Happy 4th birthday for FreeTamilEbooks.com

source : http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=172102&picture=happy-birthday

Today, our FreeTamilEbooks.com completes 4 years and enters into 5th year.

303 ebooks, 48 lakh downloads, thousands of readers, hundreds of writers, more new contributors are the wonders of the projects.

We are planning for 5th year, to bring more new ebooks, competition,prizes for writers, contributors, and new action plans etc.

Stay tuned for the announcements.

Thanks for being with us.

Share your thoughts in our discussion forum.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/freetamilebooksforum

 

 

 

 

Notes : Wikipedia Mini Hackathon Chennai July 23, 2017

Today, from Indian Linux Users Group, Chennai, we conducted a mini hackathon on Wikipedia.
We asked for ideas to the Tamil wiki community.
Collected the ideas here – https://ta.wikipedia.org/s/6t7w

We got 7 people. Balaji is a second year CS student. Syed Abuthahir is joining his first company as Python programmer tomorrow. His college senior Ajees is working. Neechalkaran is a well known contributor for wikipedia for his bots. Padmakumar is a C/C++ expert. Sankar is a full stack programmer. Myself a python kid.

With this energetic team with various skillsets, today’s hackathon got some interesting contributions.

Balaji hacked the UI of Tamil wikisource to show the wiki editing tools to left side bar. He is exploring on adding Tamil typewriting keyboard to Jquery.ime of “Universal Language Selector” extension of mediaiwki.

Padma Kumar explored the process of installing Tamil Text to speech system provided by IIT Madras. With very less and confusing documentation, he was downloading huge amount of software stack and compiling them for the entire day. Found that they had many hardcoded paths for various files in the code. Have to find and fix them manually. He will be exploring on this, further.

Syed Abuthahir explored the features of wikitools, a python library. He started to build a reporting tool to list out the contributions by all the TamilNadu School Teachers. The tool is still backing. He will complete it soon.

Neechalkaran explained and demonstrated his bots using Google Script Engine. He explained how mediawiki api works. He learned working with wikitools and python.

Sankar started to explore wikipedia as he is very new to it. Myself was helping the participants to understand the requirements and to get into hacking easily.

Will followup with the team to get the repo links and documentation.

Thanks for Raja Manohar for providing the venue. Thanks for Sankar and Vasanth for nice hospitality.

Thanks for all the participants. Hoping to see them all as great contributors to wikipedia. Let us conduct such events often. Meet you all soon.

Photos are here – https://photos.app.goo.gl/SEjPkJUvF30qGUWg2

ILUGC Hackathon – 2 – Wikipedia Hackathon – July 23, 2017

Announcing our second hackathon on July 23. This time it is all about Wikipedia.

Venue :

Hexolabs Interactive Tech Pvt Ltd, Type II/17, Dr.VSI Estate,
Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai 41. Phone – 044 42169699  Near NIFT, Opposite
to Origin Towers.

https://goo.gl/maps/XtTZXXDf3Ku
https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4978570060#map=17/12.98271/80.25278

Date : July 23, 2017
Time : 10.00 AM – 5.00 PM

Must:

* Bring your laptop
* Knowledge in any programming language

Good:

* To bring any internet device like dongle or 4g smartphone to get your own internet, as there is limited speed in available internet

Pre-Learning:

Exploring these links and installing them is desired.

Installing medaiwiki-
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-mediawiki-on-ubuntu-14-04

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installing_MediaWiki_on_XAMPP

wikitools – Python Library
https://github.com/alexz-enwp/wikitools/wiki/Documentation

Mediawiki API https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page

Gadgets https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Gadget_kitchen

Hack Ideas:

If you, or Tamil or any other language wiki needs any programming solutions, share the ideas here.

Examples :
1. Report of contributions of all TN school teachers. Usernames will
start as TNSE. Need a report like https://ta.wikipedia.org/s/6s9e

2. Fixing the titles, moving the pages automatically, if they have
errors on page title.

3. Install Tamil TTS – https://www.iitm.ac.in/donlab/tts/index.php
and try to use it for wiki pages.

Registration :

To register, add your name in the following wiki page.
bit.ly/2u5AnT1

If you dont know tamil, just mail me your interest to attend.

