Tamil font converters

List of Tamil font converters :

1. NHM Converter is available as both online and offline versions. Converts Unicode, Bamini, Vanavil, ShreeLipi, TSCII, DiaCritic, TAB, TAM, SoftView fonts to one another. The software is very robust and even large data conversion can be done seamlessly.

2. Suratha PonguTamil is one of  the earliest free online tamil font converters. This has a new user friendly version at http://www.jaffnalibrary.com/tools/tamilconverter.htm .Focuses mainly fonts of online Tamil magazines. Converts IndoWeb, Murasoli, WebUlagam, DhinaThanthi,  DinaMani, DhinaBoomi, Anjal, ThatsTamil, Libi, Amutham / Dinakaran, Mylai, Vikatan (Old), Tab, Tam (Kumudam / Vikatan), Bamini, TSC, Romanised, Koeln, anu graphics (pallavar), nakkeeran (senthamiz). However, it can be noted that many of the sites mentioned here have already migrated to Unicode fonts. 

3. Azhagi– Unicode – TSCII bulk converter. 

4. ELCOT Tamil font converters for Linux and Windows.

5. Sarma has a paid software for converting Tamil fonts.

6. Bamini – Unicode and Unicode – Bamini Font converters from University of Colombo, School of computing

7. Adhiyaman – Converts TSCII, TAM, TAB, TUNE, DailyThanthi, Dinamani, Chenet, Kambar, Kalaham, Keeravani, Kambar fonts to Unicode.

Related posts:

* Tamil in Android mobile phones
* Tamil typing software
* Download free Tamil fonts

Tamil Grammar lessons online

List of websites to learn Tamil Grammar:

1. Tamil Virtual University grammar courses

2. Books on Tamil grammar listed at Viruba.com

3. Tamil Wikipedia grammar guide – Has relevant links, guides for understanding essential Tamil grammar.

4. http://ilakkanam.blogspot.com – A team blog in Tamil answering common questions / doubts on Tamil grammar.

5. அடிப்படைத் தமிழ் இலக்கணம், பொற்காலத் தமிழ் இலக்கணம் – Free e-books for download from Noolaham.net.

6. மரத்தடி.com articles on Tamil grammar – Caters to advanced level students of Tamil grammar.

7. Tamil grammar through English – A simple beginner level presentation in English to understand basic Tamil grammar.

8. http://www.pudhucherry.com/pages/gram2.html andhttp://www.pudhucherry.com/pages/gram3.html teach you about சந்தி இலக்கணம். i.e, when to add க், ச், த், ப் in between two words when you write them together. Guess this is the number one confusion for any tamil writer 🙂

Related posts:

* Tamil literature magazines websites

* Tamil writers websites

* Tamil ebooks download websites

* Buy Tamil books online

* Tamilnadu school textbooks online

* English to Tamil dictionary websites

Free online English – Tamil dictionary websites

List of websites giving  English – Tamil dictionaries for free online.

1. Tamil Wiktionary – Tamil Wiktionary is a Multi lingual – Tamil dictionary. It has more than One lakh words with a focus on technical glassary prepared by Tamil virtual University. This is a free to edit dictionary. So you can improve the pages by adding correct meaning, pronunciation, images etc.,

2. DSAL dictionariesDigital South Asia Library is a portal for Tamil’s oldest dictionaries. It is a treasure house for Tamil lovers. Gives meanings for Tamil words found in literature.

List of dictionaries in this portal:

abricius, Johann PhilippJ. P. Fabricius’s Tamil and English dictionary. 4th ed., rev.and enl. Tranquebar: Evangelical Lutheran Mission Pub. House, 1972.

Kadirvelu Pillai, NaTamil Moli Akarathi. N. Kathiraiver Pillai’s Tamil Moli Akarathi: Tamil-Tamil dictionary = Na. Kathiraiver Pillayin Tamil Moliyakarati: Tamil-Tamil akarathi. 6th ed., rev. and enl. Cennai: Pi. Ve. Namacivaya Mutaliyar.

McAlpin, David WA core vocabulary for Tamil. Rev. ed. Philadelphia, Pa.: Dept. of South Asia Regional Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 1981.

University of MadrasTamil lexicon. [Madras]: University of Madras, 1936-

Winslow, MironA comprehensive Tamil and English dictionary of high and low Tamil. Madras: P.R. Hunt, 1862.

3. Pals e-dictionary – English-Tamil dictionary from Palaniappa brothers.

4. Tamil Virtual University Dictionaries – Has  a flashy interface and inbuilt Tamil typing tool.

5. க்ரியாவின் தற்காலத் தமிழ் அகராதி – Tamil – Tamil – English dictionary for contemporary Tamil words by Kriya.

6. Free online Tamil – Tamil – English dictionary from Lifco.

7. Tamil Lexicon

8. Agaraadhi

More English – Tamil dictionaries are out there. Which one do you use often?

