Thursday, December 14, 2006

TamilKey 0.3 (Thamizh Visai) released.

TamilKey or ThamizhVisai(as its called in tamil) is an extension for typing tamil inside firefox,thunderbird & chatzilla. Its one of the projects initiated and being maintained by a group tamil freesoftware volunteers under thamizha.com.

Tamilkey version 0.3 was released on 12 Dec 2006 and release anouncement was made by our team member Gopi in freetamilcomputing list.

This release has following new features:
1. Support for Bamini and Typewriter keyboard layouts.
Bamini keyboard is popular among Srilankan Tamils and Typewriter keyboard is popular among the Tamil Nadu tamils.

2. User Shortcut option - Now users can set their own shortcuts for various keyboard settings and for switching from english to tamil typing.

3. And also many bugs were fixed in this release.

Almost all the development work related to this version 0.3 was done by Gopi. And also Freetamilcomputing list members Ravi, Thi.Va., Sethu contributed to this release greatly by testing this release and finding bugs.

This can be downloaded from the following locations:
http://tamilkey.mozdev.org/installation.html
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2994/

Thursday, November 16, 2006

My home town in news!

Recently my home town Namakkal - became first town in India to get ISO 14001 certification. I am really proud about this.
http://www.hindu.com/mag/2006/04/09/stories/2006040900210400.htm

I hope other cities in India too follow Namakkal and become clean and efficiently managed cities.

Monday, September 04, 2006

'Crocodile Hunter' Steve Irwin Killed

Just saw this news in BBC site http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5311298.stm
I used to watch with awe Steve Irwin's wildlife programs in TV. I feel sad about his sudden death.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

SumatraPDF viewer - A light weight PDF reader

In my windows machine, I havent installed any PDF reader since I was not using windows system often. Yesterday I came across a light weight PDF viewer for windows by name Sumatra PDF viewer. http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/

I liked it very much for the following reasons:
1. Its light weight compared to Adobe Acrobat reader.
2. It serves its purpose of showing the pdf files cleanly.
3. Its a freesoftware .

I have installed it and started using it as my primary and only PDF viewer.

Of cource it has few sortcomings too. Right now it doesnt have printing support. But I hope soon these features will be available since its a freesoftware. And by nature freesoftwares evolves thro community participation

Monday, July 24, 2006

Updated tamil firerfox extensions

Last week I updated two of my firefox extensions.
1. Tamil language extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2989/ )
I had created a tamil language extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/512/) that works only on version 1.0.x . Even though I have updated this tamil extension to work in version 1.5 some time back, but could find time to updated the extension in addons.mozilla.org only last week.

2. Tamilkey extension:
Tamilkey is a utility to type tamil in firefox/thunderbird/chatzilla directly. Its now available at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2994/
It was created by myself and released on Pongal day (14-01-2006) .
Later voice of wings joined and enhanced the utility by completely rewriting the code.

Tamilkey project website URL: http://tamilkey.mozdev.org

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Chennai in google earth

Google has released a new version (release 4 beta) of their google earth yesterday. Details of this release is here: http://earth.google.com/earth4.html

I am happy about this release for two reasons:
1. Google earth is available for Linux machines. So now I am able to install google earth in my linux laptop.
2. Google earth features my favorite place chennai (its also my home state capital). Its now possible to see more details(street level details) of chennai. Previously google earth used to show in detail only Bangalore, New Delhi, Bombay & Hydrabad cities in India. For some unknown reason chennai was left out by google. I am happy that atleast now google earth shows chennai in detail.

Following screen shot shows chennai's famous Anna Flyover in google earth.

Monday, January 30, 2006

A tamil transliteration pluggin for Gaim

Gaim is a popular opensource IM utility. I use Gaim to communicate with my friends using various protocols like Yahoo/MSN/IRC etc. It works both in Linux & Windows (also in BSD, MacOS X )

For typing tamil in any windows program, I use a keyboard driver software by name ekalappai (which is also created by me). But somehow ekalappai cannot be used with Gaim. It simply does not work. So far no time to debug this. So whenever I use Gaim in windows I type tamil text in notepad then copy & paste in Gaim and send it.

Now there is a solution to this problem. Anna University student Varun has created a plugin for Gaim transliterate english text typed in gaim message window to tamil.

You can read about this plugin in Varun's blog.

Congrats Varun !

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Tamilkey - a firefox extension to type tamil.

I am happy to announce the release of tamilkey firefox extension on this Pongal day.

Using tamilkey firefox extension firefox users will be able to type tamil without need for any external programs like ekalappai.
Currently tamilnet99 and Anjal keyboard layouts are supported by tamilkey. I am planning to add more keyboard layouts in future.
Tamilkey can be downloaded from http://tamilkey.mozdev.org

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

An Online Tamil Keyboard to type tamil from anywhere...

I have often found myself unable to write tamil from cyber cafes. Many cybercafes dont have tamil input software installed in their computers. To address this problem i wrote a javascript utility for typping tamil and have hosted in my developer.thamizha.com site.

I have named it as Online Tamil Keyboard. URL for Online Tamil Keyboard : http://developer.thamizha.com/tamilkey.html

As of now I have given option for two keyboard layouts
1. Anjal layout - This is most popular keyboard among tamils who havent learned Tamil typewriter or Tamilnet99 keyboards.

2. Tamilnet99 keyboard layout - This is the keyboard recognised by Tamil Nadu Government. Using this keyboard we can type tamil very fast. I personally use this.

I plan to add Bamini keyboard (which is popular among Srilankan Tamils) and TamilTypewriter layout (which is popular among those who have learned Tamil Typewriter) in future.

And this only works in Firefox browser as of now. I am trying to figure out a way to make it work in Internet Explorer (I would greatly appreciate if any one helped me on this ).

I hope this Online Tamil Keyboard page would be helpful in some way to Tamil users :)