News

IndianExpress: For years, Puneites wanting to get their passports were forced to stand for long hours in serpentine queues at the lone Regional Passport Office on Senapati Bapat Marg. There has been no dearth of complaints about the service they got during these vigils.

The long lines of people who jostled with each other to get their ‘numbers’ called on a given day and their applications processed will now dissipate as they have the option to go to alternative outlets. Starting Thursday, one doesn’t need to undergo the rigours associated with the daily routine at the passport office as seven speed post offices in the region join the general post office as authorised collection centres for passport applications.

IndianExpress: Two citizens’ organistions on Wednesday chose to adopt Gandhigiri to vent their ire over bad roads and water shortage in the city.

In a typical protest made popular by Lage Raho Munnabhai, members of the Pune Nagrik Manch and Yug Parivartak stood outside the Pune Municipal Corporation’s building at Shivajinagar with roses and placards asking municipal commissioner Nitin Kareer and civic officials to ‘get well soon’. ‘‘Let us hope the civic administration recovers from the illness of bad roads, potholes, water shortage and other basic necessities,’’ the pamphlets said. Visitors, corporators and civic officials were given a rose and the pamphlet. ‘‘Tell the civic officers and the municipal commissioner to get well soon,’’ the members urged.

IndianExpress: In a major haul, the crime branch of the city police on Wednesday arrested two persons on Solapur Road and recovered 83.6 kg of ganja from the Indica car they were travelling in.

Acting on a tip off, a crime branch team led by PI Sheshrao Suryavanshi accosted the car on Solapur Road at 1.15 pm on Wednesday

IndianExpress: At a time when party leaders are still undecided over payment of bonus and ex-gratia for Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) staff and although the civic budget does not earmark any funds for the purpose, Mayor Rajani Tribhuvan is in a mood to see civic employees happy during the festive period. ‘‘I will make maximum employees happy,’’ she said on Wednesday, referring to the bonus and ex-gratia issue.

The decision to provide bonus and ex-gratia to the PMC staff for the current year has been simmering with the workers’ union demanding the payment before Diwali.

IndianExpress: With Public Works Department Minister Chhagan Bhujbal giving the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) the deadline of October 15 to complete the new Katraj twin tunnels’ work, the authority has promised to wrap up the work of ventilation of the tunnel in 15 days.

NHAI’s project director P D Arora said that the work of installing the ventilators will commence on Thursday. ‘‘We will try wrapping the entire work in the coming fortnight,’’ he said.

BetaNews: Digital photographers rejoice; SanDisk announced at Photokina in Germany this week 12-gigabyte and 16-gigabyte CompactFlash cards that fall under its Extreme III lineup. The new additions are the highest capacity memory cards on the market, offering a minimum read and write speed of 20MB per second.

With more consumer and professional photographers now shooting in RAW, increased storage capacity has become ever more important. SanDisk says the cards have the widest guaranteed operating temperature and come with RescuePRO software for recovering lost images. But they don’t come cheap: the 12GB model is priced at $779.99 USD, with the 16GB card costing $1,049.99 USD. Both will be available in December.

BetaNews: Japanese manufacturer Sharp on Wednesday demonstrated a new LCD flat panel that allows for three different images to be viewed on a screen depending on the angle. The company introduced a dual-view LCD last July, which is already being used in cars.

The idea is that multiple people can use a single display for different purposes. For example, Sharp noted that a driver could be accessing directions, the passenger looking at shopping information, while those in the back seat view a movie. The technology divides the backlight into three different directions to accomplish this feat.

Techtree: Adobe Systems has reportedly announced an update to the public beta of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom software at the ongoing “Photokina 2006″ in Germany.

The company says the update brings together the product feature set for both Mac and Windows platforms, thus giving professional photographers a new way to import, manage, and showcase large volumes of digital photographs.

Speaking on the occasion, Deborah Whitman, vice president - product management, digital imaging, said, “From the moment we introduced Lightroom beta, we opened-up the process to photographers, making them a part of our ‘virtual development team’ and allowing them to tell us exactly what this application needs.”