Hello WikiMedians,
With great pleasure let me inform you about the Malayalam Wikimedia
users meetup. Today (2010 April 17) Malayalam Wikimedians
are coming together for the 3rd wikimeetup at RajaGiri College of Social Sciences,
Kalamassery, Ernakulam. The first malayalam wikimeetup was happened
in 2007 Decemver 31, and the second meetup was in 2008 October 31.
We are extremely happy to inform you about some of the major things
happening as a part of this meetup.
1. We are releasing a Malayalam Wikipedia CD that contain 500
articles selected from the 12,000 articles that were available in
Malayalam Wikipedia during 2010 March.
Please note that we are not releasing an offline version of malayalam
wiki articles. It is a customized version of articles very much similar
to the English Wikipedia on CD
(http://wikipediaondvd.com/). We have provided many other additional
facilities/addons that are applicable to Malayalam language on this CD.
I will provide you the link to download this CD after we release the CD
at 3 PM Indian standard time.
With the release of this CD, we have become the first Indian language
WikiMdedia foundation Wiki releasing such a CD. Also, I assume that no
other non-latin languages tried this due to the number of technical
hurdles that need to over come while working with non-latin languages.
We have developed a dedicated application (in GNU/Linux) for creating
this CD. I will share you the details of this software as soon as
it is available for community development. I will write a separate mail
regarding the efforts that went behind the creation of this CD.
2. We are setting up a new website for coordinating the various
activities of Malayalam Wikimedians. I will share the link soon. The
CD version of Malayalam Wikipedia will be avilable for download from
this site later today.
3. We are releasing a printed book (in Malayalam language) that
contain 25 frequently asked questions about Wiki, Wikipedia, and
Malayalam Wikipedia. I think if this docuemnt is translated to
English, many other Indian languages can reuse it. Requeting the help of
wikimedians to translate it to English and available it to all. I will
provide you the link to download this book later today.
The production cost of CD and the book is sponsored by IT@school and the meetup is
sponsored by number of NGO's including SPACE.
We are trying for the live streaming of this event. The link will
be provided as soon as it is available.
I will share more details about the meetup later today.
Regards
Shiju Alex