BG Mahesh | Mahesh | mahesh.com » indian languages

Is 2012 the year for recognition of Indian languages on the internet?

bgmahesh — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:45:23 +0000

The year 2012 seems to have begun well for the Indic space – print and online media in India have been writing about Indian language space on the internet. Economic Times on Jan 24, 2012 (Republic Day) carried an article titled “Internet’s Next Growth Story to be Scripted in Vernacular Languages” (epaper, scanned version) and “Start-ups Eyeing Non-English Space ” (epaper, scanned version). The author of the article had called me few weeks ago but I wasn’t sure when this article was going to be published. Oneindia.in has been mentioned in the article as we are a major player in the Indian language space.

Multi-Lingual Web – Challenges & Opportunities

bgmahesh — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 08:52:41 +0000

Thinking Aloud! December 2011 issue

PS: My article was published in Thinking Aloud! magazine (December 2011). The entire issue focused on Indian languages on the internet and mobile.

Oneindia is India’s second most popular Local News Destination amongst NRIs: Comscore

bgmahesh — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 09:11:27 +0000

The latest comscore press release “India’s Local News Destinations See Visitors from Outside of the Country Account for a Significant Share of their Global Audience” talks about the traffic the popular Indian sites are getting from outside India (safe to assume most of the users from outside India are NRIs).

Will Hindi domain names increase the usage of internet in India?

bgmahesh — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 14:06:29 +0000

For a while the discussion about domain names in Indian language has been going on. India is about to get its own internationalized domain names (IDNs). China and Russia have their own IDNs for a while now.

Karnataka Rajyotsava – Will Karnataka Govt EVER recognize Kannada on the net?

bgmahesh — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:58:57 +0000

Today, November 1, 2011 is the 56th Karnataka Rajyotsava,

India became a Republic in the year 1950 and in same year linguistic provinces were formed. The state of Mysore is one such state in south India.

Immortalizing Narayan Murthy: Should he create Murty Indic fonts?

bgmahesh — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 05:14:12 +0000

Saturday editions of Mint are always special. Today’s article “Back to the future” caught my eye which mentioned Indic fonts (Indian language fonts). Even though I do read several newspapers (online/offline) I somehow missed the news in September about The Murty Classical Library of India (MCLI). The MCLI project was set up in 2010 with a gift of $5.2 million (around Rs.25.5 crore now) from NRN’s son Rohan Murty. MCIL will release its first set of six Indian classics translated into English in 2013.

IAMAI initiates a Working Group for Local Languages in India

bgmahesh — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 03:30:29 +0000

From the newsletter (Sept 22, 2011) of IAMAI (Internet & Mobile Association of India):

Focus on Local Language: Those tracking internet numbers in India are entering a mathematical roadblock soon. Internet user numbers are reaching 100 million soon and will get to 300 million by 2014/15 according to some. But there are only 110-120 odd million people in India who know English. There is also a social roadblock, the government and Telcos are planning to reach internet to rural India as a part of its inclusiveness agenda, but who in rural India would understand and use predominantly – English internet? The need for local language content and apps should be highlighted everywhere by everyone who believe in the inherent power of internet to dis-intermediate information and provide a level playing field to those who are currently socially and economically excluded. It was in this spirit that the Department of Information Technology led by Shri. Sachin Pilot inaugurated the W3C office in India last week [click here for press release]. We at IAMAI actively work with TDIL division of DiT and extend our full support to their initiative.

God, uh I mean Google says internet usage in India to explode

bgmahesh — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 05:59:14 +0000

Lately Google has been talking a lot about mobile internet and internet usage in India. According to Google-India, India will have over 200 million internet users by 2013. Other points from the report,

Twitter embraces Hindi, will it help?

bgmahesh — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:53:29 +0000

Twitter has released the Hindi version of their interface yesterday. Most of the sites have given a thumbs down to the level of localization Twitter has gone into (see Medianama & Plugged.in).

Will language support give the steroids for ecom growth in India?

bgmahesh — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 09:02:40 +0000

Today’s article in Mint “Data indicates an e-commerce boom” talks about the good growth of ecom in India. The study was conducted by India’s leading market research firm JuxtConsult. Some notable points from the article are,