News
From Ankur
Thursday, October 29, 2009: Bangla localized Firefox 3.5 release party
We have fully localized the Mozilla Firefox (version 3.5) into Bangla(Bangladesh), along with this we have developed a Bangla Spell Checker consist of 100,000 unique words. To celebrate this occasion, Ankur is arranging a release party supported by Mozilla foundation with swags and Presidency University with a place to host the party. There will be a lightening talk on Firefox 3.5 features and demonstration of Bangla spell checker. The party is open; join us to get Mozilla swags.
Party details
- Date: Thursday, 29th October 2009.
- Time: 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM
- Venue: Library Room, Presidency University - Banani Campus.
- googlemap
- FB Event Page
Thursday, September 17, 2009: Bangla OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 released
It is our pleasure to inform you that Bangla OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 has been released, which is based on the original source code of OpenOffice.org 3.1.x.
OpenOffice.org is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.
Some new features over the official OpenOffice.org 3.1.x:
- Updated User Interface and Help content translation.
- Built-in Bangla dictionary for spell checking capability.
- Hypernation feature introduced for Bangla which is still in development stage.
- Updated locale file for Bangla-Bangladesh (bn-BD) with improved collation rules as recommended by Bangla academy.
Bangla OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 download links:
- Debian, Ubuntu and Other DEB based GNU/Linux
- Fedora, Red Hat and Other RPM based GNU/Linux
- Microsoft Windows
Please send us your comments and suggestions at feedback@ankur.org.bd.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009: Workshop on “Using the ICT in Education Toolkit for policymakers, Planners and Practitioners” Inaugurated
On 27th April, 2009 Minister Mr. Nurul Islam Nahid, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Primary and Mass Education inaugurated a four days long workshop on “Using the ICT in Education Toolkit for policymakers, Planners and Practitioners” at BANBEIS, Palassy, Dhaka jointly organized by BANBEIS, UNDP and UNESCO in collaboration with Spanish Corporation and Ankur ICT Development Foundation (AIDF).
In his speech as chief guest of inauguration ceremony honorable Minister Mr. Nahid said that, ICT, an indispensable tool for effecting economic and social development has to be mainstreamed in our education system. He also state, The government headed by prime minister Sheikh Hasina has resolved to build a digital Bangladesh by 2021, which will mainly be realised through effecting technological changes based on ICT.
In the inauguration session there also present H E Mr. Arturo Pérez Marténaz, Ambassador, The Kingdom of Spain as Special guest, Mr. Malama Meleisea, Director and Representative to UNESCO Dhaka as guest of honor.
The session start with the welcome speech of Mr. Ahsan Abdullah, Director, BANBEIS where representative from UNESCO Regional Bureau, Bangkok Dr. Feng-Chun Miao present a overview of the workshop. Later Mr. Anir Chowdhury, A2I, PMO talked about the ICT in Education policy. The whole inauguration session was chaired by Mr. Syed Ataur Rahman, Secretary, Ministry of Education.
The organizers hopes that from the workshop they can find out the parameters, potential and prospect of integrating ICTs in Education, a team from Bangladesh who will be trained with the Toolkit developed by UNESCO and identify the functionality and usefulness of each tool. In the workshop More than 30 officials from different Government and NGO organization participating in the workshop.
Monday, December 08, 2008: Bangla Sorting in MySQL
We have done some R&D on MySQL database server and made a technical how-to document. Currently we are able to sort Bangla texts according to Bangla academy's general and dictionary based rules. Please check the document, try it yourself and let us know your feedback.
Sunday, October 19, 2008: Ankur won Manthan Award 2008 for E-Localisation
Ankur won the prestigious "Manthan Award 2008" in E-Localisation Category for it's Ubuntu Based Bangla Localised GNU/Linux Distribution "Hoimonti/হৈমন্তী". Total 284 nominations were submitted and 33 won in 8 categories. There were 14 submissions for E-localisation, only 3 won including Hoimonti.
Ankur submitted the nomination after a call for participation was circulated in September 2008. Nomination were submitted from all SAARC countries. Manthan Award is a first of its kind initiative in India to recognize the best practices in e-Content and Creativity. It was launched on 10th October 2004, by Digital Empowerment Foundation in partnership with World Summit Award and American India Foundation.
