Expressing in Sanskrit is now more fun

After the success of Sanskrit-Digest, we are now offering a couple of fun ways for students to express in Sanskrit on the web.

In a survey, a consistent pattern was noticed among several Sanskrit students. Many students in India study Sanskrit during their school days, but they do not get an opportunity to speak or use the language after graduation. As a result, they forget the language very soon.

These students should be given opportunities to converse in Sanskrit on a regular basis, and they should be fun too. So today, we're launching Sanskrit-Expressions - An online community tool that will enable interaction among Sanskrit learners. It has two components to it: Word-Game and Two-Liners.

The Word-game helps the users build their Sanskrit vocabulary steadily, while the Two-liners will encourage them to frame short-sentences and converse in Sanskrit. Further, the users will have complete control over their data (create/update/delete) at all times. One can also keep track and follow other writers via RSS feeds. These tools are proven to be effective tools in the past, and are used in several domains. Now, they are available to the Sanskrit community for the first time.

I conceive this as a proof-of-concept to fix a commonly observed problem which hinders the spread of Sanskrit. If user response for 'Sanskrit-Expressions' is on a high note, new features such as Online-Chat-Rooms shall be soon be launched.

Thanks to the sincere efforts of several NGOs such as Samskrita Bharati which enabled many to embrace Sanskrit in their daily lives. Regular Sanskrit workshops are conducted by Samskrita Bharati in India and abroad. With increasing number of Sanskrit teaching institutes, it is now important to retain the interest of the people and help them stay in touch with the language. Engaging in Satsang and community-meet is a good way to appreciate the language. For the Computer Savvy, online tools like 'Sanskrit-Satsang' can help build an e-Community for Sanskrit speakers.

Moving from Textpattern to Wordpress

Until recently, my website SanskritVoice was using Textpattern as the CMS. But now, I'm moving to Wordpress. Read below to know why and how.

I liked Textpattern for several reasons. I can have multiple Sections like Home, About, Articles, and Resources. Each section can have an assigned template, and I can publish blog-posts for a specific section. Under a given section, I can further classify my posts based on category.

The main drawback with Textpattern is the difficulty in moving the website to a different server. It has weak import/export features, and less support for unicode. It lacks a WYSIWYG editor, no widgets, and has relatively less number of plugins.

On the other hand, Wordpress has a huge community, excellent feature-set, and myriad plugins for almost anything. However, Wordpress lacks the concept of a section. It only has Pages, Posts, Categories and Tags. Ofcourse, I can assign an appropriate template to a page. I spent some time in reading the Wordpress docs on how to use it as a traditional CMS. I had to use custom-templates and custom-variables to match the URLs of textpattern and to create pseudo-sections.

Here is an overview of what I did. A traditional Page in Wordpress is static. So, I created a custom template (say "Featured Page" template) that displays the content of the Page, and reads a custom field "categoryid" defined on that Page. The template then displays all posts that were published under that category. Thus, I projected a Page that contain posts from a specific category as a virtual Section.

Launching Sanskrit Digest

Guess what's new in the online space for Sanskrit enthusiasts? Its an Online Digest, that can give you a morning dose of Sanskrit articles written by qualified writers.

"Sanskrit Voice Digest" is started as an honest effort to compile Sanskrit related blogs and articles under one roof. Currently, it has partnered with nearly 10 blog-authors and a few organizations. With its magazine-like layout, the Digest makes it easy for readers to keep tabs on all Sanskrit related articles in one place.

India is a nation of several Vedic scholars, Sanskrit pandits, and Religious gurus. The need of the hour is to educate the people (esp. the youth) about the wisdom conveyed in the ancient texts, and revive Sanskrit for the modern age. This is also the mission of "Sanskrit Voice". In the latest effort to bring all Sanskrit readers and bloggers together, we launched the "Digest" today on June 18, 2008.

In the first week, the Digest has articles in nearly 10 categories that revolve around Sanskrit. It includes "Sanskrit Quotes" written by Kiran Paranjape, who was awarded Indic Blogger Award for best blog in Sanskrit. The wonderful 'subhashitanis' that includes verses from Panchatantra, Bhartrihari's Nitishatakam, and Bhagavadgita are written by Karthik Raman.

In the past two years, blogging in Sanskrit has been well practiced by the pandits and students of Sanskrit. Blogger Himanshu Pota focuses on teaching Sanskrit via his blog "Learn Sanskrit". He told us that his blog shares his Sanskrit learning experience with other Sanskrit learners. He hopes this will encourage the learners to realise that one doesn't have to be a Panini to start reading, writing, and talking in Sanskrit.

The Digest also compiles the articles on Sanskrit literature written by Kannan Srininvas (the author of Book "Vedic Management") and Venetia Ansell (an English girl from Oxford University). Adding Sanatana Dharma to the context, we hope to pass the ancient wisdom, along with Sanskrit language.

