Narayam II may even support the Latin #script

Typing with 10 fingers is a skill that makes using a computer so much easier. It is utterly frustrating when you have to use an AZERTY keyboard at Fosdem in Brussels. The keys are not where they should be and your ability is downgraded to the hunt and peck entry method.

Typing AZERTY is relatively straightforward; a small number of keys are positioned differently but all the keys are there. It is different for languages like Lingala where a word like Mbɔ́tɛ has characters you will not find on the US International keyboard. Seriously more difficult.

The InScript keyboard

At this time the Narayam extension is focusing on the languages and scripts of the Indic languages. When you consider that there are over 500 languages in India, you will appreciate that there is a lot of ground to cover. The last news is that Oriya and Sinhala are supported as well.

At this stage, Narayam expects the US International keyboard so the AZERTY keyboards are still safe for now from foreigners overlaying it with a keyboard layout they are comfortable with,
Thanks,
      GerardM

Véronique Kessler leaves the #Wikimedia Foundation in June

When Véronique joined the Wikimedia Foundation, she joined an organisation that was very much smaller and very much in the process of improving its act. As a certified public accountant, with a B.A. in Economics she was able to improve the financial processes and return with financial plannings and statements like clockwork.

Now that she is leaving in June, our organisation is very much in a different shape. It has grown from a nickel and dime shop into an organisation that turns nickels and dimes into a globally federated multi-million organisation. This has been very much a team and community effort but it would never have happened without the firm foundation of its administration.
Thanks Véronique,
       GerardM

Digital restoration: making the most of what is already great

This picture of Donald Pleasence by Allan Warren shows how some tender loving care can improve a great photo into a superb photo. For me the most important part of a portrait are the eyes and their expression in a face. The picture as a whole shows a composed man, posing relaxed in front of a camera. These two crops show in high resolution a before and an after image.

A lot of work goes into a successful restoration like this.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Portraits of friends and foes

As #Wikipedia provides a neutral point of view, we need pictures that show friends and foes alike in a high quality. When the quality of such pictures is considered, being an European is hardly a valid argument to oppose the picture of a former USA president.

At this moment there is a civil war developing in Libya and it will slowly but surely find its way into our many Wikipedias. Many people are hopeful we do not have to wait long for the next president of Libya. In the mean time, we have a quality portrait of the current president. I entered it as a a featured picture candidate and, I am interested what the comments will be this time around.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Fundraising in #India

In telling the developing story of Narayam, only one aspect of the issues languages face on the Internet is concentrated on. It is the part that helps our editors write articles in our projects. It is understood that they are able to read what they write and, for this to be true they have the right font, the right browser on their computer.

Having the right font and the right browser is something that is easily taken for granted. For many people the realities are starkly different. Santosh told me that in the cyber cafes in rural India Windows XP with IE 6 are dominant. The screen shot I received from Santosh comes with annotations of everything that is wrong when displaying Malayalam with IE 8.

When people see their language mangled like this, it is quite obvious that they will not get to the page where Jimmy is telling us that he is also a volunteer let alone that people will donate. There may be many poor people in India, there are also many rich people in India and in order to lure the latter to our donation link, a solution is needed that makes the Indic languages look good for all of them.

Webfonts provide an answer to this problem. It is a solution under development and this solution has a working solution for Firefox users. As there are still cross browser issues, there is no complete solution yet. Indian news portals are using Unicode technology with webfonts and these do not work for Chrome.

Even though more development is needed, supporting our languages with a partial solution will give us more traffic. It will bring our content to more readers and we will even get a fighting chance to raise funds in India.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Spring is in the air

I received a happy e-mail announcing that the #birds are at it again. The website shows how eight types of birds are busy doing their spring thing; making a nest, laying eggs, sitting on the eggs, feeding chicks and seeing them fly away.

Experience spring !!

