By Martin Benjamin | Executive Director
This quarter's news update won't be long.
The old server at kamusi.org is still giving us problems, and re-igniting the services that it runs is an ongoing mission that requires funds we can only raise if the world can see what we are doing. This was our Catch-22 since the crash last September. We have now solved the impasse by moving a core set of lower-resource, high-impact services to a new server. This is coupled with a new design that we hope you'll love.
All the new stuff is at http://kamusigold.org
The page is intended to fly in the face of current trends in web design. Instead of the sleek WordPress templates you've become accustomed to, which show you a few big pictures and a minimal amount of information, the KamusiGOLD homepage has more information than you can possibly absorb in one visit. That is because the homepage sits atop a trove of resources that is meant for you to use repeatedly, in new and unexpected ways that will change what people think of as a dictionary. Instead of giving new visitors a light glimpse at what we offer, we take the philosophy of many modern airports, where visitors who finish security must stroll through the duty-free to see what is available before they can proceed to their gates. Our visual design philosophy, however, is a layout and color scheme inspired not by airports, but by the artist Paul Klee, as you can see at https://kamusigold.org/info/homepage
For the user experience, that last link shows how, once you get into the site, you can normally wander around in the back corridors without being overwhelmed by the homepage. All our articles and information nuggets have their own /info pages, with navigation boxes that make it easy to find what you want and move along to the next thing.
But design experiments are not why you come to Kamusi. You come for the words. And this is where I am happy to say that we are really rolling. The magic is in the search box at the top of the page. That unassuming little search box is your gateway to what is developing into the world's most accurate translation tool between most language pairs. At the moment, we "only" have 10 languages wired up, but the number is increasing weekly, with aligned data in the queue for a total of about 60. I'd blubber on about the languages we are bringing in from all over the world, and the tools we have awaiting funding on the main server to improve and expand the current data, but I promised this update would be short, and all that information is waiting to be discovered on kamusigold.org.
Just one more thing, we are putting the finishing touches on three other ways for you to use KamusiGOLD. The Android app should be completed in the nearest future. We also have a Chrome browser extension and a stand-alone desktop app that work on any computer, and are being finalized by their developers. Keep your eyes on http://kamusigold.org/info/software to see when those are ready for you to download.
We are far from being out of the woods financially, but I am excited by what we've been able to do in the past few months on essentially a zero budget. Now that we are running with services that won't explode our main server, we can show the world a unique resource that they can believe in. Next step: win some major support to take the project to the next level, for the speakers of languages that remain excluded from today's systems of knowledge and technology.
Thank you for continuing to stand with us!
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