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Indianexpress: District guardian minister Ajit Pawar has warned ticket-seekers against rebellion. “Do not rebel even if you have been denied candidature. Work together to ensure that Pune’s leader is a Marathi-speaking Maharashtrian,’’ he said on Friday.

He was speaking at a rally of party workers at Quartergate, a day before the Nationalist Congress Party was to begin interviewing candidates for the civic polls on February 1. “Even if the candidate is rejected, he will have to support the official party nominee.’’ Power minister Dilip Walse Patil who maintained the refrain has appealed to party workers to remain united.

Pawar said, “When I said Pune should be led by only Maharashtrians, it was alleged that I was speaking about the Maratha community. The NCP does not believe in regionalism. However, people have every right to be proud of their region,” he said

He was cautious enough to explain that his sons-of-soil stance was limited to only political leadership. “Pune is an IT-BT destination. We want big business houses to come to Pune. We welcome them and would give all cooperation. People from other states can live a dignified life in Pune but the centre of the development would be Marathi maanus and not people from Karnataka,’’ he said.
 

Indianexpress: The Pune Jewellers’ Association on Friday brought an end to the controversy they raked up over barring burqa-clad women from entering their stores by tending an apology. “Our statements were wrongly misconstrued and sent wrong signals to society. We apologise in case it has hurt the sentiments of the Muslim community,” association president Fatechand Rank said.

He said they had only sought the state government’s permission after a spate of thefts by burqa-clad robbers. “There are other means to put security in place. We will consult Muslim women on the measures to be taken for checking them before entering jewellery shops,” he said after leading a protest march to the police commissionerate.

All India Gems and Jewellery Federation president Ashok Meinwala also reiterated that it was not their intention to hurt any community’s sentiments. “We were focusing on security and certainly not on burqa-clad women. We did not intend to hurt the Muslims. We have high regards for the community and its culture,” he said.

Indianexpress: Twelve kayaks and four rowing boats will row along the Mutha River to create awareness about water pollution from December 30 till January 1.

Organised by the Jal Dindi Pratishthan and College of Engineering, Pune (COEP), the Jal Maitri Yatra will have the Alumni Association of COEP and 25 other organisations, including the Bombay Sappers, participating in the expedition from Temghar reservoir in Mulshi taluka to Vitthalwadi. Eighty people will participate in the expedition.

Jal Dindi Pratishthan president Vishwas Yewale said: “Concerned about the ecological danger posed by pollution of the river water, some citizens formed a clean-river committee in 1996 and started cleaning Mula-Mutha rivers. Later, the committee evolved into the Jal Dindi Pratishthan.”

He said the pratishthan has appointed 12 men to weed out hyacinth from the river and has been organising rowing and kayaking expeditions from Alandi to Pandharpur in October every year since 2002.

The pratishthan also takes students of the Warkari Sikshan Santha, Alandi, on expeditions to spread environmental awareness among the warkaris. “The presence of warkaris and padukas of Sant Dnyaneshwar help attract a large crowd and we spread awareness about water pollution among the people gathered,” said pratishthan secretary Vinod Bodhankar.
 

Indianexpress: Four unidentified robbers stole silver ornaments and bricks weighing 60 kg estimated about Rs 7 lakh at the Shivajinagar bus stand around 3.30 am on Friday.

According to the police, the silver was brought to the city by two employees of Sainath Angadiya Courier Service owned by Shankar Jagdish Parmar (30), of Kasba Peth.

The police said a jeweller from Hupri in Karnataka had sent the consignment to be delivered to various city jewellers through Vinod Singh Himmat Singh (27) and Raju Ramsingh Parmar (27), both residents of Kolhapur.

On getting off the bus, Parmar went to the washroom leaving Vinod with the two bags. Two persons astride motorcycles approached him and started talking with him. They were joined by two others who managed to steal the bag containing the silver ornaments and bricks, the police said.

TechTree: Acer has introduced another value-for-money notebook, the Acer Aspire 5101ANWLMi, at a competitive price point.

The Acer Aspire 5101ANWLMi uses an AMD Turion 64-bit enabled processor running at 2.0 GHz, and comes with a hard disc drive of 60GB that reserves sufficient storage space for saving files, downloads, music, and games. The 15.4 inch Wide CrystalBrite Screen (high brightness & high contrast), and inbuilt DVD Writer give unlimited flexibility to users to view and download movies and videos.
Commenting on the new offering, S Rajendran, General Manager of Sales and Marketing, Mobility and Display Products Group, Acer, said, “Acer is known for making affordable notebook products combined with the latest technology. In line with this tradition, the Acer Aspire 5101ANWLMi takes mobile productivity closer to consumers, and aims to capture their imagination with the latest features, aimed at increasing work productivity and efficiency as well as facilitating a powerful entertainment tool.”

Based on the Linux OS, the Acer Aspire 5101ANWLMi is backed by a one year international traveler’s warranty (ITW), and is equipped with 512MB DDR2 RAM, Integrated 802.11 b/g Wireless LAN, 3 x USB 2.0 Ports, a 5-in-1 Card Reader, and a Lithium Ion Battery.

