IPL was a great success.
Earned Astronomical Amount of Dollars for BCCI
Earned Marketing Clout, Execution Accolades for BCCI – Financial Muscle Was Existing
Allowed Shane Watson, Yusuf Pathan to enter national sides
Allowed McGrath, Pollock, Gilchrist etc to prove that age is no bar to class
Allowed Sharne Warne to finally win India and Indian hearts
Thanks Lalit Modi. Thanks Kapil Dev. Thanks ICL.
Magnet celebrate its ninth anniversary last week. Nine years of making a difference, challenging assumptions, living the vision and moving ahead! It has been a remarkable journey.
We had picnics at both the offices and here are the snaps of the same. Magneteers also displayed some remarkable amount of creativity and energy. I was touched by their love and passion for Magnet.
Snaps of Magnet Mumbai’s Picnic to Royal Garden Resort
Snaps of Magnet Ahmedabad’s Picnic to Mahudi, Swapna Shrushti Park and Amarnath Dham
Online Office is the future of Office. The current leaders are Google Docs, Zoho, MS Office Live Workspace, Thinkfree, Adobe Buzzword.
All apps are going online. We are not very far away from the day when BROWSER WILL BE THE OS!
I recently came across a very good post on Read Write Web by Sarah Perez comparing Google Docs and Office Live Workspace. All the features have been compared.
Google Docs is free for use by one and all whereas one needs MS Office Suite as a pre-requisite for Office Live. That could be a factor in the overall popularity. Microsoft’s position is very tricky as MS Office is its rich cash cow.
Online Office has several advantages and it is a paradigm shift.
How about Online Office Suite for Indian Languages only?
Related Post :
The State of Office 2.0 and Its Future
Hoover’s May Newsletter had an interesting Sales Tip by Miller Heiman:
In virtually all companies, 5 percent of the customers bring in more than 50 percent of the business.
Quite true and very similar to the classical 80:20 Principle!
So why work on rest on the customers ?
A. Emerging Stars : Today’s small customers can become tomorrow’s Top 5 Customer
B. Derisk : If any of today’s Top 5 Customer move away, then company suffers substantially
C. Innovation, Ideas : Many small customers challenge the supplier on price, technology and other areas leading to new ideas and innovations
D. Margins : Smaller customers can provide better margins as well.
Dr Tushar Shah, Ahmedabad has launched an unique endeavor on improving English-speaking skills of Gujaratis. He has created a group called Wordphil wherein every member gets an SMS of an English word, its meaning and usage in a contemporary context. It functions daily (no holidays) for an hour from 8 am—the service is free. Anyone keen to join him can send him a request SMS on 09825034142, giving him your name and mobile number. There are no forms to be filled up.
Cheers to a good cause.
“Try not to become a man of success, but rather to become a man of value. He who is considered successful in our day gets more out of life than he puts in. But a man of value will give more than he receives.”
: Albert Einstein
Google launched Google Translate in Hindi. It allows users to translate text from English to Hindi and Hindi to English. One can view a particular English website in Hindi as well.
The service is good enough, though it can always be better. The perfectionists would not be happy. But let us treat this as a start. I am sure Google will improve the effectiveness of the translations in days to come. We should also report and contribute to the improvement by our feedback, as we should also be a part of this endeavor. We should not sit back. Let us be active contributors!
This is a first important step in the long journey. By the way, here are the results of my first attempt at Google Translate in Hindi:
Recently, I had written about the launch of Gujarati Software Tools CD release by Government of India.
Please find the link for snaps of the same public function.
A wonderful new website on Gandhi was recently launched : http://www.gandhibiography.net/
The site is for promoting the sale of Gandhi’s Biography but has a good collection of Gandhi’s quotes, wallpapers apart from a good design. Check it!
May 1, 2008 marked the 49th birthday of Gujarat. Government of India’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology celebrated the Gujarat Day by launching Gujarati Software Tools and Fonts in Ahmedabad.
Government of India’s Technology Development for Indian Languages (TDIL) Programme and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) have worked with leading IT Companies in private sector under a unique Public Private Partnership (PPP) model for this initiative.
