News

Washingtonpost:The crew set to fly aboard space shuttle Discovery scrambled into the spaceship on Thursday for a practice countdown ahead of next month’s launch.

The U.S. space agency NASA has not launched a shuttle since July 2005 when Discovery blasted off to test safety upgrades imposed after the 2003 Columbia disaster.
Though the mission to the International Space Station was accomplished without significant problems, the shuttle’s external fuel tank, which had been redesigned to stem the loss of potentially deadly debris, flunked its debut test flight

Pocket-lint:The feelgood factor involved in unwrapping a new product from Apple may be dimmed slightly after the Mail on Sunday published a report of its investigations at iPod manufacturing plants in China where workers allegedly toil for up to 15-hours a day for just £27 a month.

The Mail reporters visited two sites in China, one near Hong Kong and one near Shanghai to see how workers are treated. One factory is said to operate with 200,000 workers who live in dormitories on site.

News.com: Internet search leader Google is testing a system that aims to speed purchases online but bears no resemblance to the popular PayPal payments service of Web auctioneer eBay, Google’s chief executive said Thursday.

Analysts have speculated whether Google would enter into direct competition with PayPal, dubbing its potential new service “GBuy” to capture commercial transaction data.

Google’s system aims to allow quicker purchases by a consumer from a marketer, and a beta version is expected soon, said Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

BusinessNews: Much to its claim ‘to become relevant to one billion Indians’, Microsoft Corporation will soon release the final version of its Office 2007, which supports all 14 official Indian languages. 
 
The product, which will be launched in the fourth quarter of calender 2006, has Assamese and Oriya, as the two latest additions, a senior official of Microsoft Office and localisation team said. 
 
Raveesh Gupta, senior product manager ? office & localisation told Business Standard that while earlier Microsoft products, including its latest version of Windows XP, was compatible with 12 Indian languages, Office 2007 supports 14 Indian languages. 

BusinessStandard:Microsoft Corporation India and Anna University signed a memorandum of understanding to provide easier access to Microsoft technology and solutions to the faculty and students across 235 colleges affiliated to the University. 
 
The agreement would allow students and faculty to use Microsoft developer tools within the institution for academic and research purposes. 
 
Besides, the students and faculty would also be able to use the tools on their personal computers at their hostel or homes. 

News.com: Four mobile handset makers are teaming up with two cellular operators to develop a new Linux software platform for mobile devices.

Cell phone makers Motorola, NEC, Panasonic Mobile Communications and Samsung Electronics, along with mobile operators NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone, expect to announce on Thursday plans to form an independent foundation to develop a common mobile Linux-based platform. They will use this platform to develop new products, applications and features

IndianExpress: IT was a landmark when the office of the settlement commissioner made available rural land records (saat-baara extracts) of the entire State on their departmental website www.mahabhulekh.mumbai.nic.in and now they have now gone a step further. At the click of a button, one will be able to check the land records (property cards) of Pune city.

This move has made Pune the first city in the country to have all its land records available for public viewing on a website. ‘‘No other city in the country has its urban land records available online,’’ says settlement commissioner T C Benjamin. Next on the cards are cities like Nashik, Mumbai, Aurangabad, Kolhapur and Solapur.

IndianExpress: ACTING Vice Chancellor of University of Pune (UoP) Ratnakar Gaikwad inaugurated a business centre on Monday, which will cater to the needs of the students, faculty and residents of the institution. The centre has been opened in front of the Jaykar Library.

The business centre will be run by Sharamik Sewa Sahakari Samstha, an association of 13 unemployed persons, who will provide several services. ‘‘We will provide groceries, fruits, vegetables as well as laundry services,’’ says Dilip Wankhede, president of the society.
 
In addition, one will also be able to avail internet, telephone, photocopying, spiral binding services and buy stationary at the centre. ‘‘We have installed 10 computers while another ten will be added soon,’’ Wankhhede said.