature is creating new tasks using gestures instead of buttons. If during adding new task you swipe to the left the task will be added to the list but the the form will not disappear. This is so convenient especially when you are on the phone and somebody is dictating you what to take with you or what to buy. This is reach!

However, the new interface has it’s disadvantages. For instance, I don’t like the right upper conner with two buttons. I only once missed the “aim” but this idea looks cheap for me.

Sharing

I use to-do lists only as place where I can store what I should buy or for my wish-list. Still, even these unpretentious tasks must be done conveniently. For instance, my family members got iPhone’s not so far, and now we can share our lists in ListBook within e-mail. Moreover, ListBook is a universal app for iPad an iPhone and it supports iCloud sync. So my lists on both devices are synced magically.

And other tiny details

Happiness is that small details. And ListBook instead of Reminders has a lot of them. For example: color tags for tasks (well I don’t like them, and don’t use), or badge with a counter of undone tasks, or notifications in Notification Center. Due to time for every task.

And my favorite feature: hide and show completed tasks. When you are up to your Wish-list it is always truly good to recall something what you’ve alredy fulfilled.

Conclusion

From our last meeting ListBook became better then ever. I love this program from it’s icon on Home screen to the small icons for categories. In comparison with Remainders app ListBook has it’s own advantages and disadvantages.

The answer to the question what’s better is simple. Apple has it’s own philosophy about to-do lists — “remind me”. On the other side ListBook and it’s idea — “write down and forget, come back and recall”. If you share the philosophy of ListBook as I am you’ve love the app. You can buy ListBook just for 1.99$ in AppStore.

And talking about me, my wish list will be only in ListBook. For ever.

News about ads is not new. Not at all. If I am not mistaken, two years ago ads was announced, and the next year people started accuse Twitter and predict a short life. However, Twitter is still popular and still frighten us with ads, but not on mobile phones.

Yesterday news was not unexpected for me. Firstly, Twitter have to move to Android and iOS environment. Almost everyone has an adverb system: Google has AdWords, Apple can suddenly release iAds. So, ads arrival to mobile phones was just a matter of the time. Secondly, today is Facebook special event which devoted to ads on mobile phones (but only on Facebook). So yesterday’s announce of Twitter ad system was a good timing.

Next week uses who use official Android and iOS clients will see several kinds of advertisement on their mobile devices: Promoted Trends, Promoted Tweets, and also Promoted Accounts (in Who to follow). I think, the most annoying will be Promoted Tweets. How announcement said, these tweets will be shown at the top of your timeline. If you found certain tweet irrelevant you can delete it. So, probably basing on whom you follow, comment and what you read all ads tweets are build. However, just to be hones, when I saw how Twitter suggest me new people to follow sometimes I want to run away. If Promoted tweets will be the same I presume I will reads about politics or stuff more horrible then that.

Still there are two interesting things: first is official iPad client. It hasn’t updated yet, so it’s can’t show ads. I can’t prove it by my sefl because of lack of iPad, but some folks on Twitter show some “evidence” .

And another interesting thing is third party apps on Twitter API. It’s also hasn’t been updated yet so that means no ads on third party apps. Of course during the week Twitter can release new API but I hardly believe in this. Supposedly, we should wait for ads on aps like TweetBot, Weet for tweet, Ecofone, Osfoora and others. So, we have already saw advertisement like this and we have already deal with attitude like this. Let’s meet next year and do the same thing?

You know, several days ago Twitter released new app for iPhone and Android, and also shown new web design. All that was named “new new twitter” and they made very cool promotion video – go to space. So, I remember when Twitter has just released his first official app. And, truly specking it has enormously different than web-site. Today we have very similar web and mobile UI. And guess why do people displeased and complain about that changes? Why did it happened? Let’s discuss.

Back to users

Design has a rule: complicated stuff do failed. Twitter decided to follow this rule actively and that’s why. Today, when a lot of geeks and nerds have been using twitter for a long time, company needs new people in their user “troops”. Geeks can write their massages even don’t look at screen, but new users need some help and assistant. So this client was made only for new people in a goal to grow the number of active users. That’s it. Geeks will never leave twitter because they got the idea of micro massages, while the new users need to understand it.

When there are many things — it’s frightened

Well, just imagine, a new one downloads the app, launches it and … all tabs, accounts, hash tags, lists, search and other scary words just smashed his head with incomprehension. Being in his shoes I will run away as fast as possible. Complicated things are scary people and because of that Twitter hide some or even cut them. For example, these features disappeared from the app:

• Favstar integration (why do they need this, can you explain me?)
• Tweet translation
• Make a repost
• Copy links
• Address book integration
• Readitlater integration
• Ability to change font size
• Landscape mode

Lose some of this features is unacceptable for experienced user: as for me I will miss copy links one. Although, the person who has never heard about that features and his user experience is based on only on iPhone UI, he probably doesn’t have need of them at all. Other example is repost button. It dubs retweet button and for person who wants to recommend someone’s tweet is really hard to decide which one is the best.

So, new new Twitter is very very simple and light for perception. You don’t need to think how it works. It’s just simple and really convenient. Twitter is back to the gound to his first ideas; simplicity, quality and convenience. Bacause of that I suppose, that all remarks was made by people is really rude and this is cause of misunderstanding.

What’s cool in new new Twitter

As I said earlier new app is very simple. Next is new design: it similar to web one. And third is #Discover. By the way, #Discover also was criticized by geeks and was named as the most useless thing in the app. On the one hand I accept this opinion: I have the whole time line of information to read so why do I need more? But, on the other hand for new users this feature is really useful and wonderful. They on their starting point can find new people and stories to follow. Oh, and also in this tab there is search.