Acer maintains it is the first PC vendor to make notebooks affordable in India; citing the launch of the sub Rs 50,000 Centrino NB and the sub Rs 30,000 Celeron NB as cases in point.

TechTree: Reliance Communications has announced significant plans to expand FLAG Telecom’s global optic fibre network.

The company has announced that over the next 3 years, FLAG Telecom will build the world’s largest IP network over submarine cable systems, named “FLAG Next Generation Network (NGN)”.

“FLAG NGN” will comprise four systems: FLAG NGN System 1 (Asia India, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Brunei, Honk Kong); FLAG NGN System 2 (Africa Kenya, Mozambique, Republic of South Africa, Tanzania, Madagascar, Mauritius); FLAG NGN System 3 (Mediterranean Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Malta, Libya, Lebanon); and
FLAG NGN System 4 (Trans Pacific US West Coast, Japan, China, Hong Kong).

As such, the project will cater to the ever increasing telecom needs of over 5 billion customers across the globe.

The FLAG Global Network will have the capacity to carry 2.5 billion simultaneous voice calls, 300 million simultaneous Web chats, 52 million simultaneous Video Chats, and is expected to offer simultaneous e-learning to around 20 million students in Indian educational institutions.

FLAG Telecom will invest nearly Rs 7,000 crores in laying 50,000 additional kms of undersea optic fibre cable, ultimately covering 60 countries.

Techtree: SumTotal Systems has released ToolBook Translation System (TTS) version 1.0 to enable customers translate e-learning content.

By using TTS in sync with SumTotal’s ToolBook Instructor or ToolBook Assistant, multilingual content for global e-learning initiatives can be created.

What TTS does is identify those elements of an online course that need to be translated, passes them on to a translation expert, and preserves any format/design in the course of the pending translation.

With the TTS-ToolBook combo, instructional designers can build training courses; linguists can focus on translations, without having to understand how to manipulate software; and staff can create multilingual simulations, tutorials, assessments, courseware, and other interactive learning content.

In the event of any change, TTS can be tapped to handle the revisions without disturbing the online course in terms of its layout, hypertext information, pop-ups, and other such data.

Also, while translating course content from one language to another, TTS remembers the exact context and formatting associated with the text, placing the translated copy exactly back into the original layout.

Speaking at the occasion, Brad Crain, Vice President of ToolBook, SumTotal, said, “After an author creates a course using either ToolBook Instructor or ToolBook Assistant, he or she simply clicks a few buttons whereupon all the course elements to be translated are put in a digital package. The ToolBook Translation System takes the digital package and delivers it to the person carrying out
the translation from, say, English to German. As the translator prepares the German text, he/she can - with a few keystrokes - see how the course will look in German at any stage of the process.”

TechTree: The latest reports say that a dude who goes under the name, “MysVidel” has managed to get the Linux operating system up and alive on Microsoft’s Zune.

On a forum post, “MysVidel” says he has been working on the “Zune Linux” for quite some time now despite all the bugs, and that presently, his “Zune Linux” has only limited capabilities; for instance it has to be booted while synced. However, “MysVidel” expresses happiness at having got the “Zune Linux” working at least part way. He says, hopefully, he will be able to get his “Zune Linux” released before the competition beats him to it.

As for competitors, sources reveal there has been no dearth of them as the debate on whether Linux can be gotten to work on Zune has been quite a long standing one. The bone of contention seems to be Zune’s use of the Freescale iMX31L processor that is capable of running the Linux operating system.

Those who think the Zune might just be able to run Linux, argue that while Freescale iMX31L sports a Linux board support package (BSP), getting the BSP to work on the Zune is a completely different ball game. Others who dismiss the possibility say why should users want to put a whole operating system on the Zune when just a Linux kernel is sufficient to communicate with the hardware and iPod-like light intuitive interface of the device.

However, what both soothsayers and naysayers are in agreement about is - the immense possibilities of a Linux on Zune.

All along, enthusiasts have been saying that with Linux on Zune, one can get all the features one normally expects - but with all the freedom that one wants.

Meaning, things like surfing the Internet, playing any audio/video type, FM radio recording, etc, are all possible with a Linux on Zune.

TechTree: Hitachi has reportedly started mass production of its newest LCD panels for mobile phones.

The LCD panel is 2.9 inches with a resolution of 800×480. The company claims this product to be an industry first.

The panel employs the company’s proprietary liquid crystal technology called IPS. The new panel will allow users view the entire image without side scrolling, while browsing Web sites designed to match the size of a PC monitor, or while watching VGA (480 x 640) video. The real payoff though remains the ability to play 480i content with menus.

Further, the pixel count of the new panel is five times that of QVGA (240 x 320), which has been the standard for mobile phone panels.

Hitachi has also focused on improving transmittance of light from the backlight unit in the new panel. The company is revamping the pixel structure and micro-fabricating the wiring as well.

The new Hitachi panel uses IPS LCD technology that works differently from general TFT. IPS LCD technology allows for a wider viewing angle i.e. over 170 degrees in both vertical and horizontal directions, better color reproduction, and faster grey-to-grey response time with a contrast ratio of about 400:1 and luminance of 250 cd/m2.