TechNews.LK
| File:TechNews LK.svg | |
Screenshot
File:TechNews.LK Website Screenshot.png TechNews.LK homepage as of May 2, 2020 | |
Type of site | Technology news and community |
|---|---|
| Available in | Sinhala |
| Founded | March 2018 |
| Headquarters | Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Area served | Sri Lanka (content target) Worldwide (accessible)a |
| Owner | Codeaffinity Technologies |
| Industry | Journalism |
| Services | |
| Website | TechNews.LK |
| Alexa rank |  3,061 (April 2020[update])[1] |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Optional, but is required for certain tasks such as posting news, commenting, reacting and updating existing articles. |
| Launched | April 17, 2018 |
| Current status | Online |
Content license | Creative Commons Attribution / Share-Alike 4.0b |
| Written in | |
TechNews.LK (Tech News සිංහලෙන්) is an award-winning community-powered Sri Lankan[2] online publisher[3] operated by Codeaffinity Technologies, focusing on the tech industry. The main purpose of the website is to bring the latest tech news in the Sinhala language, and respects user contributions by letting anyone to contribute and update latest news, through the same manner anyone with access to the website can read news and get the latest updates via the official website and the native Android and Windows apps named "Techie - Tech News සිංහලෙන්". [4][5][6][7]
TechNews.LK soon recognized as one of most trusted tech communities in Sri Lanka[8] and won numerous awards[9][10][11][12][13].
History[edit]
Origins[edit]
Between March and April 2018, a group of people got together thinking of an idea that would make technological milestone in news publishing in Sri Lanka. It was not so long until they came up with idea of TechNews.LK, a fundamental idea which was to make a community-powered, self-sustaining news publishing platform in the native language of Sri Lanka, which is Sinhala. These group of people together then founded the Codeaffinity Technologies as the parent company of TechNews.LK.
Launch[edit]
TechNews.LK launched in April 17, 2018 initially as just a blog. After few weeks, the website was updated as a cross-platform application[14] that publishes the latest technological news, knowledge sharing space and a forum to discuss the tech-related problems in Sinhala.
2018–present[edit]
On May 2, 2018, Codeaffinity Technologies revamped the TechNews.LK website design adding tons of new features and a completely new theme designed from scratch.
Official Android app has been released on March 28, 2018[5] which was first release as a public news aggregator app and then after the TechNews.LK official launch the app has been updated to work with dedicated website news data. Official Windows app has been released on December 3, 2018[4][15].
Although an official iOS app has not been released yet, TechNews.LK has been updated with full support for iOS Web Applications on October 18, 2018, allowing iOS readers to easily add an app shortcut to home screen and use it as like a native app.
On November 10, 2018, Codeaffinity Technologies released an official WhatsApp strickers for TechNews.LK readers and the sticker set went viral on Sri Lanka among young tech enthusiasts[16][17].
On April 15, 2019, Codeaffinity Technologies officially opened TechNews.LK Community for the general public, a place for tech discussions and share knowledge among readers[18].
Content[edit]
Curation[edit]
Content posted on TechNews.LK are carefully curated and sourced from the Internet, including other tech industry news websites and even local news are also being posted. Authors are promptly advised to never copy-paste news from any other site into TechNews.LK, instead they are encouraged to read the news and then translate his or her thoughts into a new article on TechNews.LK in native language of Sinhala. This process actively eliminates copy-pasting, copyright infringements, and author discrediting while also adding real human thoughts into the new article.
Resulting article is a completely new article and TechNews.LK does not required to backlink the article to the original source because of aforementioned process, but TechNews.LK still adds a backlink to the original source so the reader can refer to the original article more information and to credit the original author.
Attribution[edit]
All posted content on TechNews.LK is dual-licensed under Creative Commons Attribution / Share-Alike 4.0 and GDFL licenses. Unlike other news publishing sites TechNews.LK does not restrict readers from copying or extracting out the content. In fact, TechNews.LK encourage this behavior by making it easy to copy entire articles just by clicking on a sidebar button. Copied content then can be pasted or inserted anything they wish, along with a backlink to TechNews.LK.[19][20][21][22]
Categorization[edit]
TechNews.LK split into four different sections including News, TechRoom, Community and Live each providing the news readers with different types of interactions.
News[edit]
News articles related to tech industry in Sinhala language posted by users are listed here along with complete set of tags to search through other similar articles to more in depth information regarding a news. Anyone with a free account can request the privileges to post articles. Published articles are online immediately and anyone with access to the website or the Android app can read the article.
Once a user post at least one credible news article, he or she recognized as an author and then ranked among the other authors who similarly contributed to the website. Authors receives special giveaways and merchandise items according to the contribution ratio.
TechRoom[edit]
While being different from the News section, various topics about tech companies, products and services are posted here along with many in depth data regarding the corresponding subject. Readers can quickly link and jump into the community to discuss more about anything.