The launch was held at Gujarat Vishwakosh Trust Auditorium. The special function started with the Jay Jay Garvi Gujarat song and Lighting of Lamp. Shri. Bharat Bhushan, JS&FA, DIT welcome the guests and spoke on “National Roll out plan on language CD as a part of Indian Language Computing Initiatives”. Shri. S. Ramakrishnan – Director General C-DAC enlightened the audiences on work on Indian languages in his talk “Indian language technologies – Today & Tomorrow.”
Ms. Swaran Lata – Director, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology spoke on the Role of TDIL in language technology development. Shri Raj Kumar, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, Government of Gujarat thanked the Union Government for the wonderful gift to Gujarati people on the auspicious day and requested for covering legacy system data as well.
Sushri Neeta Shah, Director – eGovernance, Gujarat Informatics Ltd recollected her long pending desire of programming in Gujarati and her experience of working on bi-lingual projects. She emphasized the need for content creation in Gujarati and requested CDAC to covering maximum software tools and investing in support for further proliferation of these tools. The audience was spell bound by her wonderful Gujarati speech.
Sushri Kirtida Shah, Head of Gujarati Department, Bhasha Bhavan, Gujarat University was happy to note the these tools will help to improve the confidence levels of students in Gujarati. She also urged the audience to speak in their language first. Kritida Shah’s speech struck a chord with the august gathering.
Chief Guest Shri Kumarpal Desai, noted author and trustee behind leading organizations like Gujarati Vishwakosh Trust, Jay Bhikhu Trust, Institute of Jainology etc released the Gujarati language software tools and fonts CD and sites for download. He was happy to note that Gujarati culture would remain ever-alive as the fear of IT and English taking over IT have been addressed by CDAC. His Hindi speech and example of Vivekanandji impressed one and all. He noted that Gujarati language’s march to digital century commences from this day.
Shri Mahesh Kulkarniji, Programme Coordinator, C-DAC, GIST gave an demo of the Gujarati language CD. The demo was very interactive and invoked response from people on either side of the dais. Shri Maheshji highlighted that Gujaratilexicon dictionary and spellchecker were the best tools amongst all Indian languages. He spoke about Shri R P Chandaria’s contribution to the project was well. Children’s game Tuxpaint was a big hit with the audience. Shri Kulkarniji presented the vote of thanks.
The launch concluded by Hand-Over of CD to Media and Key Guests. It was followed by High Tea-Snacks. The launch was successful and well-attended inspite of scorching heat of Ahmedabad.
Gujarati Software CD contains the following categories of tools:
1. Tools for common man
2. Tools to enhance the productivity
3. Beta tools
Gujaratilexicon – Utkarsh and Magnet Technologies are proud to be associated with this government initiative. Our contribution includes:
1. Guajratilexicon Dictionaries : Gujarati – Gujarati, English – Gujarati, Gujarati – English
2. Gujaratilexicon Thesaurus, Antonyms and Idioms
3. Saras Spell Checker
4. Localized Open Office – Office Suite
5. Localized Thunderbird – Email Client
6. Localized Mozilla Firefox – Browser
7. Quick Quiz – Game
8. Localized Tuxpaint – Game
9. Localized Drupal – Content Management System
Magnet Technologies is also proud to have provided the liaison and ground support for the launch. Like CDAC, we are also working towards the vision of spreading benefits of information technology for the common man. The mission is simple : ‘Content creation in local language’. Local content will form basis of future initiatives like Machine Translation, Text to Speech, Natural Language Tools etc.
The CD also contains :
1. Bharateeya Open Office
2. Sunbird Calendar
3. 400 Plus Fonts
4. Scribus
5. Transliteration Tools etc.
Shri Mahesh Kulkarni noted that they are confident that this will drive the contents creation in Indian languages which is the basic raw material for development of futuristic technologies. They are geared-up to release the language software tools and fonts CD for all the 22 scheduled languages. So far 10 language CD’s have been released and others are in pipeline.
Everyone one can get the CD by ordering it on the portal – www.ildc.in and www.ildc.gov.in. The best part : The CD will be delivered at your door step – free of cost!