A gadget blog built for a friend

Supporting a friend’s gadget blog

In 2005, we created Gadgetlab.Ru, one of the early gadget-focused blogs in the Russian internet.

The project wasn’t commercial — it was built as a favor for a friend who wanted to run a tech blog and community around electronics, computers, cameras, and other gadgets.

Features and highlights

• 🔌 News and blog posts about gadgets and electronics.

• 💬 Full-featured forum with comments and discussions.

• 🛒 Small marketplace (baraholka) for trading and selling devices.

• 📢 Built-in banner ad engine for monetization.

• 👥 Designed as a community portal, though activity remained modest.

Why it mattered

Gadgetlab wasn’t about business milestones — it was about helping a friend launch a project.

For us, it showed again how flexible our CMS was: from blogs and forums to marketplaces and ads, all integrated in a single system.

The site ran for about a year, and while it never became a large community, it remains part of the history of our «friend projects».