Community[edit]
Crowd-powered community is available to discuss any and everything regarding the tech industry and other users can reply, react and update the community threads as they see fit. Unlike the news article publishing, anyone with a free account can ask anything related to tech industry and other users can respond to the question without any elevated privileges. Anyone can interact with any thread and post a response anytime they like.
Live[edit]
Live streams related to tech industry news are available on the website and when a live event is scheduled, users are getting notified and corresponding live stream are available to anyone to watch through the browser or the Android app.
Accessibility[edit]
TechNews.LK offers many accessibility features for those who visually impaired, including full support for text readers. Even for those who are partially visually impaired or has sensitivity against bright lighting TechNews.LK also has a site-wide dark mode to ease out the reading experience which can be either manually or automatically activated depending on the time of day.
Available languages[edit]
TechNews.LK is currently only available in Sinhala.
Public persona[edit]
Mainstream recognition[edit]
In 2019, TechNews.LK has been featured in Mawbima - Yung[23], a mainstream newspaper in Sri Lanka honoring the awards and the service provided towards Sri Lankan youth.
Merchandises[edit]
TechNews.LK branded merchandises became popular among the tech enthusiasts in Sri Lanka. Available for free and anyone can request stickers[24], T-shirts, pens, calendars, hand books and many more through the official Facebook community group or fan page.
Awards[edit]
In mid 2019, TechNews.LK has been awarded the Silver Award for the Best Media, Sports & Entertainment Website in Sri Lanka at the BestWeb.LK 2019 contest[9] which held by (.lk) LK Domain Registrar[25].
In the same year, yet another award; Best Media Website or Microsite in Sri Lanka has been awarded at the SLT Zero One Awards ceremony[10] which held by Sri Lanka Telecom, the national telecommunications services provider in Sri Lanka.
| Year | Award | Award Festival | Category | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Silver Award [9][11][12][13] | BestWeb.LK 2019 | Best Media, Sports & Entertainment Website | Won |
| 2019 | Champion [10][26] | SLT Zero One Awards | Best Media Website or Microsite | Won |
References[edit]
- ↑ Amazon Alexa
- ↑ "TechNews.LK - Tech News සිංහලෙන්". TechNews.LK - Tech News සිංහලෙන්. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
- ↑ "TechNews.LK". Google News. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Buy Techie - Tech News සිංහලෙන් - Microsoft Store en-LK". Microsoft Store. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Techie - Tech News සිංහලෙන් - Apps on Google Play". play.google.com. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
- ↑ "Techie - Tech News සිංහලෙන් - Free Android app". AppBrain. 2018-03-30. Retrieved 2020-05-03.
- ↑ "Community - TechNews.LK - Apps on Google Play". play.google.com. Retrieved 2020-05-03.
- ↑ "9+ Best Sinhala Blogs (Technology, Health & More) in Sri Lanka". MicroWeb. 2019-03-10. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Registry, LK Domain. "Re: BestWeb.2019 Winners Announcement". Retrieved 2020-05-02.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 "Winners | SLT 01Awards". www.01awards.lk. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 "2019 Winners - Bestweb". bestweb.lk. Retrieved May 2, 2020. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 "BestWeb.lk". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 TechNews.LK - Tech News සිංහලෙන් on Facebook Watch, retrieved 2020-05-02
- ↑ "Wayback Machine". web.archive.org. Retrieved 2020-05-03.
- ↑ "Techie - Tech News සිංහලෙන් - Windows App Released". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2020-05-03.
- ↑ "Techie - Trending Stickers - Apps on Google Play". play.google.com. Retrieved 2020-05-03.
- ↑ "New TechNews.LK WhatsApp Sticker Pack Released". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2020-05-03.
- ↑ "TechNews.LK Community Now Open for General Public". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2020-05-03.
- ↑ "ලංකාවේ online වෙසක් සැමරුම්". roar.media. Retrieved 2020-05-03. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Rajapakshe, Theekshana (2018-09-23). "වසර 10 කට පෙර අද වැනි දවසක ලොව ප්රථම Android ජංගම දුරකථනය නිකුත් කරන ලදී". Medium. Retrieved 2020-05-03.
- ↑ "LK Updates - Breaking News Sri Lanka - Apps on Google Play". play.google.com. Retrieved 2020-05-03.
- ↑ Centimetre, Mr (2019-07-25). "IT ක්ෂේත්රයේ සිටින සෑම කෙනෙකුටම වැදගත් වන Lanka Developers Community එක ගැන දැනගනිමු". e - අපි | Sinhala Technology | Sri Lankan Technolgy | Sinhala Techie | Sri Lankan Techie | Sinhala Tech News Web Site | Sri Lankan News Web Site | Want to Find Technology in Sinhala |. Retrieved 2020-05-03.
- ↑ "Mawbima - Yung" (PDF). Mawbima. Retrieved May 2, 2020. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "#TechieStickers hashtag on Twitter". twitter.com. Retrieved 2020-05-03.
- ↑ "IANA — .lk Domain Delegation Data". www.iana.org. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
- ↑ "TechNews.LK at SLT Zero One Awards Ceremony". facebook.com/www.technews.lk.
