News

IndianExpress: CITIZENS will have to wait for a long, long time for good city roads, going by the progress the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) is making on its Integrated Road Development Project (IRDP). The tardy work is compounded by absence of a quality assurance consultant.

Consider this: Of the six roads under the IRDP, work on two roads — Warje flyover to Ganpati Matha and ITI Road has just begun. Only 10 to 30 per cent of the work on four major roads — Karve Road (Khandojibaba Chowk to Paud flyover) and Karve Road (Paud flyover to Karve statue), Baner Road and NDA Road — has been done. In addition, the PMC issued tenders again for Golwalkar Guruji Path after the work was half done.

IndianExpress:  NGOs have come up with the suggestion to save the Law College hill and avoid construction of the Balbharti-Paud Road by creating alternative traffic routes.

Options include widening of Law College Road and making traffic diversions from Prabhat Road and Athavale Chowk.

Lokayat, Tekdi and other NGOs have stated that construction of the Balbharti-Paud road could be avoided if the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and the traffic police come together and make traffic diversions.

IndianExpress:  TWENTYTHREE-YEAR-OLD Reena Patil carefully touches the chakli packet before handing it over to the outstretched hand and feels the currency notes before handing out the change.

For the past five days, visually impaired Reena and 13 other women from the Poona Home and School for Blind in Kothrud have been at the stall put up near the Hatti Ganpati chowk in Sadashiv Peth selling items like cloth bags and candles and eatables like chaklis. ‘‘We also sell tea and kande pohe,’’ says Reena.

The stall, set up by the Akhil Navi Peth Hatti Ganpati Mandal, has been a part of Ganeshotsav for the last 10 years. The mandal that has corporator Sham Mankar’s support is the first in the city to stop collecting vargani for the Ganeshotsav

IndianExpress: THE city’s environmental track record has dipped in the past few years with road widening claiming trees, hills razed for construction and mounting air pollution; but it is river pollution that has citizens pressure groups in a tizzy. If the rivers that run through Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad are stinking pools of water, both the civic bodies are to blame - the PCMC for letting industrial waste to sully the Pavana river and the PMC for letting the domestic sewage degenerate the Mutha river.

Time and again, the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board has pulled up both the civic bodies over river pollution. Though the PMC and PCMC have set up sewage treatment plants along the rivers, not all of the domestic sewage is treated.

TechNews: In a move to further extend its reach beyond the desktop, Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO)  on Wednesday said it is making its suite of mobile applications available for phones using Microsoft’s (Nasdaq: MSFT)  Windows Mobile operating system.

Users of phones such as the Motorola (NYSE: MOT)  Q can now tap into Yahoo Go for Mobile services, which include mail, search, photos, an address book and a calendar. Yahoo initially launched its Go service earlier this year, hoping to push its brand and personalized Internet content to mobile phone users.

Beta News: Microsoft on Thursday released a second beta of Windows Media Player 11, providing some performance enhancements, bug fixes and the integration of Windows Media Connect functionality into the player itself. The new feature would allow users to automatically share the contents of their WMP library with compatible devices around the home, the company said in its release notes.

WMP11 Beta 2 also shows continued progress with the player’s integration with MTV’s music service, URGE. The service is a joint initative between the music network and Microsoft. In addition to the functionality changes and bug fixes, Beta 2 also includes new online stores, including eMusic, VidZone and Music Giants for a total of 14. Microsoft said it expected additional stores to be added before the final release.

IndianExpress: Nokia announced on Thursday that the N80 Internet Edition, an enriched successor to the N80 multimedia phone, will be available in mid-September.

The N80 Internet Edition can be used as both a cell phone and a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone. Users can download and use software for any VoIP service, according to Nokia. In addition to handling work-related functions such as e-mail and text-messaging, the Wi-Fi-capable multimedia phone allows users to find and map locations, take pictures, share photos, browse a book, and record and send instant voice messages.