Contact:

T Shrinivasan  tshrinivasan@gmail.com 98417 9546 Eight

Meeting Minutes – July 2017 meet

Indian Linux Users Group, Chennai is my homeland. The monthly meetings always give great ideas and thoughts. Most of my project ideas are being initiated here. Kaniyam.com and FreeTamilEbooks.com are childs of the thoughts discussed here.

We meet, every month, second saturday at IIT Madras – 3-6 pm. Last saturday, we had a meet. Here are the notes.

Joshua explained about Yocta project. This is used to build tiny GNU/Linux distributions with only the minimal required tools and libraries. We can create many recipies and use them to design our own OS.

He explained the build tool bitbake and demonstrated the processes.

Few links to know more about it.

https://www.yoctoproject.org/about
https://www.slideshare.net/rossburton/the-yocto-project
https://www.slideshare.net/coldnew/build-your-own-embedded-linux-distributions-by-yocto-project

Khaleel explained about OpenStreetMaps.org  . He demonstrated how to add new roads, Point of interests and how to edit other’s works. He explained how the project started, why it exists and why it is important to contribute for it.

We can add missing details about the streetname and POI for chennai.

Use these applications to contribute using mobile.
1. maps.me
2. OSM contributor

Using the app, “StreetComplete” we can add missing street names easily.

We can plan for an online or offline mapathon event to learn OSM
contribution someday this month.

Few links:
http://openstreetmap.org/
https://www.slideshare.net/keng/20130507-opendreamandosmatmekongictcamp
https://www.slideshare.net/ckreutz/maptivism-maps-for-activism-transparency-and-engagement

I distributed few old “Linux for you” books to the participants.

After the talk, few of us went to gurunath restaurant. Discussed about bitcoin, blockchain, chennai colleges, having hackathon and trainings etc. Baskar selvaraj requested to have more offline events like we were doing few years ago. Remembered contributions of our long time members like KG, Raaman, Bharathi etc. He shared all the fun happening at colleges on the events he conducts. It will be really great if we start more events. Let us plan them and start as soon as possible.

Thanks for all participants and speakers.

Here are few photos
https://goo.gl/photos/y7nEuEvoNBGZTBVr9

Released 300 Ebooks at FreeTamilEbooks.com

Happy to release our 300th Ebook in Tamil Language at FreeTamilEbooks.com

For new readers, this is a portal to release DRM free Tamil Ebooks with Creative Commons license.

Read more about the project here – http://freetamilebooks.com/about-us/

It is around 4 years journey with the ebooks. Yes. We are completing 4 years next month. All these years gave great happy moments.

Tons of thanks for all writers, contributors and readers. With all your support only, we are going forward to provide even better services for Tamil Language.

Nothing is happier than to see the dreams come true. Thanks for seeing a big dream together and making it real.

 

Minutes – Intro to Wikipedia – Villupuram

Last Sunday, I gave a talk on Wikipedia at Villupuram GLUG. We had around 30 participants. Got few School Teachers, Writers, Media people too.

Started the session with a game. Started a story with one line. Asked everyone to continue one line after another. Thus the story was built collaboratively.

This experience helped them to understand how wiki pages are being written. Explored about wikipedia history, Foundation, Languages, /various wiki projects like wikisource, wiktionary etc.

Explained about issues by copyright, Creative commons license and Commons.

Then, Poet Ramamurthy expressed his thoughts about wikipedia and public contributions.

Journalist Ko.senguttuvan shared his thoughts on copyrights. He requested all to document their knowledge so that the next generation can use it. He presented me a book he wrote about his Journalism experiences.

Teacher Dhilip narrated his efforts on enhancing the government schools with various ICT activities.

Then, we started the practical sessions. Asked all to create an account on wiki. Then, explored about the pages, history, talk page, visual editor, language tools. Asked them to edit the page for villupuram and asked to add few points.

This was a very initial intro session. Hope they get some idea about wiki ecosystem.

Thanks for the organizers, Puduvai GLUG and Villupuram GLUG. They are doing great activities there by introducing Free Software every sunday.

Special thanks to Karkee, Khaleel and Sathish for great efforts on this event.

Few Photos are here – https://goo.gl/photos/JwXmZwYN1QCvnDfH8

Thanks for Dinamani Newspaper for writing about the event.

Intro to wikipedia – a talk at Villupuram

Tomorrow, Sunday, 18-06-1983, I am giving a talk at Villupuram on “Introduction to Wikipedia”.

