News

CNN: Microsoft Corp.’s effort to compete against Apple’s iPod juggernaut will focus on the idea that people want to be able to easily share music with friends and others.The software maker said Thursday that its portable Zune media player, scheduled to be available around the holiday season, will include wireless technology to let people share some of their favorite songs, playlists or pictures with other Zune users who are close by.
Those users can listen to the songs three times over three days before deciding whether to purchase it themselves.
“The idea is to legitimize peer-to-peer sharing in a healthy way that works for everybody,” said J Allard, a Microsoft vice president in charge of the Zune product line.
Microsoft said the song-sharing capability will be available for most songs available through its forthcoming Zune Marketplace service, although some music publishers won’t allow it.

News.com: A Blackstone-led alliance that includes the Carlyle Group, Permira and the Texas Pacific Group announced yesterday that it had won the bidding for Freescale Semiconductor, a maker of chips for cell phones and cars, with a $17.6 billion deal. It is the largest leveraged buyout of a technology company ever, surpassing last year’s $11.3 billion buyout of SunGard Data Systems.
The Blackstone team, which had been in talks with Freescale for months, beat back a late effort from a group that included Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, Silver Lake Partners, Bain Capital and Apax.
Under the terms of the deal, the alliance will acquire the shares of Freescale for $40 apiece, a premium of 30 percent over Freescale’s stock price on Sept. 8

Techtree: Samsung Telecommunications has announced the world-wide launch of its Card Phone II, “SGH-P310,” with newly-designed exterior and revamped features.
Samsung said that the development of the SGH-P310 was prompted by the global success of its predecessor, the Card Phone I or the SGH-P300.
The SGH-P310 sports an elegant Black color, is around 8.5mm thick, and features a 1.9-inch 262K QVGA TFT LCD screen, superior portability, and wide form factor. The company said that the exquisitely designed phone is the perfect companion for business users to serve their needs anytime, anywhere.
The Card Phone II comes with a 2 mega-pixel camera, embedded 80MB memory, and external memory slot. The P310 also comes with Bluetooth connectivity and the new touch sensor soft key. The phone also includes a case offering extended battery life.

Techtree: Nintendo has reportedly announced that its next generation gaming console “Wii” will be launched first in North America on November 19, and later in Japan on December 2, 2006.
The US release, thus, would be exactly two days after the launch of Sony s PS3 gaming console - that is - if the intended dates are kept up with - on both sides.
However, Nintendo claims that Wii will not actually compete with the PS3 or the Xbox 360, because it is designed to appeal to less sophisticated gamers.
The company will try to break the impasse between players and non-players by giving the best of games at the most affordable of prices. Nintendo intends to attract newer audiences with this strategy, as also with the Wii’s revolutionary motion-sensitive controller.
The Wii is a wand-like device or remote controller, which can be swung around like a racket to carry out realistic movements within the games. The device will have an Internet browser, and can be used to view and edit digital photos on the TV screen.

Indian Express: After awarding tenders over Rs 1.38 crore to Sunshine Paving Pvt Ltd, the contractor slapped with a show-cause notice for shoddy road work a month ago, the Pune Municipal Corporation is all set to do a repeat. The civic administration now wants Thakar Constructions, which was also served notice in August, to resurface some roads.
The civic administration has forwarded a proposal to the standing committee to allow Thakar Constructions to resurface the road from Santoshnagar Agammandir to Sacchaimata Mandir, Anjalinagar, in Katraj amounting to Rs 70.44 lakhs. The proposal was mooted last week but the decision was deferred and is likely to be taken this Tuesday.
On August 22, the civic road department had served notices to nine road contractors for bad repairs. Both Sunshine Paving Pvt Ltd and Thakar Constructions were in the list.

Indian Express: INFOSYS Technologies is expanding in Pune. The company will be opening the first of its two new buildings at Hinjewadi that resemble spaceships on Tuesday. Infosys director and CFO T V Mohandas Pai will be present for the function that also marks the celebration of the 11,000 headcount in Pune.
Designed by Hafeez Contractor and constructed on 1.5 million sq ft,the five-storeyed building will accommodate around 2,000-odd techies. Together, the two buildings will have around 3,500 professionals.
“Infosys is known for its innovation. This is just another attempt to bring in an element of novelty,” said Priti Rao, senior VP and head of the Pune development centre. She was speaking about the elliptical shape chosen by the company for the new buildings.

Indian Express : Early morning commuters on bustling roads like Law College Road, Senapati Bapat Road and Fergusson College Road were in for a pleasant surprise on Saturday when they spotted hundreds of students on the streets, not hanging around at coffee shops, but for a larger cause: Cleaning the city.
Over 700 students from the Symbiosis College of Commerce, armed with plastic gloves and garbage bags, worked under the banner of ‘Chakachak Pune’ to clean several roads in the city.
These included the entire stretch of Law College Road till Nal Stop, Senapati Bapat Road until Chatuhshringi Temple including Gokhalenagar and Model Colony and also Fergusson College. ‘‘We collected almost 115 bags of both wet and dry garbage,’’ says coordinator Janani Ravichandran.

Indian Express : AN efficient, reliable, safe and people-friendly public transport system is every Puneite’s wish. But the Pune Municipal Transport (PMT) stands up to none of these expectations what with several buses in its fleet of 832 breaking down on the roads everyday, drivers with scant regard for human life and rude conductors, making a mockery of its slogan Vat pahin, pan PMT neech jain (We’ll wait for the PMT). All this leads to a plethora of complaints from its hapless passengers.

Be it the long haul routes like Swargate-Alandi, Pune Railway Station-Viman Nagar and Katraj-Nigdi or the shorter ones from Katraj to Kothrud depot, instances of at least 40-50 PMT buses simply dying out on Tilak, Karve, Bund Garden, Laxmi roads and the Pune-Mumbai highway are reported each day.

‘‘Most buses are attended to within 30 minutes by one of the eight mobile vans for small snags like leaking diesel pipes or problems in air joints. Those with bigger problems are towed away to the depots,’’ said PMT spokesperson D A Pardeshi.

It is no wonder that commuters complain about buses that never arrive on time and the long wait at the stops, says Pune Traffic and Transport Forum (PTTF) founder-member Sujit Patwardhan. ‘‘At least 300 buses in the fleet are over 10 years old. Given their condition, some 100 buses break down everyday and a minimum of 10 per cent are in garages for repairs,’’ he said.