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IndianExpress: EVEN as municipal commissioner Nitin Kareer announced plans of making Pune the first WiFi city in the country by year-end, an attempt for another first — the country’s first open air WiFi zone — has run into trouble.

For, the Pune Cantonment Board (PCB) that outsmarted its peer — the PMC — by logging on to the WiFi zone over three months ago, is yet to decide on its continuity.

The public-private partnership initiated by the PCB was to undergo a three-month trial before being finalised, but now it seems to have run into trouble with all the three partners — PCB, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and HOL Infosolutions — citing various difficulties with the project. While the PCB seems to have suddenly realised the need for conducting a feasibility study for setting up a permanent WiFi zone, private player HOL Infosolutions that set up the Rs 7.9-lakh infrastructure is not interested in maintaining it.

IndianExpress: TWO years ago, when the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) was in a shambles after it was ransacked by people who felt its scholars should not have helped American author James Laine write a book on Shivaji, hardly anybody would have expected the institute to bounce back, much less steam ahead.

Even as the institute celebrated its 90th anniversary on Thursday, it became a meeting ground for scientists and Sanskrit scholars. In a unique venture, computer wizard Vijay Bhatkar and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research Director General R A Mashelkar recently sat with BORI scholars to draw up a plan to revamp the institute.

The idea is a new-look institute 10 years hence. “The institute should become the most prominent centre in Indological studies when we celebrate our centenary in 2016,” says treasurer Vasanta Gadgi

IndianExpress: TEN persons, who were wanted for involvement in various crimes, are among the 50 persons nabbed during a routine combing operation carried out in the district by Pune rural police on Wednesday.

The combing operation was ordered by District Superintendent of Police Vishwas Nangare Patil in view of the increase in crimes like dacoity, robbery and burglary.

Four persons, wanted in a dacoity reported to Haveli police earlier in the year, were among the nine nabbed at Baramati.

IndianExpress: THE consequent collapsing of two wadas over the last two days has brought the attention of the civic body to the historically important but dilapidated Bhidewada at Budhwar Peth. It was at Bhidewada that social reformer Jyotibarao and his wife Savitri Phule started the country’s first school for girls.

After visiting the structure on Friday, Standing Committee chairman Jayant Bhokare demanded that the civic administration acquire the land on which the structure is located. He also directed the civic administration to allocate Rs 10 lakh for immediate restoration of the crumbling wada. Bhokare said that the owner of the property should hand over the land to the Pune Municipal Corporation or the civic administration should take over the land.

IndianExpress: THE Hadapsar police filed a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder against the owner, operator and staff of a toddy shop in connection with the recent death of an alcoholic under mysterious circumstances.

Two shop employees — Mallesh Vyankaiyyah Gadale (40) and Mahesh Channabasappa Jokale (27) — have been arrested. Shopowner Ravikumar Agarwal and operator Jitu Bhandari have not been arrested
Police said Khandu had left home for the toddy shop located near Vaibhav Theatre around 6 pm on the fateful day. He fell unconscious at the toddy shop around 7 pm. Later, the toddy shop owner and his staff abandoned Khandu along the Solapur Road in Sade Satara Nali area.

TechTree.com: Both CDMA and GSM mobile service providers have jointly-launched a project called “mobile operators shared towers” (MOST), with a view towards sharing infrastructure in the country.

It is believed this move will reduce cost and ultimately tariffs for consumers. Four sites have been selected to share infrastructure that include Delhi High Court, Rajokri, Dhansa, and Noida (sector 125.) Cellular and CDMA operators like Airtel, Hutch, Idea, MTNL, Reliance, and Tata will be sharing the towers at these places.

Speaking about the initiative, Union Minister for Communications and IT, Dayanidhi Maran, said that Project MOST has brought together GSM and CDMA operators, public and private sector players, and independent infrastructure providers to establish infrastructure on a sharing-basis. The sharing of passive infrastructure like towers will save significant resources to fund further roll-out, enhance aesthetics of the environment, and lower costs per operator

TechTree.com: Samsung Electronics has reportedly begun mass production of GDDR4 (series four of graphics double-density-rate memory), which the company claims to be the world’s fastest graphics memory.

Samsung says that GDDR4 processes images 33 percent faster than the fastest memory on the market today. Graphics memory is installed on desktop PCs, notebooks, and work-stations to move huge volumes of video images simultaneously.

According to Samsung, GDDR4 offers dramatically increased performance while greatly reducing power consumption. Company sources say that when GDDR4 was measured against GDDR3 at the highest comparable speed (2.0Gb/s), the former registered 45 percent power saving. Samsung says the 512Mb GDDR4 memory will be offered in a 32-bit data bus configuration.

The GDDR4 uses JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) approved standards for signal noise reduction, including data bus inversion and multi-preamble specifications, to help attain the highest possible speed.

TechNewsDaily.com: Researchers at Purdue University are using a rare type of electron microscope to see how structures like carbon nanotubes form at the atomic level, information that will be crucial for nanotechnology to find practical applications in computing, electronics and other areas.

The new transmission electron microscope has been modified so that researchers can watch how atoms come together to form nanostructures as gases flow into a chamber in the presence of a metal catalyst. This is the same method used to make nanotubes in research labs and electronic devices in the semiconductor industry.

“Before we can consistently manufacture nanostructures that have the same specifications and qualities, we have to learn precisely how atoms interact and come together to form these structures,” said Eric Stach, an associate professor of materials engineering who operates the microscope at the Birck Nanotechnology Center

TechNewsdaily.com: A complete suite of back office server applications centrally controlled by a user friendly web-based interface, from Comodo. ZTL was developed by Comodo’s Positive Software Division, specialists in web hosting and server automation.

ZTL takes a ‘best of breed’ approach by offering administrators industry-leading server software pre-configured on Comodo’s Linux distribution, Trustix Secure Linux.ZTL is ideal for small businesses looking to achieve an easy way to migrate to Linux, yet ZTL also serves the needs of the larger enterprise with sophisticated administration requirements.

A single installation of ZTL brings under one umbrella a File Server, Print Server, Domain Controller, DNS, Mail Server, Web Mail, Database Server, Web Server, Proxy Server, DHCP server, Content Filtering Server and a Firewall. The package overcomes the traditional difficulties of deploying a Linux infrastructure by reducing the setup of multiple server types to a one time installation and configuration

TMCNet.com: Cisco Systems (News - Alert) and IBM have reportedly teamed up in an effort to win a bid to build one of the largest public wireless networks in the U.S.

According to published reports, the proposed 1,500-square-mile high-speed wireless network - a project of the San Mateo County Telecommunications Authority and Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network - will deliver free or low-cost Internet access to 2.4 million people in the San Francisco Bay Area. The cost of building the network is estimated to be in the range of $150 to $225 million and it will take about two years to build. When completed, the network will serve residents in San Mateo County, most of Santa Clara County, Fremont, Newark and Santa Cruz.

Cisco and IBM’s (News - Alert) team also includes wireless technology companies SeaKay and Azulstar. It is one of seven teams which are bidding on the project, which is being managed by the Wireless Silicon Valley Task Force.