There are already five feeds for five species of birds and, it would be cool when we could incorporate such feeds in our articles on these birds or on the subject of spring. It being a feed, it shows the real deal and in a way it is quite compulsive watching these animals doing .. not that much really.

Technically it may be a challenge. For us and for potential partners like the Dutch society for the birds it is a great opportunity as it brings the reality of nature to a much greater public.

Thanks,

       GerardM

Narayam shows the scope of an #Internet #language issue

Narayam is a #MediaWiki extension and it helps with writing articles in #Wikipedia. With several languages supported, additions for Narayam are queuing up.

When a mail is received from someone who is working for the government of Karnataka on a knowledge base asking for support in his application, a better perspective of the issue transpires. It is truly hard work to write Indic language content.

With the recent addition of Santhosh Thottingal to the Wikimedia language committee, we have a person who adds a history of practical involvement to the existing awareness of issues like these. When we provide support in MediaWiki for a language like Kannada or Singhala, similar support is needed in LibreOffice, Drupal or Wordpress to name but a few.

As the Wikimedia Foundation is through its projects the 500 pound gorilla of diverse language content, we hope to effectively raise awareness of language issues and stimulate solutions inside and outside our movement.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#StatusNet is getting ready for the big 1.0

Brion posted a heads-up: "StatusNet main development will be moving from 0.9.x to 1.0.x branch soon". A 1.0 release is the holy grail when software is considered feature complete.

At translatewiki.net, we have amassed a huge amount of StatusNet extensions and these 83 extensions contain together with the core StatusNet software 2319 messages. Surely at a time like this, when a release is in sight, it is a great moment to help out with the localisation.

The great thing of the StatusNet software for a localiser is that everything is in one place. It is just a matter of getting your teeth in and you are helping to make micro blogging software ready for your language. This software is great at connecting with other StatusNet servers and, you can even reach out to a Twitter.

A start with the localisation has been made for many languages; this is where you can check how your language is doing.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The 50 most spoken languages

At #translatewiki.net localisers for all languages are welcome. The 50 most spoken languages however provides a benchmark that indicates to what extend we are reaching the people of the world. Such statistics are used to report to the Wikimedia Foundation about how well we are doing with the localisation of MediaWiki.

Recently the first localisers for the Oriya language have surfaced and in a few days, the score for the Oriya localisation has gone up from 3 to 12. This is a happy occasion because the user experience of the Oriya Wikipedia has already improved as a consequence.

This new activity is the result of the close cooperation that exists between the Indian language projects. One of the newbie localisers was introduced in the vagaries of translatewiki by an experienced localiser and he is clearly finding his feet.
Thanks,
        GerardM

Narayam supports #Hindi and #Kannada

The Narayam extension provides a global replacement for keyboard method functionality that exists locally an several Wikipedias. This process is straight forward; it is a matter of isolating the keyboard method adding messages for a language and it is done.

The Kannada and Hindi Wikipedia have such local functionality and it has been incorporated in Narayam. This means that translatewiki.net is now better able to support its localisers for Hindi and Kannada.

As Narayam is getting ready to be used on projects like Commons, it is important that this functionality is tested. This can be done by localising the messages for Narayam or any of the other MediaWiki messages.

We hope to learn from you that it works in the same way as it does in the local solution. We also hope to see your appreciation and enthusiasm for the efforts to make localisation at translatewiki.net as easy as we can make it.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Okawix will support #openZIM

Okawix will support openZIM. #Wikipedia off line reading is done best when a localised interface is important to you. It is the only application that can be localised that will support openZIM.

With the support of openZIM, Okawix supports two formats for texts; their original one  Zeno and openZIM which is more efficient in compressing text. The installed base of Okawix includes smart phones like Android and iPhone. As Android does not yet support lzma2 compression, Okawix will move to the openZIM format when this support is available.

