Committed to PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO KNOW
Vol. 5 Num 568 Sat. December 31, 2005  
   
StarTech


TechFocus
Bangla-blogs: Express yourself in your own language


You have heard of 'blogs' before. But what you might not have heard is that now you can create your own blogs in Bangla. The concept of the Bangla-blog and the site itself, www.somewhere-inblog.net, has been developed by Somewhere In, a Norway-Bangladesh joint venture IT firm.

"The idea is as simple as it sounds. To have a blog, where Bangladeshis all over the world can express their views and opinions about current issues, problems, incidents, personal details etc. to a wider audience," said Hasin Haider, one of the key-developers of the site.

The blog site, named 'Badh Bhangar Awaz', was initiated during the beginning of this month.

"We named it as this as we wanted to depict the desire and passion which almost every single Bangladeshi had to express themselves on the world wide web. We felt the need of such a blog site through the feedback we obtained from our friends and close relatives earlier," said Md Imran Hasan, another developer of the site.

Imran and Hasin developed the site within a matter of two weeks, which is quite a commendable effort.

The site is quite user friendly and as easy as any other English blog sites such as blogspot.com, blogger.com and any other from this list. But it has some unique features also.

A user of the site may find a blog from a number of keywords at the homepage used in some of the blogs created by previous and existing users of the site.

These keywords can make them enthuse toward writing comments on some of the blogs or create one of their own.

The opening page also displays some of the recent blog entries made by users, the recent bloggers into the site and highest number of posts made by bloggers.

In order to create someone's own blog, a user would need to register into the site. The registration process is not as tedious or as lengthy as most other blog sites on the net and can be completed within a matter of one to two minutes.

A blogger can begin blogging as soon as he or she has keyed in the required details.

Beside the usual features like blogger's profiles, my links and new blog thread creation, the site also features 'Amar Diary', a online diary and 'Amar Dinkal' a daily logbook.

The best feature of the site is the virtual Bangla keyboard with the aid of which a browser can type their blogs or write comments on existing blogs.

"Users who already have Bangla fonts installed in their systems can simply use that configuration. But those who do not know how to or don't want to get that technical can make great use of this keyboard," said Hasin, while discussing about blog entries.

Along with Shor Borno (Bangla Vowels) and Banjon Borno (Bangla Consonants), the keyboard is also equipped with the Bangla vowel signs.

"Bloggers can also key in connected letters in Bangla through the 'Jukto Korun' (connect) feature of the keyboard," said Imran.

Although the blog site started off only two weeks back, it has received an overwhelming response.

"Already we have over 30 to 40 bloggers who have registered at the site. 20 out of these are regular bloggers and most from this list are professional bloggers of the country," said Imran.

He also informed that some of these bloggers are residing abroad and are ecstatic to have received a platform, where they can share their thoughts about current issue in the Bangladeshi scenario, about their own lives etc.

Sources from 'Somewhere in' informed Star Tech that due to the enthusiastic response, they will add two new features to the site, pretty soon.

"The two new features will be a chat-room where chatters or registered members of the site can chat in Bangla. We are also planning to install a photo gallery feature," said Hasin. bloggers and Bangladeshis, all over the world, can anticipate these features within the next few months.

Picture
Homepage of the somewhere-inblog.net (left) and a test Blog writing page with the virtual Bangla keyboard (right)