The advances in web technology facilitates the creation of a virtual community just for Sanskrit enthusiasts. The RSS feeds, Widgets and Campaign buttons provide easy ways for readers to follow the updates, or learn Sanskrit glossary every day. You will find all these features packed in the parent site "Sanskrit Voice" hosted on http://sanskritvoice.com .

"Undoubtedly, it is the greatest language ever, and I feel that more initiatives to spread the language, in a written or spoken form, through blogs etc are always welcome", says Karthik Raman - a PhD student at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

New Features to Sanskrit Voice

Sanskrit Voice now supports Devanagari font in the new Glossary RSS feed (subscribe)! Hope this will give joy to some of my users who have requested this feature in the recent past. In addition to it, a dictionary widget to search Sanskrit words-meaning pairs can be found on the homepage. Feel free to steal this widget for your blog.

Also, a unified Facebook-app is built for the glossary feed and dictionary search. If you are a Facebook enthusiast, you can now learn Sanskrit glossary from the comfort of your favorite social application. Thanks to Dapper tools for making all these enhancements possible.

Multi facets of FundooWeb

FundooWeb is now updated to provide you multiple interfaces in an effort to become ubiquitous. It has a new logo, and an easy navigation layout at its footer. Now, you can use FundooWeb from your IPhone, Facebook, or your Homepage via widget. Also checkout its new Flash interface for superior look and feel.

I used Adobe Flex to provide these enhancements. Hope you all will like it.

Sanskrit Voice on NDTV

My non-profit effort to revive Sanskrit to the modern age has now been acknowledged by NDTV. Yesterday, NDTV profiled my website SanskritVoice.com along with the viewpoints of a few people in Sanskrit Vidyapeetha. Thanks to NDTV for featuring this website, and I'm honored to be of service to the country.

You can read the full article, or watch this video on NDTV. Here is a snippet on YouTube.

References:
Cover Story on NDTV
Video coverage on NDTV
YouTube video snippet

The day for Victory

Today is Vijayadasami, the tenth day of the Dasara festival in India. 'Vijaya' means victory and Dasami is the tenth day. So, VIJAYADASAMI is a day to begin new ventures, be it business or education, as it is an auspicious day and assures success.

According to Hindu mythology, goddess Durga slays the demon Mahishasuran on this day. It signifies the victory of good over evil. My salutes to the goddess, and let good prevail in this world. Symbolically, when one makes an effort to remove a negative personality in oneself during the Dasara festival, he will achieve his goal on the Vijayadasami day.

On this auspicious day, I'd like to get FundooWeb (one-click search mashup) out of its Beta phase. Lately, it has been displaying a satisfactory performance in terms of speed and relevancy of search results. FundooWeb was launched on Sep 27 2006, and it graduates today after a year long study.

SAB Graduating!

Today, I'm pulling Stuff-a-Blog (SAB) out of its Beta phase, as its been more than a year since its initial launch in Sep '06. Several new features including BStir module, support for Unicode, and performance enhancements were being added in its Beta. They are all working great lately.

To mark this occasion, I'm launching a dynamic BStir widget along with a few additional display options. For those who are using an old static BStir widget, you may want to update your widget. Click here for a preview (widget in action). Its free... and you will love it!

Also, a discussion group is created for the interested ones. Here... You may ask questions, request features, or just give your feedback.

Gigya - A great addon for webapps

When I read about Gigya on Techcrunch last week, I knew my wait was over. It allows one click posting of specific content to blogs and other social media. This widget provides a great value to social webapps and user-generated sites. Last weekend, I incorporated the widget into my webapps Stuff-a-Blog and Saywit. The implementation was a breeze! This will sure encourage users to participate and contribute content to web2.0 sites.

OpenID 2.0 support

In my earlier post about OpenId, I mentioned that IdPrism implementation was easy and straight-forward to use. However, they don't support OpenId 2.0 specification, and their website is inaccessible since long... I guess they flew away! So, I switched to OpenId4Java implementation for better support. Frankly speaking, I was amazed at its simplicity & documentation, and it was a breeze to make the switch. My webapp (Saywit) now supports both OpenId-1.x and OpenId-2.0 standards.

The making of Saywit

Below is brief story on how Saywit was made...

Several months ago, I was pondering on what kind of a web2.0 application to create. I wanted to stay away from the "Me-Too" model of existence, and provide a substantial value to my users.

While having this in mind, I came across a few interesting blog posts related to Creativity on Lifehack. The following points were key to the forming of the base idea.
# Become a whole-brain thinker.
# The final tool for developing your creativity is imaginary dialogue.

These articles essentially answered my question "What value should I provide to my users?". Also inspired from the humor & wit filled posts at Ouch-My-Toe, I decided the central theme of my webapp would be to share the wit and creativity in people.

I did more research, and short-listed 6 channels. This concept is much different from Q&A sites whose focus is on knowledge (not creativity). This is sure refreshing and vitalizing!

