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Microimage, the award-winning Sri
Lankan software engineering company, unveiled its “Helawadana
Nawayugaya”, the most comprehensive local language suite ever.
“We at Microimage pride
ourselves on being the innovators in language technology solutions.
Helawadana Nawayugaya crosses a new frontier in making a vast number
of computer benefits accessible to local language users,” said
Harsha Purasinghe, CEO of Microimage.
Microimage’s “Helawadana” and
“Helawadana with Arichchuwadu” are already the most widely used user
friendly Sinhala and Tamil word processing packages in Sri Lanka.
“Helawadana Nawayugaya” the
latest Unicode feature rich suite allows Sinhala language computer
users to do almost everything with Windows-based applications that
English-language users can do,” said Harsha Purasinghe. “These
include working on MSWord, Excel, PowerPoint and a host of other
popular windows based applications.
“Microimage concentrated on
making the product as user-friendly as possible. Helawadana
Nawayugaya has been designed for use by all types of users,
including the government sector, corporate sector, home users, and
schools,” said CEO Purasinghe. Further the product is designed as a
platform for local language products where the company plans to
deliver innovative functional modules/components as upgrades time to
time.
A user-friendly launchpad takes
its place as an icon on the Windows desktop and provides guidance at
any time. Helawadana Nawayugaya includes four types of keyboards to
allow users their preference. The phonetic keyboard is the most
fascinating feature , which means that a user only has to press the
letter whose sound resembles that of the Sinhala letter, and it
would appear in Sinhala. For example, when you type “mama oba ena
thuru balaa sitimi” using the normal English keys on the keyboard,
it automatically converts in to Sinhala, accordingly.
Helawadana Nawayugaya provides
Unicode fonts (the standardized language fonts) as its previous non
Unicode fonts.
Helawadana Nawayugaya includes a
local language spellchecker, find & replace functions, calculator,
calendar, contact list, conversion table, diary, world time and a
host of other useful features.
Helawadana Nawayugaya also
includes the Photo Previewer “Pinthura Ekathuwa” which allows local
language users to preview and sort photos. Another unique component
is the “Elavena Kola” sticky notes to remind users of personal
tasks, with an alarm.
It also includes innovative
games that are designed to master and speed up Sinhala typing.
Another unparallel feature is
that the Suite includes Gaveshaka, a self-learning package, which
teaches MSWord, Excel, and PowerPoint in all in one CD through audio
and video contents, and another feature is on “How to Use Windows
XP.”
“Helawadana Nawayugaya is priced
at Rs. 9,900/=,. It comes in an easy to install CD, which anyone
could load, It can be installed in PCs, laptops and network
environment. Minimum requirements are PIII, 128 MB RAM, 300 MB hard
disk space, and works best with Windows 2000 and XP”
CDs are available at
Microimage’s corporate office and other Microimage business
partners.
“Microimage will be constantly
upgrading the Helawadana Nawayugaya product. Any person who
purchases a Helawadana Nawayugaya CD could download these updates
for free from our website free of charge, ensuring that they will
have the most up-to-date local language software for the foreseeable
future,” said Harsha Purasinghe.
Microimage, a 100% Sri Lankan
owned company, has been going from strength to strength in recent
times. Last April Microimage and Dialog Telekom launched Sinhala and
Tamil mobile browser & messaging a major breakthrough in sending and
receiving sms in local languages as well as content browsing in
local languages using mobile phones.
The Company’s large array of
clients include Dialog Telekom, Dhiraagu Telecom-Maldives, Lanka
Bell, HSBC, DFCC, Hemas Holdings, Cargills, Rocell, World Vision,
APL Lanka and FDK Lanka
The Company has over a decade of
experience in providing local language solutions. Microimage made a
splash at the BCS National Best Quality Software Awards 2004 by
winning two more prestigious awards – a Gold and a Silver – having
earlier won a Merit Award for Human Capital Software Product at the
inaugural BCS Awards in 1998, and in 2003 won a Special Gold Award
for Software Localization at the same awards.
As far back as 1994, Microimage
introduced Sinhala fonts to Personal Computers. Two years later the
Company launched “Helawadana” at that time the most user-friendly
Sinhala solution for Windows, with keyboard drivers and fonts.
Helewadana quickly became a leader in local language provisioning
with over 1,000 copies sold within two years.
In 1997, Microimage introduced
the first ever Sinhala Spell Checker. Three years later came
Helawadana with Arichchuwadu, upto now the most user-friendly
Sinhala and Tamil packaged product. In 2001 the country’s largest
newspaper group, Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd (Lake House),
selected Microimage as the platform provider for publishing local
language newspapers.
The first ever local language
portal for Human Resource Management was also developed by
Microimage three years ago. That same year, Microimage gave Dialog
Telekom licensing rights to its product “e-thapal” which exceeded
2,000 users within 1 ½ months.
By 2002 Microimage completed
development of imessenger messaging components - IMessenger local
language chat, imessenger plug-in for MSN, Yahoo, imessenger email
for Outlook and Outlook Express, all of which were licensed to Sri
Lanka Telecom Limited. In 2004 Microimage developed Sinhala Unicode
Keyboard Driver for ICTA.
Microimage was founded in 1993
by a group of high schools students who were passionate about
innovating new technology and software solutions. It now has a staff
of 40 at its Development Center and Corporate Office in Colombo,
with its own branch operation in Bangladesh and business partners in
Maldives, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. From humble beginnings as
a provider of desktop local language software, the company has
become a leading technology innovator and enterprise software
solutions provider to major corporate and government institutions.
Microimage focuses on providing
innovative solutions in key product lines such as Human Capital
Management Software Solutions, Enterprise Software Solutions, and
Mobile Solutions/Software Localization. Key products include
Microimage Human Capital Management 4, mStudio, Workforce, Ontime,
Helawadana. Its domain of expertise includes Human Resource
Management, Media Stations, the Apparel industry, Software
Localization, and mobile solutions. Microimage is a Microsoft
Certified partner with competencies in MS Platforms/tools and
industry standard technologies.
“Microimage does not believe in
resting on its laurels. We will continue to push back the boundaries
of language technology as well our vast array of other software,”
said Harsha Purasinghe. | 