DESI YAHOO: The most widely used email tool in India now offers IndiaChat in Hindi, Kannada and Tamil.

Bangalore: ``Yeh chat mujse kar le Thakur!'' (Chat with me, Thakur).

The tiny icon looks like the dreaded Gabbar Singh of Sholay fame. And the voice is a good imitation of the menacing dacoit as voiced by Amjad Khan, with one difference.

He doesn't want to fight with his famous adversary, only chat with him!

With the new Version 8 of its India-specific Internet Messenger tool — IndiChat — launched by Yahoo last month, you can download what are being called ``audibles'': tiny coloured facial icons which can be attached to your instant messages. When clicked open by the recipient, they will speak a few seconds of dialogue — most of it `filmi' from Dharmendra to Johnny Lever to Rajnikanth.

In international releases of Yahoo's new messenger, the spoken lines range from flirtatious to slightly risque: but in India the lines are more chaste, if corny and Bollywood-based.

The India launch comes with free plug-ins in Hindi, Kannada or Tamil, with other languages promised. They allow the users to relay chat in these languages using a Standard English keyboard... thanks to a new international standard known as UTF-8 (Universal Transformation Format).

Yahoo has simultaneously made available its enhanced version of YahooMail — the most used email client in India. New features include drag-and-drop email organisation, the ability to view multiple mails at the same time and a Really Simple Syndication reader that allows users to get news feeds and blogs pushed directly to their mails in real time.

The release is still being called a beta or trial version. The download sites for the new India-centered messenger tools and the beefed-up mail tool are: http://in.messenger.yahoo.com/

http://in.gallery.

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