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Indianexpress: PULOTSAV, the 13-day cultural extravaganza held annually in memory of Pu La Deshpande, will begin in the city from January 19. Organised by Aashay Sanskrutik and Paranjpe Schemes, the festival will be inaugurated at Balgandharva Rangmandir by president of Marathi Sahitya Sammelan Arun Sadhu.

Feature films, documentaries and plays and programmes on music and literature will mark Pulotsav that will also be held at National Film Archive of India (NFAI), Yashwantrao Chavan Natyagruha, Pathfinder and Ganesh Kala Krida Manch. Most importantly, this year the Bahurupi Pu La Sanman —the annual Pulotsav award—-will be conferred upon noted film-maker, writer, lyricist and poet Gulzar. The award carries Rs 1 lakh in cash and will be given away by vice-chancellor of University of Pune and Pulotsav convenor Narendra Jadhav. This will be followed by the screening of documentaries and films on Gulzar on January 20 at NFAI. “We have chosen Gulzar for the award, given his exceptional contribution to Indian cinema, literature and poetry,” said Virendra Chitrav, one of the festival directors.

Various personalities from the field of science, art, films, theatre and literature like Dr Shriram Lagoo, Jayant Narlikar, Lalan Sarang, Madhav Vaze, Nivedita Saraf, Atul Kulkarni, Dajikaka Gagdil, Dr Vijay Bhatkar, Lubna Salim, Ravi Paranjpe, Nina Kulkarni, Jayashree Gadkar, Ajit Saatbhai, will attend.

Indianexpress: AFTER having supplied milk, milk products, cheese and fruit juices to Nestle, Britannia, Tropicana and McDonalds, Baramati-based Schreiber Dynamix Dairies Ltd’s brands will soon be on the shelves of Reliance and Pantaloon retail stores.

“We have been identified as suppliers and signed an agreement with them. We are currently negotiating the prices and once it is finalised, we will decide on the prices,” plant manager Vinit Shah said.

The dairy is also in talks with global retail giant Walmart to supply their products.

“Reliance wants all our products to be supplied to them. We will mainly be supplying cheese, butter and ghee. Most likely, the supply will begin from February-March,” he said.

Shah said they would supply their products for western region, while for other regions there will be different suppliers. “We are looking at 10 per cent growth from these new orders for the next financial year (2007-08) and expect Rs 30-40 crore increase in turnover,” he said.

Last year, the company had a turnover of Rs 500 crore and expects to close this year between Rs 550 crore and Rs 600 crore.

The company has already invested Rs 20 crore for expanding its capacity and towards procurement of milk, while another Rs 20 crore has been set aside for capital expenditure. “We are investing to get a steady supply of milk and also have a tie-up with Sahyadri Agro Produce & Dairy Pvt Ltd,” Shah said. Sahyadri Agro is engaged in milk procurement from farmers in Pune, Ahmednagar and Satara districts.

Indianexpress: PEOPLE wanting to go abroad will no more have to wait patiently for issual of their fresh passports. The External Affairs Ministry has relaxed norms for issuance of passports to ensure that people applying for passports under Tatkal Scheme will be issued in seven days after police verification if they pay Rs 1,500 extra and in 14 days if they pay additional amount of Rs 1,000.

A press communique said people wanting to get the passports expeditiously will have to make these payments in addition to the passport fees.

Moreover, reissuing of passports under Tatkal Scheme will be done in three days for additional payment of Rs 1,500.

List of officers who can issue verification certificates for Tatkal passport scheme has also been expanded to include an officer of the rank of Under Secretary to the State Government and an equivalent officer in the State Government. Sub divisional magistrates, Judicial Magistrates (First Class), tahsildars and concerned station head officers (SHOs) of the area, officers of the rank of Major and above in the armed forces, chairmen of Apex Business Organisations like FICCI, ASSOCHAM, CII and partners/directors of companies that are members of these chambers are also authorised to issue the verification certificates.

For getting passport under Tatkal category on post police verification, the applicant will have to submit any three of the 10 prescribed documents of which one must be photo identity document.

TechTree: According to reports, VeriSign’s iDefense Labs, which is into investigation of cyber threats and alerting users of potential harm, has said that a new worm in emails with the subject “Happy New Year” is doing the rounds globally.

It is said these emails contain different attachments, with a majority of them named as postcard.exe or a zip file with the name postcard.zip. Although all the messages are said to be different, they come under the same “Happy New Year” subject line.