Okawix can be localised at translatewiki.net and with zeno it is a tool that not only displays the content of your wiki but also can also have a user interface in your language.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Supporting #mobile phones in #India

When you look at the distribution of traffic for #Wikipedia on the mobile phone, it is quite obvious. The "other" languages of India are not on the map. With not even one megabyte of traffic they hardly register.

As the Wikimedia Foundation has partnerships with Telecom organisations like Orange, asking them to help us promote our "other" Wikipedias is so obvious. Obvious because so far it was hard to come up with an argument explaining such a partnership.

The traffic by mobiles is so low, that this request to the Indian readers of my blog will actually register in the statistics. Click for instance here. A more interesting result will be had by clicking here. Some communities need to invest some effort to enable the mobile interface for their language.

So what can these Telecom giants do for us. They can provide a service to the people in India will show these languages flawlessly. If they want to do even more, they can make the browsing of mobile Wikipedia really cheap or even free.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Giving context to a friend in a social network

In #Wikipedia the call to be nice to newbies is an old one. The arguments for and against are pretty much well established and, these positions do not move. With a decline in the number of editors that stay with us, a different approach is sought.

When people make their first edit, they may be new to our community but chances are that they have friends who are well established. These friends are the most likely people willing to help when the first steps by a newbie are a bit wobbly. The trick is to engage these friends and to do that, it helps when a social network enables us to signal them.

It is really efficient to have social relations deal with the mess people make when they are new. Social control coming from friends is more appreciated then the templated instructions coming from someone who flies by. When someone is known to have social relations, the modus operandi of the people checking new articles can change; in stead of barking to the newbie they yell for a friend.

Wikipedia so far does not consider its role as a social network but it already is. People are invited to IRC for help, people establish wiki relations in social networks, they can be found on mailing lists. These relations while real are informal and cannot yet be leveraged.

When a social network is established for our context we have gained an approach to the newbies that come to us as friends.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Say hello to the magic of gender in #Wikipedia

The notion I had about #privacy was that it should not be possible to get information about a person like his or her gender. I was wrong; it says clearly in the preferences that gender is observable.

It is even better, "gender" is a magic word that allows you to make a sentence and will retrieve the gender of a user and, it will allow insert one of three strings depending on the result.

Hello {{gender:Maria|Mr|Mrs|whatever}} [[User:Maria|]], gender is a ''magic word''. Greetings, {{gender:GerardM|Mr|Mrs|whatever}} [[User:GerardM|]]

This same mechanism is used in the localisation of MediaWiki at translatewiki.net with the exception that the user is the logged in user by default and does not need to be identified.

What this clearly demonstrates is that setting your gender is observable and it can be used in templates and in texts wherever it is appropriate.
Thanks,
       GerardM

The joy of growing up

 #Netcup.de

#Translatewiki.net is growing up. It is bursting at the seams and again, it needs to size up to fit its activity. With all the new applications supported, applications that bring their own activity and people. With the ever growing number of localisers and localisation translatewiki sometimes breaks.

We have a wonderful host in netcup because they have been supporting translatewiki not only for its present activity but also for its growth. This is already the third time they have given us the facility we need to continue our growth.

As we manage our service at netcup, we can run on the bleeding edge of the MediaWiki development. This isolation allows us to catch many of the less then perfect revisions before they make it onto the Wikimedia servers. It allows us to test functionality like Narayam, functionality that enables people to test and work on their localisation at the same time.

We are really happy to be hosted by netcup and, we are happy to tell the world.
Thanks,
      GerardM

A friend in social software is a "friend" without much context

#Facebook, #LinkedIn, #Plaxo, #Twitter, they all urge you to connect to your friends and, that it is even to their benefit. Now that the software scene is maturing, many lost their advantages as they lost their focus.

The duplication is overwhelming and the noise is deafening. Often functionality is not where you want it. Plaxo was about sharing addresses with people. With all the additional hoopla its purpose is diluted. With the barrage of invites to garden or Mafia wars, Facebook became a playground but not mine and while LinkedIn is still a bit serious, it is not without its problems.

