English by mobile – in Bangla
Filed under: Community, Conversation, New Web Creations, Web services
At Third Sector Web we have always delivered our web sites for clients with translation embedded into the pages. Helping to spread news and information across communities in languages other than English.
The BBC World Service recently updated their news on a service that enables Bangla speakers to get English lessons via their mobile phones.
In Bangladesh, the project lead, Sara Chamberlain, was also able to persuade service providers in the country to make the English lessons available at half the pre-existing mobile rates.
The BBC has also created a website, Janala, which means window, so that younger learners can get to grips with English directly from the web.
‘Bangla is one of the world’s great languages. Tagore, the giant of Bengali literature, was the first person from Asia to become a Nobel laureate back in 1913. So it’s not surprising that following independence from Pakistan in 1971, Bangla was adopted as the language of instruction in Bangladesh’s schools and colleges.
The unintended consequence has been that English has waned over the last few decades…the vast majority of young people have gone through the education system without picking up the ability to speak or understand spoken English’.
The Janala service has hundreds of short, three minute English lessons available for free, from any web enabled computer. A great use of technology in a learning environment.
You can read Sara Chamberlain’s original post here.
You can find the home page of Third Sector Web here.
Comodo Dragon – browser bites
Filed under: Conversation, New Web Creations, New technology, Web services
Comodo have always delivered highly effective and secure anti-virus and firewall protection.
Even the free version is on our recommended list because of its effectiveness and ability to inform the web user of what is happening to their machine as they travel the web.
The company has now entered the free browser market. You can now download a copy of their new Dragon browser.
Comodo claim to have built upon the Chromium Open Source base that browsers like Google’s Chrome deploy but also offer…
Privacy enhancements that surpass those in Chromium’s technology
Has Domain Validation technology that identifies and segregates superior SSL certificates from inferior ones
Stops cookies and other Web spies
Prevents all Browser download tracking to ensure your privacy
The download and install is quick, and all the features will be very familiar to users of Chrome.
We’ll run with the Dragon for a while to see how the under the hood specifications affect performance and security claims.
Slightly out of kilter with the privacy pitch is the registration of a lifetime license on Comodo servers, involving the generation of a unique identifier when you install?
However, it comes from a good family, is fast and renders web pages well as you would expect.
You can visit the home page of Third Sector Web here.
The WordPress Foundation
Filed under: Conversation, New Web Creations, Web services, WordPress
Matt Mullenweg has recently announced the establishment of the WordPress Foundation. Having created WordPress, the software this blog is running on, the WordPress Foundation takes the concept of the freely available platform another step forward.
Below are the philosophical principles that the Foundation seeks to apply. The aim being to preserve source code for future generations and to develop other freely available open source projects that themselves are perpetually available.
The software should be licensed under the GNU Public License.
The software should be freely available to anyone to use for any purpose, and without permission.
The software should be open to modifications.
Any modifications should be freely distributed at no cost and without permission from its creators.
The software should provide a framework for translation to make it globally accessible to speakers of all languages.
The software should provide a framework for extensions so modifications and enhancements can be made without modifying core code.
We love WordPress- we build both our own blogs and those of clients with it. Good luck to the Foundation and long may its aims thrive – stimulating creativity, contact in multiple languages and a better informed world. A great start to 2010 we think.
You can find the Third Sector Web home page here.
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About our business
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