News

IndianExpress: On November 2, when $38.82-billion chipmaker Intel Corporation’s Chairman Craig Barrett lands in India for his eighth visit to the country, his first stop will be Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar’s hometown Baramati. The reason: To spend a day visiting the Maratha strongman’s high-profile Vidya Pratishtan Institute of Information Technology (VIIT) and to get a feel of the information and communication technologies (ICT) programmes being conducted by it for rural communities.

Barrett’s main agenda in Baramati is to check whether the e-initiatives being carried out there can be scaled up and replicated in the developing nations. “As the chairman of the United Nations’ Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies, Barrett’s theme of visit is ‘Rural Transformation Using ICT’. Hence, a day-long visit to Baramati,” Intel sources said, adding he will be reaching Baramati by 8.30 am.

IndianExpress: The media glare may have lessened on the shooting of A Mighty Heart, but that has not apparently put an end to the troubles of the film unit that had to recently contend with the ire of the Sindh Society residents over the blocking a large part of Road No 2 on which the bungalow, where the shooting is taking place, is located.

Following increasing complaints of inconvenience by the residents, the film unit has had to withdraw their barricades from the entire stretch in front of the house and limit themselves to the portion in front of the house Nayansukh

IndianExpress: Having successfully helped in mitigating power cuts through a unique public-private partnership — a first-of-its-kind in the country — the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) is now all set to replicate the experiment in Nashik and Kolhapur. If the objective is the same, the method will also be similar: Using captive power plants through CII’s member-industries.

“Nashik and Kolhapur looks promising for implementing whatever was done in Pune and CII teams are exploring ways to implement it,” said Pradeep Bhargava, architect of the CII plan in Pune.
 

IndianExpress: Dr Mrudula Phadke, Vice-Chancellor, Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS) and former Dean of B J Medical College has been appointed as a member of the Influenza study committee of the World Health Organisation (WHO). Phadke is also part of WHO’s global advisory committee on vaccine safety that was set up to respond promptly, efficiently and with scientific rigour to safety issues of potential global importance.

The Committee acknowledged that supposed “immune overload” is a parental and societal concern due to fears of deleterious effects resulting from multiple vaccines being given to infants. The Committee noted that the concept of immune overload was ill-defined, as was the nature of the adverse effects that were supposed to derive from it.

.

IndianExpress: Forty families of a colony in Erandavane ushered in the New Year with a move in self-governance: With the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) dilly-dallying on repairing a leaking water tank at the public toilet, they pitched in and installed a new tank.

The 1,200-odd residents, mostly from the lower middle-class were rehabilitated after the Panshet dam was washed away in 1961. The problem started with the overhead water storage tank at the public toilet developing cracks some eight months ago. “For months we were living under the fear of epidemics, besides bearing the stink from the accumulated water. Today we can breathe freely,” says colony resident Mangesh Pise

TechTree: According to reports, Google has announced that it will allow users create customized search engines to suit their tastes and preferences; be it cooking, gardening, music, the works.

Christened “Google Custom Search Engine,” the service is designed to allow users place personal search engines on their Web sites and/or blogs. According to a company source, the tool enables users to search just the content that they care about, cutting through the chaff.

TechTree: Adobe Digital Editions, a Rich Internet Application (RIA) for managing and reading ebooks, digital magazines, digital newspapers, and other digital content.

The beta version, with native support for Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), as well as an XHTML-based reflow-centric publication format, delivers an engaging way to acquire, read, and manage digital content.

BetaNews: BitTorrent continued its efforts to separate itself from its illicit file-sharing roots by announcing a new initiative to incorporate the technology into consumer electronic products. ASUS, Planex, and QNAP are among the first companies to license the technology.

The BitTorrent download manager would be integrated into devices, allowing content to be retrieved, stored and played back. Products including routers, media servers, and network attached storage devices would incorporate the technology.
 

TechNewsWorld: Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)  is making greater portions of its Sender ID framework, a security  standard designed to ensure that e-mails come from legitimate sources, available under its Open Specification Promise (OSP) program.

At one time, the standard — which is used alone or in combination with others by most of the major ISP providers — was seen as a viable tool for stemming the flow of spam by addressing domain spoofing. Microsoft has been pushing wider adoption of this standard since its first incarnation.