The Award giving ceremony was held at Delhi in India, on 18th October 2008. Mr. Syed Ziaul Habib (Roobon) of The Hunger Project-Bangladesh, received the award on behalf of Ankur. In the ceremony Ankur's effort towards localisation and ict4d in Bangladesh was praised.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008: Fedora 9 Release Party (BD)
Fedora 9 (Sulphur) is now available - http://get.fedoraproject.org/. It's our great pleasure to inform you that we, Ankur Bangladesh is going to arrange first ever Operating System Release party in Bangladesh on this occasion. The party is going to be a great fun included with "Live USB stick making station (min 1GB)", "Free Fedora 9 DVD distribution", snacks and talks on New features of Fedora 9.
- To get free DVD please register yourself : http://tinyurl.com/5srpmt ; we have limited number of DVDs, those will be given away on first come first serve basis.
- Bring 1GB USB drive to have Live USB Fedora 9
- Interested persons who want to deliver small talks or share their experience / tips-n-tricks on Fedora, can email us feedback@ankur.org.bd, to enlist their names.
Date: Friday, May 16, 2008. Time: 5:00 pm Venue: FREPD Auditorium, Palashi Crossing, Dhaka University Campus. Location: FREPD is just opposite of BUET Kacha bazar.
more details:
- Fedora Project wiki: http://tinyurl.com/6pnuxk
- Facebook event: http://tinyurl.com/6j32dt (login needed)
Fedora 9 (Sulfur) key features: Fedora has always been a place where new technologies can be found and worked with. Fedora 9 is no exception. Some major enhancements in Fedora 9 include:
* PackageKit - A new graphical interface for package management. * KDE 4 * Firefox 3 * OpenJDK6 * Encrypted root filesystem support * Preupgrade abilities from Fedora 8 * Persistent Live USB support * FreeIPA for identity management * Upstart * EXT4 support
See you at the party...
Saturday, February 02, 2008: Bangla spell checker for OpenOffice.org
Last month, we released Bangla Word List and Dictionary files for Hunspell, which is the spell checker for OpenOffice.org. As Bangla spell checking feature does not come by default with the OpenOffice.org yet, you have to install/integrate it manually.
Please check our documentation page on how to use the spell checking feature on OpenOffice.org. And don't forget to send us your feedbacks at feedback@ankur.org.bd.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008: MediaWiki Workshop
Ankur is going to arrange a day long workshop on MediaWiki. MediaWiki is a web-based wiki software application used by all projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, all wikis hosted by Wikia, and many other wikis, including some of the largest and most popular ones. Originally developed to serve the needs of the free content Wikipedia encyclopedia, today it has also been deployed by companies as an internal knowledge management solution, and as a content management system.
This course is mainly designed for general internet users with basic computer skills, who want to get a Collaborative web site up and running using MediaWiki which allows to create, edit and link web pages easily.
Instructor: Md. Belayet Hossain
{Administrator Bangla Wikipedia, Bangla Wikisource and Member of Wikimedia Foundation}
Date: Friday, February 01, 2008.
Time: 10.00am to 04.00pm {Prayer and Lunch break included}
Venue:
iMesh Multimedia
29, Subash Bose Avenue,
Dhaka - 1100
(Near St. Gregory High School)
Phone: 01915676694
Registration Fee: 1000/- BDT
Registration Deadline: 31st January.
(Depends on the seat availability).
Please call for registration.
Friday, January 18, 2008: 1st HackFest'08 @ Jahangirnagar University
The very first HackFest in Bangladesh was arranged on Friday (18th January, 2008) at Jahangirnagar University. It was arranged by Ankur ICT Development Foundation supported by JUOSN (Jahangirnagar University Open Source Network) and was sponsored by National AIDS / STD Programme, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and Save the Children, USA.
The event was inaugurated by Dr. M. Zahidur Rahman, Head, Dept of CSE, JU. Jamil Ahmed, National Coordinator of AIDF facilitated the Hacking Contest and the leading hackers of Ankur Salahuddin and Abu Zaher assisted him.
Fifteen teams consisting of two students each participated in the main event of the Hacking Contest. They were given twelve problems, based on various Open Source Software and were asked to alter the existing code, compile and install them and to Show to the judges. The contestants worked on Software written in C, C++, Perl, PHP, Python. They have shown great enthusiasm and an advance level of expertise while hacking.
