A web developer named Steven McCullagh sent in a nifty present to the Kamusi community: a little Firefox search toy that you can use to search kamusi.org from anywhere on the web. The photo below shows you how to install it and use it.

Enjoy!

We have been developing a Java for Mobile devices (J2ME) application for searching through PALDO data (the multilingual next generation of Kamusi). The application can be downloaded at http://pm.suuch.com:8080/kmobile/ to a mobile device and tested. Alternatively, you can use an emulator that is available at http://www.microemu.org/microemu-webstart/index.html or specifically, the webstart application http://www.microemu.org/microemu-webstart/demo.jnlp

We need your help to test the application on as many different mobile devices as possible.

Since I only have 30 minutes left on my battery, I won't type much on this session. Mauro Rosi is discussing the report, which will be available online.

One thing that jumps out is that the report is not yet finished, so there is still opportunity to have events and activities that took place during the year incorporated in the report. Some missing items that should be included:

* The Facebook group for IYL 2008, created by Don Osborn for the year, which has thousands of members

* The launching of ANLoc, the African Network for Localization: http://africanlocalization.net

This session is introducing the third edition of the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. The atlas is now online at http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00206

The hard-copy version will be released in late May.

This third edition includes data on 2500 languages, which is greatly expanded from the previous editions. This does not mean that a huge number of new languages have become endangered, but that more data has become available. At the same time, we do know that more and more languages are becoming endangered.

Events are about to start for the International Mother Language Day, at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The first item of the day will be an opening panel with the Director-General of UNESCO, the chair of their executive board, the permanent representative of Bangladesh, and Adama Samassekou of the African Academy of Languages.

We have just promoted our new search system to the top left of every Kamusi page. We have been testing the new system for several weeks, and hope that we have managed to fix all the bugs. If not, please let us know!

What are the differences between the new search and the "classic" search? Our hope is that you will not notice any differences at the outset. (For techies, the old search was written in Perl, which we need to retire in order to make our entire site consistent within a Drupal/ PHP environment.) The initial goal is to have the new search, written in a new programming language, produce exactly the same results for the user.

Beginning today, the Kamusi Project will undertake a slow transition to our new domain name: Kamusi.org - "kamusi," of course, is the Swahili word for "dictionary." We moved the project from its university incubator to a stand-alone site a little over a year ago. At the time, kamusiproject.org was the only reasonable domain name that was available. Kamusi.com was taken, kamusi.org was taken, and even kamusiproject.com was already owned by someone else!

I've just come across a new Facebook tool that makes it much easier for users of that service to keep track of Kamusi Project news from this blog. If you are a Facebook user, please go to http://apps.new.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/kamusi_editors_blog and subscribe to that page. When you do, you will have a simple way to know when this blog has been updated, without having to click through to this site to keep up to date.

Nimegundua zana mpya kwa watumiaji wa Facebook ili kurahisisha namna ya kufuata blogu hii. Tafahadhali tembelea http://apps.new.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/kamusi_editors_blog ili kujiandikisha. Baadaye, utaweza kujua nikiandika ujumbe mpya, bila kufika kwenye ukurasa huu kutarifiwa.

Asanteni,
Martin

Spotted in Dar es Salaam and posted on the blog louder than swahili is this new kanga congratulating East Africa's favorite grandson:

We are getting ready to re-design the Kamusi Project website, in order to introduce new features and new languages. To help us prepare, please send us your thoughts about:

* design ideas, including layout, colors, graphics, fonts, etc
* features that you would like to see added
* things that you don't like on the current site

What design aspects do you admire from other web sites? What do other sites do that we should avoid at all costs?

Please email us using the contact form on the left, or use the comments feature below.

Thanks!