News

IndianExpress:  THE CITY was on flood alert on Friday with Mutha and Pavana rivers swelling to ominous levels, following release of water from Khadakvasla and Pavana dams. The discharge from Khadakvasla dam was 30,232 cusecs and Pavana, 15,000 cusecs, by 8 pm. Incessant rains that began on Thursday in the catchment area forced the Maharashtra Krishna Valley Development Corporation (MKVDC) to raise the discharge levels from 15 out of 24 reservoirs in the Bheema basin spanning Pune and Solapur districts. The municipal corporations of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad as also the district collectorates of Pune and Solapur were in standby mode, ready to implement their respective flood control schemes.

The swelling Mutha river submerged the Baba Bhide bridge linking Sadashiv Peth and Deccan Gymkhana by noon. The Pune Municipal Corporation alerted residents of low-lying areas, especially along Sinhagad Road, to be ready for evacuation.

IndianExpress: THE completion of the Pune Municipal Corporation’s Integrated Road Development Project (IRDP) at Baner road may get delayed by a month. Officers from the contractors, Valecha Engineering Private Limited said that the road work will be completed by February 2007. The official deadline of the project as per the tender specifications was January 31, 2007.

Only few days back the Pune Newsline had carried a report highlighting the bad condition of Baner road. With only one side open for traffic, commuters were having a tough time wading their way through water filled potholes. Also, improper barricading posed a major threat for the vehicles.The contractors had planned to begin the concretisation of the right side of the road on Friday, but continous rains spoilt the plan and the concretisation had to be stopped.

IndianExpress: WITH the city bursting at the seams and a crumbling infrastructure making matters worse, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has finally turned to the academia to help it develop and grow the city. In a first-of-its-kind initiative, the PMC hopes to rope in students, research scholars and academicians from the University of Pune (UoP) to improve and develop city.

‘‘The city is growing and the University of Pune with its resources can help the city to develop to its full strength,’’ municipal commissioner Nitin Kareer said adding, Yashwantrao Chavan Association of Development and Administration (YASHADA) will play the facilitator’s role.

He said for doing it, they would first have to conduct a research on what the city needs. ‘‘The students of the university can play an important role. If both the PMC and the UoP come together, the city can develop and grow,’’ he said

IndianExpress: THE ARMED Forces Medical College (AFMC) will focus attention on bleeding disorders through a Continuing Medical Education (CME) programme on ‘Recent Advances in Management of Haemorrhagic Disorders’ on Saturday and Sunday.

According to Col Harsh Kumar, Professor and Head of Department of Transfusion Medicine, AFMC, Haemorrhagic disorders or abnormal bleeding conditions are a major cause of ill health and fatality for mankind.

These diseases may be due to inherited defects such as haemophilia or acquired late in life due to various conditions such as liver disease, vitamin K deficiency, bone marrow disorders, anticoagulant drug overdose and others
 

IndianExpress: MAKING way for more acquistion of parking plots in the city, the Pune Municipal Corporation’s City Improvement Committee (CIC) approved a proposal regarding offering three FSI in main part of the city and two FSI in the suburban part on Friday.

As per the proposal the plots reserved for parking in A zone should be offered 3 FSI instead of the existing two FSI. While in other zones instead of 1 FSI, 2 FSI should be made available.The expected cost for this project is Rs five lakhs.
 

IndianExpresss: DISTRICT Superintendent of Police, Vishwas Nangare Patil, on Friday claimed that the Pune rural police have solved 35 crimes, after arresting 58 members of nine separate gangs, active in the district over the period of the last one week.

He also claimed that stolen booty worth over Rs 19 lakh has been recovered from the arrested persons.

The solved crimes include two murders, nine dacoities, four incidents of making preparations to commit a dacoity and 11 burglaries

TechTree.com: Gigabyte India has launched the 945 S motherboard series, featuring Intel Core 2 Duo processors.

The new series comprising the GA-945P-S3, the GA-945PL-S3, the GA-945G-S3, and the GA-945GM-S2 motherboards, offers exceptional performance and energy efficiency, thanks to Intel’s Core 2 Duo processors. The motherboards promise to offer users enhanced abilities to enjoy digital content, games, etc.

The S series features proprietary technologies, including Gigabyte Speed, Smart, and Safe.

Speed provides intelligent over-clocking with a wide range of frequency tuning for CPU/MEMORY/PCI-E bus speed, and over-voltage with flexible voltage setting for CPU/ Memory/ PCI-E/Chipset.

Smart facilitates easier and more user-friendly hardware driver management, with software including Xpress Install, Download Center, @BIOS, Q-Flash, Boot menu, and Smart Fan.

TechTree.com: Abacus Peripherals has launched Zion MMC cards, touted as high speed, dual voltage, small sized cards that offer dual voltage operation, even as low power consumption increases battery life of mobile phones and other electronic devices.

The cards are compatible with mobile phones, smart phones, cameras, organizers, PDAs, digital recorders, MP3 players, pagers, electronic toys, notebooks, et al.

Available in capacities of 256MB, 512MB, and 1GB, the cards come with a three-year warranty, and are immediately available through Abacus’ distribution network.

Card specifications include: 24 x 18 x 1.4 form factor, 13 pins, dual voltage, 1channel-1way Write 7.5MB/s and Read 10.5MB/s, etc.

Card features are: multimedia card system specification version 4.1 compatible; full backward compatibility with previous multimedia card system; support for SPI Mode; maximum data rate with up to 52MB/sec interface speed; correction of memory field errors; and compatibility with smart phones, cameras, organizers, etc.

BetaNews.com: Microsoft is currently developing a new cell phone operating system that it would market as low-cost computing alternative in developing nations. Called FonePlus, the current iteration of the product is essentially the WebTV platform running on a mobile phone.

In developing markets, PCs are too expensive for most people. In turn, the mobile phone is increasingly becoming a method to access the Internet. Microsoft’s FonePlus, essentially a low-cost PDA, would be able to access the Web, e-mail and multimedia, while also providing productivity applications similar to PocketOffice.

With the $100 laptop gaining momentum, such a device may be Microsoft’s answer. Both Microsoft and Intel have criticized the device, saying it lacks the necessary features to be truly useful. However, up until now, the Redmond company had not produced any alternative to the project

TechNewsWorld.com: Saying it may have some scratch for the open source  software  itch, search giant Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)  chose the O’Reilly Open Source Developers Conference (OSCON) in Portland, Ore., this week to unveil a free service hosting open source software projects.

The service, Project Hosting, will give open source software developers a place on the Internet to track issues with their software more efficiently using Google’s search and infrastructure technology, Google Engineering Manager Greg Stein told a packed room at OSCON Thursday.

Stein — who said a regular, small team of Google developers came up with the service — stressed that Project Hosting was an early beta, but said it is squarely aimed at improving open source software development by making issue and bug tracking simpler.