Those of you who have tried to use the Swahili Discussion Forum have probably experienced a great amount of frustration. You log in, click to the next screen, and are asked to log in again. And again. And again. If you are very persistent, you can eventually post your comments, but you are more likely to give up.

Earlier this week we launched the new logo for the Kamusi Project, in conjunction with our receiving full legal status as a tax-exempt NGO/ public charity in both the US and Europe.  After two years of slowly working on the design, the compliments that people have sent in have been gratifying.

However, hours and hours of effort to get the logo onto attractive shirts, mugs, and other fun items has so far resulted in ... not a single sale.  Since the Kamusi Project only earns about $5 for every shirt sold, and $15 for every clock, we need to be selling a lot more than zero in order to raise funds for the work we do. We will soon announce other plans to ensure the project's long term sustainability, as well as describing the work we plan to accomplish with the funds we raise. For today, though, we have installed a little widget that shows off the merchandise on the right of every project page, so that you can easily buy Kamusi gear for yourself and all your friends.

Please admire the designs, and then please buy Kamusi stuff! These are not just stylish sweatshirts and bags - they are an important part of the financial plan to help the project achieve its objectives. It works like this: You buy things. We do work. You use the results of our work. And, you use the things you buy.

It's a cool system, but it only works if you visit the shop and go wild!

I am enormously pleased to officially unveil the new logo for the Kamusi Project.

Unicode Consortium is partnering with ANLoc, the African Network for Localization, a project sponsored by Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), to help extend modern computing on the African continent. ANLoc's vision is to empower Africans to participate in the
digital age by enabling their languages in computers. A sub-project of ANLoc, called Afrigen (http://www.it46.se/afrigen), focuses on creating African locales. During the last 12 months, no fewer than 150 volunteers have teamed up with Afrigen-ANLoc, and gathered locale data for 72 African languages. The Afrigen-ANLoc data collection tool was developed by Louise Berthilson of IT46 (http://www.it46.se), and the project is managed by Martin Benjamin, director of Kamusi Project International (http://kamusi.org).

According to Ethnologue (http://www.ethnologue.com), there are an estimated 2,100 living languages spoken in Africa. The Afrigen-ANLoc project's stated mission is to create viable locale data for at least 100 of the many languages that are spoken in Africa, and upstream the data to Unicode Consortium's Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR http://cldr.unicode.org) project and OpenOffice.org. Implementation of fundamental locale data within CLDR is a critical step for providing computer applications that can be localized into these African languages, thus reaching a population that has perhaps never before had the ability to use their native languages on computers and mobile phones.

Unicode CLDR provides key building blocks for software to support the world's languages. Unicode CLDR is by far the largest and most extensive standard repository of locale data. This data is used by a wide spectrum of companies for their software internationalization and localization: adapting software to the conventions of different languages for such common software tasks as formatting of dates, times, time zones, numbers, and currency values; sorting text; choosing languages or countries by name; transliterating different alphabets; and many others.

The upcoming 1.8 release of CLDR will incorporate data for a total of 54 different African languages. 41 of these languages are completely new to the CLDR project, while 13 others existed in CLDR and were enhanced with additional data. These languages are spoken in 26 different countries
spreading across the entire African continent. The Afrigen-ANLoc project selected approximately 200 candidate languages, including all official languages recognized by a national government and all languages with at least 500,000 native speakers; additional languages are also incorporated in the project when volunteers step forward. Data is collected through the Afrigen-ANLoc project by native-speaking volunteers around the world, and entered via a web-based utility designed specifically for this purpose. The data is then reviewed for accuracy and merged into the CLDR repository.

"The partnership with Afrigen has been a huge benefit for us," says John Emmons, vice-chair of the Unicode CLDR technical committee and lead CLDR engineer for IBM. "The Afrigen effort has allowed us to bring many new languages on board that we wouldn't be able to do through our normal
process, while still maintaining the level of quality and consistency that we require for every language."

Good news on the Swahili ICT terminology project: we have been able to extend the period by one week. The final deadline for input from the community is this Sunday, March 14.

Habari nzuri kuhusu mradi wa istilahi ya kiteknolojia: tunaweza kuongeza muda wa wiki moja. Siku ya mwisho kupokea maoni kutoka wadau ni Jumapili, 14 Machi.

We have also added one more set of terms, so there are about 150 terms in total that need feedback from the community.

Pia, tumeongeza seti moja ya istilahi, hivyo kuna maneno 150 jumla yanayohitaji maoni kutoka kwa jamii.

We are asking for your help on a quick, important project intended to improve access to computer technology in East Africa. The task is simple: look through a list of English terms that are used in information technology, and vote on the Swahili translations or suggest your own.

Twaomba msaada wako kwenye mradi muhimu unaolenga kuboresha matumizi ya teknolojia za tarakilishi katika Afrika ya Mashariki. Shughuli ni rahisi: tazama orodha ya maneno yanayotumiwa kwenye teknolojia ya habari na mawasiliano, na kupigia kura tafsiri zilizoko za Kiswahili au pendekeza neno lako (unalofikiri ni sawa).

We need volunteers with good knowledge of information technology and the Swahili language. To get started, just visit https://sites.google.com/site/manenomagumu

Tunahitaji watu kujitolea ambao wana ujuzi wa teknolojia za mawasiliano na pia lugha ya Kiswahili. Kuanza, tembelea: https://sites.google.com/site/manenomagumu

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.