To sum it all up: this update is good, seriously, it’s not that bad. Don’t read that blaming articles around just give it a try. If you don’t like it you can always use something another: for instance Tweetbot. And I really proud that Twitter is developing. Nice job!

Yearly has notifications, but their the potential are in right set up. For example, for me it’s really difficult to decide what present should I buy. So after week or more I make a decision and go to the nearest tech shop to buy iPod :). For people like me in Yearly there are two different settings features: time and days before. In my case it’s great to receive the notification at 8:00 PM before two weeks.

And third thing which I like is person profiles. Though in Address Book app there is the same “Note” field in Yearly it become more usefully. You can write down person’s interests, hobbies, likes or even wishes or gift’s ideas. So, because of these features and design I like Yearly so much! You can buy it for 0.99$ in AppleStore.

By the way I should mention that Yearly takes all date from Address Book app. There is some advantages and disadvantages here. However, in my opinion there is more benefits then loss. You can sync your you birthday list among your devices, you can sync it with Facebook app, there is no need of creating new event and you can edit all date from you Mac or PC.

P.S. Now I am expecting an app which helps me choose the right present. Noidentity, can you create app for that?)

I love to receive mail and I love to do it with some beauty. So I created the design for the brilliant idea of my friend and now we want to share it with you. Feel free to comment, share and tell us about bugs. This is the first version so, don’t judge us strict. And happy halloween!

6:30 oh, God! Monday again! How I hate mondays. Automatically brush my teeth, wash hands and face and leave the home. 7 AM and again a huge traffic jam on my way to work. Lost hour and a half I arrive to my office. Main doors, lift goes up, open my cabinet and sit down in my favorite chair. Ready to work. But first I have to drink a cup of coffee cause I need to wake up!

Well, my mind becomes clear and I can start do tasks. But I need to check e-mails. Spam, spam, spam again. And what does admin do if I receive so many spam letter? Lazy guy! By the way we are working here! Deleted all spam I find my self chatting in the ICQ. After hour of hard labour in front of the computer I am so tired. But luckily launch will be soon.

At 1 PM I eat several rolls and two glasses of tea. What I suppose to do? Oh, yeah, I want to visit accounting department. They got a new cool shooter game and I must check it out. After the game we have a meeting about important questions which I skip because we have our programmer department meeting. Actually we have a nap for two hours or two and a half. Who cares? After the nap we follow a tradition to eat the leftovers of rolls and drink coffee.

Time 5 PM and I start prepare myself to finnish working day. All request we decline because we can do it tomorrow. And at the 6 pm I leave the office, drive my car and arrive home. Now I have free time for my self after a long hardworking day.

P.S. I hope You like it.

Everyday something incredible happens on Twitter: car races, people find new iPhone in a bar (again) or just a simple line about food: folks post a lot. You know.
Sometimes from this flow something can be useful in future. But how to save it? Evernote has a Tweet to Evernote feature wich allows you to send your tweets to Evernote special twitter account. Even if you are a really persistent person next day you are gonna give up sanding each tweet. So we need a simple tool for saving all this blue bird stuff. And the process should be automatic and simple cause you know, we leave in the tech century. And I am wonna to show you how I did this.

A short comment before you continue reading. It’s not a manual, it’s just thoughts so read them and after that use. Ok? Go on!

Who? When? Where? Why?

Long time ago I thought about saving all tweets. Tweets from following companies, from my favorite users and also from people who I usually greeting “Who the Hell are you?” Before that I used a connection between feedbernuer + email, but it did not work well. So, after some searching I found this – ifttt.

Idea is very primitive – ifttt makes links (triggers) between services and transport the information directly from one to another. Sign up on ifttt and create a new trigger between Twitter and Evernote. For one Twitter account you need 3 links, because your tweets, timeline and replies have a different triggers.

Done! Wait, it’s something horrible happened. Each tweet create a separate note! Just imagine 2000 new notes every day! Oh, it’s gonna be crazy. If you use only one notebook so I’ll say institution for persons of unsound mind in you notebook. Nah…

Birds, Elephants and information flow

Information needs a special attitude. It must not disturbe you so it should be separated and organized. Idealy it should be distribute to you in certain time. By the way, Evernote also follow this idea. It collects thoughts and pieces of knowledge and store them just clear your mind.

To separate my own notes from tweets I create another account in Evernote. Cause I use two Twitter accounts I need to make two notebooks for each couple.

After that in ifttt I set up links and the process began. To have access to my tweets I share these two notebooks to my own account so I can search in tweets. Aslo I ca copy a note to my own account and use it. For this you don’t need a premium account all actions can be done in normal one.

I have a tamplet for the message body which appear in note field. Check this:

So I have a very simple and at the same time very flexible system. If I add someone, his or her tweets will immediately save to my Evernote. That’s amazing. And I doesn’t need to think about how it works!
Wise and fast backups for you.

Hurrah! Now I have access to Google+ social net. First I want to say: Google+ is awesome and better then Facebook. It’s fresh, it’s stylish and it’s shiny. I think in future it will be very good Facebook’s competitor.

Ok, let’s talk about my favorite photo editing and posting service – Instagram. I have near one hundred cool shots ad now I want to share them all with my new Google+ friends. How to do that?

So, to import photos from Instgram to Google+ I use Instaport. It’s free and simple web service which allow you to download all you Instgram photos in one zip archive.

Then, go to Google+ photo page and choose «Upload photos».

And after that just drug all photos from folder to upload window. That’s it!

In future you can rename you album. For example, I have one called «Instagram photоs» and also upload new pictures from your computer (or from iOS device. Google+ app has been published to AppStore and now waining for approval).