Hindi catches on in Amrikan schools

Uncle Sam is generously funding US schools to teach students foreign languages deemed vital to its economy and national security. First, it was Chinese and Arabic, and now there is a great effort to teach Hindi. The demand for Hindi teachers and course material has snowballed. Top US universities, including the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago, Princeton, Harvard, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania offer Hindi. [Read full news at DNA]

IPLKhabar: New Hindi website on IPL

With 8 days to go to IPL-2 Hindi blogger Pratik Pandey has launched a new Hindi website IPLKhabar that provides match timetable, team and player profiles, news and tidbits in Hindi. (A related news about another Hindi IPL website is here.)

Lok Sabha website now in Hindi too

Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee launched the Hindi website of the lower house on 7 Jan 2008. Addressing the launching ceremony at Parliament Library Building, the speaker said the launch of the Hindi website would be beneficial for MPs and the Lok Sabha secretariat. "The Hindi website will help bring parliament nearer to the people," Chatterjee said.

Appreciating the efforts of the officials of the secretariat and National Informatics Centre for launching the website, Chatterjee said: ‘One will be able to access the information on parliamentary activities online in Hindi.’ Lok Sabha Secretary General P.D.T. Achary said: "Now, members will be able to access the information on parliamentary activities online in Hindi as well, thereby helping them discharge their parliamentary tasks more quickly and effectively."

The English website of Lok Sabha exists at http://loksabha.nic.in and the new Hindi website is at http://164.100.24.207/loksabha_hindi/loksabha.htm (link also available from the English website).

Firefox in Hindi, its finally here

Firefox has finally been able to mend its mistake of dumping Hindi in its major release 3.0. Firefox Hindi is now available (also, Marathi, Bengali and Telugu). Its still in beta. This release also contains a lot of fixes. You may download 3.0.3 here. [via]

Chandamama launches online editions in Indian languages

Popular children's magazine Chandamama is now available online in Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu and Tamil (Marathi & Oriya are coming up). The sites use Unicode and are very elegantly designed. It seems the group is also trying to bring previous print issue online however they pertain for the duration 1947 to 1965.

Chandamama was the brainchild of filmmakers B Nagi Reddi and his friend Chakrapani who edited the magazine. Chandamama has been a popular source of Indian folklore, mythology and history in the form of stories. Since 1975 Nagi Reddi's son Vishwanath edits the magazine.

The online portal comes in the wake of Chandamama being recently acquired by Mumbai based Geodesic, known for its IM system Mundu. On the anvil are the plans to produce films, video and interactive books and CDs based on the magazines. [News source]