Birthday Celebrations

As one gets older, one stops enjoying one's birthdays. But today was something special.

Yesterday, Shreeram our sysadmin, was doing a demo of OpenEnrich in our conference room and was creating a profile for me. One of the required information in my profile was my date of birth and I gave it hesitantly.

Then I also announced to everyone in the room that the date happened to be tomorrow and that I would like to celebrate it with my family --- all my team-members and offered that I would buy everyone lunch the next day.

Today, I was pleasantly surprised to come to the conference room at lunch time to see a birthday cake with candles waiting for me.

Moreover, when one reaches a certain age (I prefer not to disclose it), one comes to a point when one does not start enjoying birthdays.

For me, this day has been a day of recokning to make me understand that most successful people have been successful after the age of forty. Maybe the best years for me to be the highest productive has just started.

At this age, most people come to what's normally referred to as 'mid-life crisis'. For me it is more of a day to get my batteries recharged to march ahead with added determination.

The cake that my team bought me today tasted much better than any of the cakes I have had in my life... and I do not think it was because it was bought at a special bakery. I think it has that special ingredient that I will cherish for a long time...

Build Your own locale for Windows Vista

I remember last year when we were developing the Nepali (Nepal) locale for Windows XP which got shipped out as a ELK from Micrsoft. Before this, whenever we were entering data we had to select eitherHindi or Sankrit as the language identified. That is all history now.

Similarly, I have been working with Ranjana script opentype fonts and Prachalit script open type fonts. However, so far, Nepal bhasha script has only be entered into the computers as Nepali and the time for creation of a Nepal Bhasha or Newari locale has come.

Yet, the time also has come for us to be able to build and distribute our own custom locales in Windows Vista.

Microsoft Windows Vista currently supports more than 200 locales (100+ languages), and yet this covers only a fraction of speakers worldwide. Microsoft is now moving towards a more extensible model for international support that will empower users to create and share customized solutions in the international space.The Microsoft Locale Builder provides a way to extend and modify the set of locales that Microsoft ships with your own regional and cultural data. The Microsoft Locale Builder was created to support customers in regions without built-in Windows locales as well as customers seeking to modify locales that they are already using. Customers will be able to add support on their own timeline without having to wait for new releases of Windows.Microsoft Locale Builder will also allow corporations, governments, universities, and special-interest groups to generate and easily share custom locales on Microsoft Windows Vista.Download available at:http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=12ADFFC8-A4DA-424B-8D62-17C1E0FFC116&displaylang=en

Microsoft kills Windows 98: Great News for Nepali Computing

Every cloud has a silver-lining. The news that Microsoft has decided to put Windows 98 to bed may be sad news for tens of thousands of computer users in Nepal, who have been able to use their computers even in very low resources. But when we are thinking of computing in Nepali language (I mean not just being able to fool the computer to display some devanagari characters while storing the data in ASCII characters but being able to compute in Nepali language 'I repeat'), Windows 98 has been the biggest hurdle.

Here is a link from BBC on the death of Windows 98: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5164450.stm

Reducing the Digital Divide with not only local language computing but with rural telecenters as well in poor countries like Nepal

I have always enjoyed the discussion on the digital divide and taking computing from the hands of two percent that is able to write their names in English language to over 55% of Nepal's population that is literate in Nepali language. In doing so, with the language barrier now removed on computers, the next problem is taking the hardware to nearly 4,000 VDCs of Nepal which account for close to 15,000 villages.
In this context, Report of Swaabhimaan, the National Conference on rural telecenters in Nepal was released on June 2, 2006 amidst a function in Kathmandu where all the stakeholders cumulatively unveiled the report and made it public.Swaabhimaan Report embraces all the essential areas of discussion and the conclusions drawn at the Swaabhimaan 2062 conference. The discussions and indispensable points as put forward in all the plenary sessions and the final conclusions and suggestions at the wrap-up session have been exclusively compiled in this report. Final draft of the report was circulated among the Swaabhimaan Stakeholders and few meetings were also held to gather comments and suggestions from the Stakeholders on the report. We would like to thank all the Swaabhimaan Stakeholders for their comments on this report. After much scrutiny, Swaabhimaan Report has finally been published. The foremost section of the report describes the road map. A chapter has been dedicated keenly on all the essential details of each of the five plenary sessions and the final chapter exclusively illustrates the valuable suggestions and conclusions made at the wrap-up session at the Conference. Hopefully, the report will be able to keep the essence of the Conference alive and the direction of the mission forward.
Photographs of the event can be viewed here: http://www.culminisconnections.com/sites/FITNEPAL/Mission%20Swaabhimaan%20Consultation%20Meeting/Forms/AllItems.aspx

The softcopy of the report can be downloaded from
http://www.culminisconnections.com/sites/FITNEPAL/Mission%20Swaabhimaan/Forms/AllItems.aspx

I was chatting with my old school friend Manoj, who tells me that he likes CDs burned rare medium ;-) and also sees only boxes when I type in Nepali language in our chat conversation. He agrees to preview Office 2007, but is not sure if his 'puter is capable of using the cool features without the drop down menus of Office 2007. Very well educated and people from well-to-do families of our society are all using computers, albeit still in what I called 'dark ages' that is not able to see any unicode fonts (read Win 98). The challenges of localization is not only the technical aspects of creating binaries but also being able to evangelize and convert people from the dark ages to the enlightened world of localized computing --- another face in the upper pyramid of digital divide.

Today (as has been for the past couple of days covering telecenters in Bungamati, Dhulikhel, Panauti, Gerkhutar, Devighat) my colleagues Sunaina, Gita and Shrijana went to Sankhu and did an Orientation along with handing over the various equipments for providing 'voice to the voiceless' of the community who without having to go to the streets and shout slogans, using traditional ICTs like radio and newspapers, and modern ICTs like computers and Internet, should be able to influence the policy making bodies of our government. This would hopefully provide the 'power to the people' in its fullest and democratic-est sense.

Some photos of the Orientation Program are posted here: http://www.culminisconnections.com/sites/FITNEPAL/Sankhu%20Telecenter%20Orintation%20Program/Forms/AllItems.aspx

Office 2007 BETA 2 Released

At 10pm I got the email from Microsoft that Bill Gates has released Office 2007 Beta 2 which is going to be available for public review and can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx.

With the foundations on the building of Nepali version of Office 2007 is also underway with the Style Guide for Technical Writing for Vista and Office 2007 already done and a database of words that should not appear into the software for various reasons are underway at the moment.

This is a historic moment to see a product go into public beta, and here I am up till 2 am still in the office downloading the Bea 2 software. Download speed tonight is exceptionally good. I guess this is a good sign of things to come in Office 2007 ;-)

I also had a long chat with Gehendra Acharya of Lumbini ICT discussing the schedule, contents and logisitics for the Bhasha Workshops to be held in Butwal from May 28-29, 2006. After which I go to Dang to conduct the Bhasha Workshop and then a series of all-Nepal Bhasha Workshops. I guess a lot of questions would be on Vista and Office 2007 and since it is in public beta now, it is good timing. Another good sign of thing to come ;-)

Microsoft Windows Vista, the biggest operating systems that Microsoft has been working on is just around the corner now, and has gone live for Beta 2 public preview from today onwards. I had an opportunity to sit thru a 3 day training on software development on Vista from May 18-20, 2006 at the Microsoft Office in Gurgaon, India off New Delhi. Exciting times ahead with the cool look and feel with Aero glass installed.