Inviting you all to the event. Thanks for Villupuram GNU Linux Users Group and Puduvai GNU Linux Users Group for organizing this event.

Date : 18-06-2017 Sunday

Time : 10.00 am

Venu : Bodhi IAS Academy,
Shanthi Nilayam
No:10, Vishvalingam Layout,
Villupuram – 605602

Contact : 995 253 408 Three , 750 227 341 Eight

 

StreetComplete – Android app to add Missing Street Names in OpenStreetMaps

I am thinking of bringing OpenStreetMaps.org in Tamil. Imagining a world, where a GPS device or smartphone, showing paths in Tamil and giving instructions in Tamil to the driver.

To achieve this, we need all the street names to be filled in OpenStreetMaps.org

I checked for the streets in my area, Tambaram, Chennai. Found that there are many street names are missing. Editing the street names on the browser seems difficult for the lazy me.

Was looking for any alternate ways to add streets in OSM. Found the Open Source android app “StreetComplete“.

It simply shows the streets that dont have a name and ask to enter a name for it. Thats all.

From the description of the app.

 

Help to improve the OpenStreetMap with StreetComplete!

This app finds incomplete and extendable data in your vicinity and displays it on a map as markers. Each of those is solvable by answering a simple question to complete the info on site.

The info you enter is then directly added to the OpenStreetMap in your name, without the need to use another editor.

As it says, it is really simple to add details like street names, road types, shops opening hours etc.

Install this app in your android phone and help OpenStreetMaps to have all the street names. It will lead to various super projects like “Maps in our language” and more.

Help to to build truely open maps.

Few links to explore:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.westnordost.streetcomplete

Source : https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete/

Project Idea – Telegram bot to translate strings for Open Source Projects

In wikimedia hackathon, I saw a demo of using telegram bot to translate strings from translatewiki.net

here are the notes about it.

============

Telegram Translation Bot: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T131664 DONE

Translate on translatewiki.net without leaving your Telegram app

Code: https://github.com/amire80/mediawiki-telegram-bot/

mediawiki.org page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Amire80/chat_bot_draft

Phabricator: amire80 * Wikipedia: Amire80 * Twitter: @aharoni

Amir E. Aharoni and Taras Bunyk presenting

Justin Du (MtDu), Taras Bunyk, and help from Brian Wolff, Madhvuvishy, bd808, Niklas Laxström, Jon Robson, and more people!

“Most people don’t speak English”

Translatewiki.net – thousands of messages to translate

can now translate through this simple mobile app instead of needing to load the full site in a browser

selects untranslated strings, in your preferred languages, sends them to you, and you translate, and it submits them to translatewiki

Long messages are automatically skipped to fit a use on mobile.

============

Thinking as we can build a bot to translate the strings for mozilla and openstreetmaps.

Need to get your inputs/thoughts/ideas for this.

These links may help to build a telegram bot for translations.

https://github.com/zanata/zanata-python-client

https://translate.zanata.org

https://translate.zanata.org/iteration/view/TamilMap/1/settings?dswid=1182

use this command to get the po file in /tmp/ta.po

zanata po pull –url https://translate.zanata.org/ –project-id TamilMap –project-version 1 –transdir /tmp

We can process the po file using polib

http://polib.readthedocs.io/en/latest/quickstart.html

There are many python libraries to create a telegram bot.

http://telepot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

https://khashtamov.com/en/how-to-create-a-telegram-bot-using-python/

https://blog.pythonanywhere.com/148/

https://www.codementor.io/garethdwyer/building-a-telegram-bot-using-python-part-1-goi5fncay
With all these tools to create a bot, to process Po files and zanata to host the translations, we can connect them all.
If any one is interested in programming for this, reply here.

Thanks.

Image sources:

http://www.asktrustdee.com/2016/03/my-top-5-telegram-bot.html
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Translate_en-ta.png | CC-By-SA

Project Idea – Teach Tamil to Apertium – Open Source Machine translation tool

 

Apertium is a Open source Machine Translation system. It supports many languages like english, hindi, urudu etc.

Explore its features and train Tamil for it.

The following links will help to explore further.

https://www.apertium.org

http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium_New_Language_Pair_HOWTO

http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Dravidian_languages

https://sourceforge.net/p/apertium/mailman/message/23318108/

 

If you are interested in exploring this, comment here. Let us work together and make some move with apertium for Tamil.