The rest of the CSE Dept. Students who did not get the opportunity to take part in the Hacking Contest have attended day long Talk/Tutorial sessions held at Physics Gallery of JU. There were four sessions respectively on FOSS Philosophy and its Social Impact, Wikipedia, User 2 Hacker and a BoF session for JUOSN members. Almost sixty students were present in the Talk/Tutorial sessions. These sessions were conducted by Mahay Alam Khan, Nazmuz Salehin and Belayet Hossain of Ankur while the BoF session was conducted by Ex. JU student and Lead Hacker of Ankur Muzahidul Islam Suzan.
The day concluded with prize giving ceremony amongst the Hacking Contest winners, after the prize distribution Dr. M. Zahidur Rahman, Head, Dept of CSE, JU said this kind of event will help the students to achieve expertise beyond their academic syllabus and will help themselves further in their Career. He expressed his hope that AIDF will frequently arrange this kind of event. He thanked all volunteer of JU along with the Ankurians.
Sunday, January 06, 2008: Bangla Word List and Dictionary files for GNU Aspell and Hunspell Released
Updated Bangla Word List and Dictionary files for GNU Aspell and Hunspell is released. Please check out the Download section.
Friday, January 04, 2008: Bangla spell checker for Mozilla Released
Ankur has released Bangla spell checker extension for Mozilla products {ie. Firefox and Thunderbird}. Currently it contains around 110k words, which will be enhanced in future. Initially we made the Bangla word list for GNU Aspell on 2004, later the list was converted to make it workable for Hunspell. Recently we have updated the word list by fixing some issues {ie. Khanda-Ta and Nukta mainly}.
Btw, for spell check Firefox and Thunderbird 2.x currently uses MySpell, but from 3.x release Hunspell will be used. You can check our documentation page on how to use this extension. Also send us your feedbacks at feedback@ankur.org.bd.
Download link:
- bn-BD_dictionary_0.02.xpi (328K)
Sunday, November 25, 2007: OpenOffice.org Bangla Manual
As the number of OpenOffice.org users in Bangladesh increasing, people are already seeking for Bangla manual/guide. Currently we have organized translating "Getting Started with OpenOffice.org 2.x" guide jointly with BdOSN.
Our plan is to complete the translation work by mid December, 2007. The current status of the translation work is available here.
Sunday, October 28, 2007: New Bangla GNU/Linux Distro Released
We are glad to inform you that, 2nd installable Bangla distro based on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) has released. The codename of this release is Hoimonti (হৈমন্তী). The first one, Sraboni (শ্রাবণী), was based on Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake).
Some new features over the default Gutsy installation:
- Customized Debian/Ubuntu Installer: It will take less inputs then usual text installer
- After installation it will boot into Bangla locale (ie. bn_BD locale) by default
- Some important software are included,
- Banshee - Audio Management and Playback application
- Gnash - free SWF movie player
- Gnome-PPP - modem internet connection tool for the GNOME Desktop
- GParted - GNOME partition editor
- Ogle - DVD player with support for DVD menus
- VLC Player - multimedia player and streamer
- Some codecs are included which will help to play various audio/video files out of the box
- Some updated deb packages (ie. Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.8)
Some issues:
- Minimum memory requirement is 256MB.
- There might be some issues while installation if the CDROM is old, DMA enable/desabled, S.M.A.R.T. enable/desabled for IDE channels.
- If you put IP address during installation but there is no Internet connection, then it will take un-wanted delays cause it tries to download some packages from the Internet.
- Internal modems might not work/be detected/need to download restricted modules.
- Gutsy itself has some issues which are mentioned in their release notes.
- Let us know if you get any.
Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) Release Notes: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/710
Hoimonti (হৈমন্তী) Download link:
You can send us your feedbacks at feedback@ankur.org.bd.
Friday, October 5, 2007: Joomla Workshop
The Joomla workshop organized by Ankur and supported by i-Mesh multimedia was held successfully on 5th October 2007. The day long workshop started at 10am and ended at 4.30pm. The Workshop provided hands on training on Ubuntu server for Joomla hosting. A total of 9 participants joined the program including 2 students. Rests of the participants were service holders from different organizations. All participants were provided with a training kit consisting of training materials. Mahay Alam Khan and Salauddin Pasha acted as the facilitator of the workshop while Jamil Ahmed coordinated the same.