Tamil software websites

Popular Tamil software websites:

Offline / Desktop Tamil software products

1. Thamizha

Provides E-kalappai, a popular tamil typing software. Initiates and organizes localization of free software like Firefox, OpenOffice, TuxPaint in Tamil.

2. NHM software

Makers of NHM Writer, NHM converter and NHM Lister. They help in Tamil typing, font conversion, word counting.

3. Sarma

Provide English-Tamil dictionary, Indian language computing services, Unicode font conversion, Grammar and Spell checker for Tamil.

4. Kanithamiz

Provide Word Processors, Business software, Educational Multimedia products, Dictionary in Tamil.

5. Azhagi

Gives English to Tamil transliteration software. Has both free and paid software.

6. Murasu – Makers of Murasu Anjal and Sellinam software.

Murasu Anjal helps you email, chat, write and publish in Tamil. Has both paid and free versions.

Sellinam helps you send sms in Tamil.

Online Tamil software products

1. Suratha

Tamil typing in Unicode, Bamini formats

Unicode font conversion services.

2. HiGopi

English to Indian language transliteration in Unicode format.

 Firefox extensions for Tamil

Tamil software discussion websites

1. Free Tamil Computing Group

2. INFITT

12 tips to save money

12 Simple tips to save money:

1. Stop the buying spree. Do not buy anything in an instinct as soon as seeing it in the shop. Do not buy anything without having planned to buy it.

2. Do not have more cash in your pocket than you need for the day. We think more to draw money from ATM. Many shops don’t have debit card payment facilities. So if you don’t have extra cash in hand, you won’t end up spending unnecessarily.

3. Discuss, report to someone how you spend money. A second person can always pinpoint unnecessary spending. It can be your mom or wife. They do this service for free 😉

4. Do not get credit unless it is an emergency and absolute necessity. Getting loans through credit cards, banks for buying consumer goods can gradually milk lot of interest money from you without you being aware.

5. Stop being a fashion guru. People who want to follow the fashion end up paying heavily to update their gadgets, automibiles, apparels. 

6. Account. Keep a simple worksheet to track your income and spending. This helps to identify regualr patterns in spending and areas for cost cutting.

7. Help your friends.  Yes, help your friends when they need money. You have the satisfaction of helping your friends and be assured that they will come to your rescue when you need.

8. Pay only when you use. never swiped extra credit cards, unoperated bank accounts, magazines in showcase: You know you never use them and keep paying the service cost. Close all such idle accounts.

9. Don’t go for membership deals. Membership deals make you pay more now for discounts on future purchases which you may never make.

10. Don’t live for others. We do spend quite a lot to improe our image in others’s eyes. Let there be a limit for this and start living for yourself.

12. Use and throw use again. Just 20 years before we had the good habit of reusing things. Don’t follow the use and throw culture. Make purchases which will last longer and can be reused. In the long run, this helps in saving money.

11 simple tips for weight loss

Simple tips for weight loss:

1. Stop eating snacks, junk, oily, processed, non-vegetarian, fat rich food.

2. Reduce the quantity of carbohydrate rich food like rice, potato etc.,

3. Eat more vegetables, fruits. Drink more water.

4. Eat only during regular meal times and only if you are hungry. Do not stuff your stomach. 

5. Walk as often and as long as you can.

6. Reduce the time spent sitting in front of TV, computer and in work place. 

7. Do not go for any magic weight loss pills, belts etc., The natural way of weight loss is the best way.

8. Take a look at your photographs in which you are slim. This inspires and gives you cnfidence to lose weight.

9. Engage more time in your favourite sport / outdoor game.

10. Go for a picnic / trip regularly. 

11. Don’t be a lonely goose. Get more social. Get more friends. You would naturally want to look good in front of them.

Google Chrome

 

Likes:

1. Lightning fast. Works great with Wikipedia pages, vbulletin forums, Google applications like Gmail, Google reader.

2. Connectivity. Not only does http://nonoh.net loads damn fast, i am also getting connected to all calls without delay and fail. From Firefox I couldn’t connect properly many times.

3. Larger screen space. Uncluttered menu.  I used to press F11 often in Firefox too.

4. Download manager. It is easier to locate downloads now.  

5. Tabs Managment. Tabs opened from one page are grouped together. You can close all tabs except the current tab, close tabs to the right, close tabs opened by the current tab. You can drag and reorder the them. You can pull out a tab and get a new window. 

6. Isolated tab processes. One tab doesn’t crash the whole window. 

7. Pleasing interface colour.

8. Application shortcuts. Now i made application shortcuts for Wikipedia, Google reader, Gmail, Twitter, Nonoh. I use them so often that i better think them of as applications not as webpages. Mozilla Prism does this too. But the integration and ease of use is better. 

