News

IndianExpress: Three weeks ago as water-level of the Pavana rose and threatened to flood their bungalow in Sangamnagar area of Sangvi, 25-year-old Jasbir Kaur Kaler and her family remembered the Trying Tuesday almost a year ago. Last year on July 26, the Kaler family spent 19 hours on the terrace of their bungalow as the Pavana kept rising.

An ordeal that last for 19 hours — from 8.30 am on July 26 to 3 am on July 27 — the Kalers were finally rescued when a boat reached them after the water receded. ‘‘We were fighting for survival,’’ says Jasbir.

On July 26 last year, perhaps for the first time in history the twin industrial township of Pimpri-Chinchwad remained cut-off from its big brother Pune. Incessant rain saw the Pavana in spate, inundating several low-lying areas and displacing as many as 9,000 families in Pimpri-Chinchwad. The Harris Bridge — the main link to Pune — was closed for traffic and so was the Aundh Bridge.

IndianExpress:  The University of Pune (UoP) will soon house the country’s most-environment friendly building. It will be one of the four such buildings in India which have the highest platinum points — a rating given to the most self-sufficient building in areas like power and water by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC).

Of the 69-point rating, the project seeks to score 54 to 55 points, making it the highest platinum-rated building in the country.

‘‘It will house the Centre for Excellence in Project Management set up by us,’’ said Rajendra Jagdale, director general of science and technology park, an autonomous body of the UoP. In fact, with an area of more than two lakh square feet, the building may just be the largest in its category. The campus will come up on 12.5 acres, next to the SET guest house in the UoP.

IndianExpress: Mahesh Shinde can never reconcile to 26/7. He looks up from the Ganpati idol he is spray painting with a pained expression to say on this day last year, he lost about Rs 40,000. ‘‘About 400 to 500 idols could not dry because of the deluge. We had to keep them at home unsold,’’ says the owner of the Gorakumbhar Matka Bhandar.

Early this year, Shinde decided not to take any chances. He spent Rs 20,000 to put up a shed just to protect every idol currently being made. His foresight is being followed by others too.

With about 1,000 idols in the shed under various stages of completion, Shinde started work early this year so that he has a few grace days to tide over any calamity.

IndianExpress: A few anxious moments were witnessed on Monday afternoon when a manually operated steam boiler exploded at a Fast Food manufacturing unit on the Wadgaonsheri-Mundhawa road. Five workers of Parampara company were injured in the blast. They include Aruna Jadhav, Vandana Jadhav, Radha Pote, Sayara Jakhote and D N Mali. They have been hospitalised.

Assistant Police Inspector Pratap Poman said the preliminary investigations have revealed that the explosion took place as the pressure of steam in the manually operated boiler increased considerably. Such was the impact of the blast that the fibre sheet roof was blown off and a wall came down.
 

IndianExpress: Tempers ran high in the General Body (GB) meeting of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) when the proposal of reconstruction of civic employees colonies at Wakdewadi on Build-Operate and Transfer basis (BOT) came for approval.

Although the residents of the colonies and a fraction of Congress members opposed the project, there was no hitch in getting GB’s approval for the proposal along with a suggestion to provide 550 sq feet of flats to the residents instead of ones admeasuring 350 sq feet.Nine buildings would be constructed on BOT basis at the site and the developer is to pay Rs 2.7 crore to the PMC as against market value of Rs 100 crore of the 9.5 acres of land. The builder would be allowed to develop 30,797 sq meter of land for commercial use and IT complex.

Earlier this month the civic Standing Committee had ‘‘hurriedly’’approved the civic administration’s proposal allowing Pune Rehabilitation Projects Private Limited Kumar Capital to reconstruct the land.

IndianExpress:  Former Vice-Chancellor of University of Pune (UoP), Shridhar Gupte, inaugurated the Centre for Excellence for Project Management on Tuesday, which has been set up by Science and Technology Park (STP) and UoP. The first of the kind institute will be involved in training academicians, students, government officials, scientists as well as NGO activists in various aspects of Project management.

‘‘Projects implemented by government agencies, academic institutions, research laboratories often run into trouble because of inefficient handling. This institute will bridge this gap,’’ said Rajendra Jagdale, director general of STP.The institute will implement training programmes in project management awareness, consultancy, and support academic institutions, R&D institutions, government agencies and departments, as well as NGOs. ‘‘We will also support small and medium enterprises, as they cannot hire project consultants,’’ Jagdale

MumbaiMirror.com: Listening to radio on your mobile is now going to be far more interactive. Visual Radio, a new revolutionary service developed by Nokia and offered by Hewlett-Packard (HP), will allow listeners to actually get more exciting content like visuals, information on what’s playing on air, ring tones, other mobile content, and even get them to participate in radio promotions, polls, contests, and interact with RJs and special guests.

The Visual Radio service allows listeners to tune in to local FM radio via the analog receiver on their Nokia devices while simultaneously receiving interactive information and graphics that are synchronised with the radio broadcasts via the cellular data network on-screen of the mobile device. “Visual Radio not only enhances the listener’s interaction with the station, but also provides advertisers a more dynamic platform to communicate,” Radio Mirchi MD A P Parigi said.

TechTree.com: At a press briefing in Mumbai today, Symantec launched the beta of “Norton Confidential”, a first-of-its-kind personal transactions and communications security solution that promises to allow consumers safely conduct business online.

Symantec says Norton Confidential is the only available solution designed to protect consumers at the moment they are transacting, and features zero-hour protection against fraudulent Web sites and crimeware. The solution also includes Web site authentication and password security capabilities.

Speaking at the occasion, Philip Hickey, manager - consumer product marketing, Symantec Asia Pacific, said, “To help restore confidence in doing business over the Internet, Symantec is introducing Norton Confidential, the first solution that offers consumers both fraud site and crimeware protection for their personal information at the point of great risk, during a transaction, login, or any other submission of data to a Web site”.

ITWire.com: For the first time in the Indian IT industry, a global telecom leader (Motorola) is teaming up with a software service provider (Wipro) to set up a new company.

The new company, WMNetServ will deliver outsourced telecom services to the market.

India’s third largest software exporter Wipro and wireless and broadband giant Motorola announced that the new company will take on the global managed services business in a big way.

According to Mercer Management Consulting, the global managed and advisory services market is expected to almost double during the next four years, reaching $48 billion by 2010, from $26 billion in 2005.

This growth reflects an industry-wide shift from the traditional use of in-house teams to manage network operations and maintenance to more flexible managed services models.
This enables operators to better focus on critical business functions, while upgrading to next-generation capabilities.

BetaNews.com: Google debuted an update to its Google Maps for Mobile product that will provide live traffic updates in 30 metropolitan areas, plus partial information for smaller cities as well. The search engine’s mobile map service for cell phones is available as a small download for compatible models.

Traffic information will be provided as an additional layer that users can toggle on and off. Routes are shown in green, yellow, or red depending on the severity of traffic congestion, along with detailed information on incidents. Additionally, when users search for driving directions through the service, traffic conditions would be factored in to overall drive time.

In addition to the new traffic condition functionality, Google has also added a feature that would allow users to save and recall commonly requested directions, allowing the user to compare traffic across a variety of routes.