Abasar

Abasar (অবসর) is a general-information website in the Bengali language. It is one of the oldest Bengali language Websites in the net.[1]

Background

Founded in 2002 by Sujan DasGupta, it covers health, law, environment, women's issues, science, literature, culture, food, art and film. The site contains a concise version of the famous encyclopedia, Bharatkosh.[2] Abasar has a directory of local and community services in Dhaka and Kolkata, a list of other important Bengali websites with links, a comprehensive database of old Bengali films and some recreational items. .[3] Abasar.net contains biographies of noted Bengali people of the past like Kadambini Ganguly, Hiralal Sen, Sadhana Bose, Akshay Kumar Maitreya and many others. Wikipedia has often referred to these biographies and other information of Abasar.

History

Abasar,[4] was created for Bengali speaking people, who are not conversant in English, to have access to information that affect their lives. The name abasar.net comes from the Bengali abasar (অবসর), which means time off. The development of the website was started with the idea that volunteers who had taken time off work could help build this database that would eventually help those in villages of West Bengal and Bangladesh who went online. The website has a total of 20,000+ web pages. It has a strong focus on women. Among other things it includes information on human trafficking, laws protecting women's rights in India and Bangladesh and tips for law enforcement officers to understand trafficking patterns.

Technology

Abasar uses font embedding technology and its contents can be seen with almost all popular browsers. For years, a proprietary font (Haraf) developed by Sumit Roy, was used for this site. The use of Haraf technology has recently been discontinued and all new contents are in UNICODE.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Launching a Web-Based Resource for Bengalis: Story Behind Abasar.net
  2. ↑ Queens Library
  3. ↑ Aboutus
  4. ↑ The Statesman Ltd, Source: The Financial Times Limited

External links


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Sunday, August 16, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.