The bulk of the people who reach out to me are Wikimedians. Many of them are my "friend" in many places and, several of them I consider as real friends. The easiest and most obvious solution; another social network offering but one with a twist.

The twist would be that it accepts comments from other social networks and is happy to post messages on all these other networks. There are two fundamental problems:

• for many Wikimedians Wikipedia is not a social media
• will the other social media allow for this

The rebuttal for the first one is simple; time moves on and as we need new contributors badly. We should be willing to reach out and make good use of what social media has to offer. We can give game like qualities to many of our activities and in this way our Wikimedia activities become more attractive.

The second one is simpler; when our messages are not shared, the point to those social networks becomes even less. Our investment in the Facebooks, Twitters of this world is at most an emotional one. When the message and the involvement is elsewhere, would you miss it ?
Thanks,
       GerardM

Women Make the News 2011

The relevance for #Wikipedia of this #UNESCO project becomes evident when you read more about it. Initially the impression is that it is about women in conventional news organisations, but when you read further it becomes apparent that it is about "media and information systems".

What we do in our projects is exactly that.

This years aim is to "highlight good practices in this area and emphasize the importance of fostering media and information literate societies as a way to improve the understanding of women and men about gender perspectives in media and information systems".

To do this they are seeking best practices for addressing gender related issues. Contributions can be submitted until 30 March 2011.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Narayam is a framework introducing #Sanskrit

At #translatewiki.net we want more people localising. When a solution like the Narayam extension comes along, we embrace it because it makes life easy on the communities that is supported by Narayam.

Software has to be tested and, as translatewiki is living on the edge, there is no better place to test the latest languages that are supported by Narayam. two days ago the software was enabled and now a new language is supported.

The localisation of Sanskrit is not that great and its keyboard mapping needs to be tested. So what comes more natural then to test new functionality in an environment where even doodles can be serious business.

In two days a lot has happened, the most visible difference is that the option to choose a keyboard method is only available when you localise in a language or when the language selected in your preferences support an input method. When you combine this with the other improvements provided by Roan, it comes ever closer to being introduced on a Wikimedia project.
Thanks,
       GerardM

The #Sygma collection needs a refuge

When you google for the Corbis Sygma collection, you find amazing things, for instance this YouTube video shot in better times. It has Bill Gates say that this archive was about to fall apart and has been rescued.

Sadly, the news is that the rescue by Corbis proved to be temporary. Even worse, the news is that the liquidators are about to truly liquidate the collection. When you immerse yourself into what the Sygma collection represents, you will find that it is not only of immense importance to the cultural heritage of France, but also of global importance.

Director David Lynch, Cannes, May 2001

The Sygma collection is known for its portrait photography, it has news photography covering wars, important events, it has it all. It is not often that I agree with Bill Gates but this is a collection worth saving.
Thanks,
        GerardM

Supporting #Unicode in #MediaWiki

MediaWiki does store its texts in Unicode. Every #Wikipedia has to have Unicode support in its fonts on a device to be properly displayed on a screen or to be printed on paper. Never mind what input methods are used, they have to insert the right Unicode characters in the database.

There are languages where many input methods are used to generate text. Some of them are associated with a particular incompatible font or writing systems like Zawgyi. When its input method is used, the characters will have to be converted to proper Unicode. As a consequence the characters will not be properly visible for a Zawgyi user. This can be remedied by displaying text using a web-font.

For many input methods, it is not that problematic. Here people are accustomed to the characters being in "their" place on the keyboard and they see the resulting text properly. These are where the early gains are for the Narayam extension. This is a complete solution when the appropriate fonts are available on the system.

Having proper fonts on a system is an assumption and for all scripts, including the Latin script, it cannot be relied on. It would be good when a user can indicate if he can read a Wikipedia properly. When there is an issue, we should provide web fonts.
Thanks,
       GerardM