Having got the business plan laid out, its now all about implementation. OpenId came to my rescue in providing an easy way for users to login and interact. I used Spring framework and Hibernate along with MySql to build the application.

The site incorporates several web2.0 concepts like REST-API, Widgets, RSS-feeds and Tags. After several months of hard-work on weekends all by myself, it was finally good to go. I formally launched Saywit on May 5, 2007 (my mom's birthday).

Launching 'Saywit'

Today is the day... I'm launching my ambitious web2.0 application 'Saywit'. It is a social webapp to express our creative abilities of problem-solving and out-of-box thinking. Saywit is a unique & first of its kind social experiment. As the tagline states, we love Creative minds and Cognitive Brains!

It has 6 channels to start with.

* Witty Chat: Snippets of conversations
* Epigram: Define or Explain in style
* Imagine: Fiction everywhere
* Brainstorm: Innovative ways to do stuff
* Algorithm: Treat for Software Developers
* Puzzle: Logic filled brain-teasers

Users can create scenarios for any of the 6 channels, and/or make creative entries for any scenario in Saywit. Check it out, and let me know if you like it. More enhancements will be made in a couple of days... Have fun!

My first Sponsor

Y'day, I got my first sponsor for Stuff-a-Blog via Text-link-ads. The sponsor is Apatar, a powerful suite of software tools designed to provide productivity benefits to those organizations that need to move data in and out of different sources. Applications include data warehousing, data migration, synchronization and application integration. Thanks to Apatar, and I wish them good luck.

Watch out for my next web-venture

Y'day, I purchased the domain name "saywit.com" after finalizing the name for my next web venture.

Its Coming Soon... to the browsers near you on the first week of May 2007. Watch out!

BStir widget for Blogger

Stuff-a-Blog's BStir now offers a widget for Blogger(new) users. Hence, you can add a BStir module (random previous musings) to your blog with a click of a button.

Top 25 Web 2.0 Search Engines

Web-Search~ A Multi-Billion dollar idea I'm sure you've heard of Google's earning of $3.21 billion for the fourth quarter. Two days ago, I received an email stating that my mashup search-site (FundooWeb) has been selected to be one of the Top 25 Web.2.0 Search Engines listed by OEDb (Online Education Database). I'm honored, and feel privileged to get my search-mashup counted upon. Not surprisingly, this site got into Digg's front page, and currently stands at 850 diggs.

I should honestly say... its a thoughtfully composed list of web2.0 search tools that we may not be aware of. Hmmm! I know whats crossing your mind... Why bother when we have Google. Am I right? Trust me! Its lot more fun using these cool search tools than the plain interface of Google. Give each of them a try, and have fun. However, Google is definitely the answer for some serious search, but no fun.

Once again, my sincere thanks to the selectors and editors of the article for counting upon FundooWeb.

BStir updated

Earlier this week, we were working on the code behind BStir. So, you might have seen the BStir module on your blog not performing very well last week. But now, things are in place, and the code is stabilized. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Whats new?
You know that BStir relies on Google Blog-Search for retrieving your earlier blog posts. But there are times when Google Blog-search api may not have any results to return, or fails to return the results.

So now, we have added a backup solution. In the case of no results from Google Blog API, we fetch your blog-posts using Yahoo search API. So at all times, BStir shall work as it claims.

UPDATE: An option to specify a particular character-encoding scheme is now available. It defaults to UTF-8 (unicode) charset.

BStir now supports Unicode

Today, I added support for Unicode characters in BStir. Its a good news for Non-English bloggers... Enjoy blogging!

An overview of Stuff-a-Blog

Just emphasizing on what Stuff-a-Blog currently has to offer... Its a quick & easy way to enrich your blog. Stuff-a-Blog's BMash and BStir are simple, useful and yet fun for bloggers to please their reader community.

BMash
In simple words, it makes it easy for a blogger to create content-rich blog posts. It works by using several mashup APIs to generate high quality content relevant to the keywords.

BStir
Any blog can make use of this service to surprise its readers with a random post from the archives. Give a new life to all the excellent posts you've written in the past...

All this is FREE! and No Login required.

Launching 'BStir' - Surprise your blog readers

Today, I launched a new service called BStir as a part of Stuff-a-Blog series. This is simple, useful and yet fun for bloggers to please their reader community. Any blog can make use of this service to surprise its readers with a random post from the archives. Give a new life to all the excellent posts you've written in the past...

Its easy to customize the look and feel of the random post to include just the title, or wrap it with a border. You can further set keyword criteria to control the selection of random posts, and limit the number of posts to display.



Here is all that you have to do... Goto BStir, and enter your blog-site in the form. Get the code, and Paste it in your blog. This service is based on the results from Google Blog-search.

You can find samples of BStir on this page (Its titled 'Musings in the past'). Hope you all like it! Enjoy blogging~