9. Speed dial. 

10. Easy to install. Imports Favourites, browsing history, passwords.

11. Inspect element. The view source page is rich in presentation.

 

Could have been better:

1. No Master Password option. Privacy concerns if more people can access your computer.

2. I am too used to Firefox 3 location bar. It was better in ease of use. I could type any letter in the website title / url and get my sites. Also, it displayed the title name above url which is easy to read. 

3. Speed dial is not accurate and we have no control over it.

4. No auto feed discovery.

5. Could allow installing Firefox add-ons. I miss them.

6. No auto suggest for searching bookmarks, history, downloads etc.,

Reservation

Bruno brought to my notice that there is something fishy about the IIT seats being left unfilled.

This seems like a big scandal and completely insane !!

The people at the IIT admission committee don’t seem to know how to implement reservation or they don’t want to !

This is how reservation works:

The eligibility marks in Maths, Physics, Chemistry are 5, 0 and 3. Those who got more than eligibility marks can all apply to get admitted.

Say, we have totally 100 seats. and 20 for Open competition, 40 for OBC, 40 For SC-ST (just some random percents)

Top 20 rankers (including OBC, SC-ST not just FC) will get admitted into the 20 seats for Open competetion. The aggregate score of the 20th person will be the cut-off for Open competition. You should note that the cut-off is an incidental score set by the 20th person.

Then the next 40 seats are filled by the next 40 Top ranking OBC. even if the 40th person got just 5, 0, 3 the minimum eligible mark, he deserves to get the seat filled. He doesn’t need to have a top score.

…and the procedure continues for SC-ST.

No one fixes the cut-off first. It gets automatically fixed when the seats are filled. It can only be known after all seats are filled and serves as an indication for next year candidates how much they may need to score to get admitted in their quota.

fixing the cut-off mark first and driving away prospective students from each quota and proposing to merge these seats to common pool and get some more FC getting added is plain cheating.

For anyone who follows TNPCEE procedure, we expect that the cut-off marks for Open competetion, OBC, SC-ST should be really distinct and significantly lesser than Open competetion.

This is how reservation should work.

Twitter wisdom

How to find new people to follow in twitter?

0. Visit your friend’s profile pages and check whom they are following.

1. Check to whom your friends are sending @ replies often. These are active, interesting people.

2. Now, Go to http://search.twitter.com and search for things of your interest. Select profiles with interesting content.

From all the above profiles,

* Select profiles with followers / following ratio 1 or more. The more the better.

* Select profiles with lot of links in the updates. Links mean information.

Remember: The number of your followers isn’t that important. The number of people you follow, their quality of tweets is important. The more the people and better they are, you are better informed.

Twitter Time management:

Twitter failed to give a statutory warning that it is highly addictive. I am already seeing many of the reticent bloggers spending a lot of time in Twitter. True that twitter induces conversation by design. But still…

* Don’t keep a Twitter Desktop / browser app or Twitter website open all the time. The notifications, refreshings will suck your time.

* Switch off the followers notifications or send it to your secondary email.

* If you get annoyed by @ replies between your friends, you can switch them off from the settings. But these replies only make the place lively, informative, interesting. You will find new people to follow.

* Do add a clear profile picture. Helps your friends to identify you easily.

* It’s best open once / twice a day, read the tweets, reply and close it down.

* Read the tweets in reverse chronological order. It makes more sense.

* Don’t flood with tweets. Anything more than 10 a day, people are starting to get annoyed.

Twitter as Microblogging platform:

If you are seriously considering Twitter as a Microblogging platform and caring less and less for your regular blogs, think twice now. I find Twitter great to stay in touch with friends, get help, social networking but I rate it very poorly as a Microblogging platform. Microblogging is not just being about short.

Why?

* Twitter is unreliable. Goes down many times. I would like to blog when I like not when Twitter is fine.

* You don’t own the content. Right now, you can’t export your tweets to another service.

* Content accessibility is blocked in many ways. They cut down the archives after mere 5-10 pages. I have 1000+ tweets gone for ever 🙁

* Your readers need to register, understand twitter before they respond to you.

* Comments / replies are spread over and don’t make sense many times. It is confusing for which tweet you get the reply.

* The 140 character limit can be unnecessarily limiting.

* The TinyURLs don’t help you understand where you are gonna land.

* No way to find related content as there are no tags and categories.

* No audio, visual treat as you can’t embed anything.

* Very Poor RSS feed service.

So, what is Twitter best for?

* To help, respond to your friends with @ replies. Whether you like it or not, the crowd is there. Stay in touch.

* Ask for help. Twitter crowd by design and habit, responds faster than light.

* Anything you would like to write but would not care to archive.

* To follow news, trends.

* Shed your online image and be just friends with people.

And that’s all the twitter wisdom I got in 8 months of tweeting !

Also see:

Twitter etiquette – Do’s and Don’ts