The worm gets installed into the user’s computer, once the email is opened and the attachment is downloaded and executed. It installs several malicious code variants including Tibs, Nwar, Banwarum, and Glowa onto the computer, and downloads the required software to send the virus to other email accounts using the affected computer. Currently, it is being spread from 160 e-mail domains.

According to the VeriSign, the worm is already moving across the Internet at a rate of five e-mails per second. Multiple large networks have already reported interceptions of the e-mail.

Further, the ‘new worm on the block’ is not detectable by all virus scanning software. There is also a possibility of the worm making an attempt to disable the security software installed on the computer.

VeriSign has warned all users to be on guard before clicking on messages, even if they think they might be legitimate happy new year messages from friends because their computer might be infected of the worm.
 

TechTree: The year 2007 has brought with it plans for a new surfing destination for Space fans. Reportedly, the French space agency has decided to publish its archive of UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) sightings and other phenomena online.

According to Jacques Arnould, an official at France’s National Space Studies Centre (CNES), the agency had been collecting statements and documents on UFOs for almost 30 years. This database of around 1,600 incidents would go live in late January or mid-February.

A spokesperson for the French Space Agency said that the statements have been collected from people who claim to have sighted UFOs, or from airline pilots. However, names of people who’ve reported sightings will not be published so as to protect their privacy.

Arnould added that the tremendous advances in technology over the past three decades had prompted CNES’ decision to put UFO sightings online.

Presently, the collection consists of around 6,000 reports, of which many are related to the same incident, filed by public and airline professionals.

Looking at the success of films like ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Independence Day, and so on, CNES expects its online archive to be nothing short of a hit.

Most likely, the whole lot of content on the UFO sightings archive will be made available via the CNES Web site, www.cnes.fr.

TechTree: If you thought flaunting that chic convertible with high tech gadgetry was the sole prerogative of Mr James Bond, think again…

At the Detroit Auto Show beginning Jan 7 and the Consumer Electronics Show beginning Jan 6, Ford and Microsoft, both giants in their respective fields, will showcase “Sync”, a navigation system based on Microsoft’s Windows platform, which when integrated into Ford vehicles, will enable drivers perform multiple computing functions effectively.

“Sync”, powered by Bluetooth wireless technology, will help drivers with hands-free communication, which does not mean just talking on the phone, but also includes checking mail and downloading music.

According to reports, this year, “Sync” will be installed in two Ford models; the Ford Focus, and the Ford Five Hundred Series. By the end of 2008, “Sync” will be integrated into all Ford automobiles.

“Sync” is but a step in the widely used Microsoft Windows Automotive System, and a part of Microsoft’s bigger plan to spread the use of its software across the entire gamut of electrical and electronic goods, from PCs to toasters.

Windows Automotive itself is built on the Windows CE operating system, which is used in mobile handhelds as also smart phones.

Commenting on “Sync”, Founder and Chief Architect of Microsoft, Bill Gates, said that to set apart car companies in the future, vehicles would have features such as HD screens, voice recognition, electronic calendars, cameras, and navigation systems. Gates said that the upcoming “Sync” project would provide a platform to centralize and standardize all of those functions.

Meanwhile, the meeting of the automobile and the digital world in the form of “Sync” is likely to raise concern over the issue of using cell phones while driving that is limited by the law in several states of USA.

TechNewsWorld: Rental car giant Avis announced Tuesday an agreement with Autonet to offer high-speed WiFi Internet access in its vehicles that will use the 3G cellular network, according to Autonet president Sterling Pratz. Legal and safety issues are likely to be raised by critics who argue the technology could distract people’s attention from the road and the act of driving.

WiFi  is hitting the road through U.S. car rental giant Avis, which signed an agreement with Autonet to provide wireless Internet  access to travelers.

For US$10.95 a day, Avis will issue motorists a device that plugs into a car’s power supply and delivers a high-speed Internet connection, The New York Times said Tuesday.

The Connected Car
A mobile WiFi hotspot linking laptops and other electronic devices to the Internet without wires represents a critical move toward what technology experts call the “connected car.”

Sterling Pratz, president and chief executive of Autonet, said the device uses the 3G  cellular network. He said it would work in all major metropolitan areas and in about 95 percent of the country.

The technology minimized dropped connections but did not eliminate them, Pratz said.

TechNewsWorld: IBM (NYSE: IBM)  announced last week an upgrade of Lotus Notes for the Macintosh platform that gives Mac users the same e-mail  and collaboration functions already available to the Windows and Linux platforms.

Lotus Notes 7.0.2 provides Mac users, including those using Intel-based Macs as well as Power PCs, with instant messaging, presence awareness and Web 2.0 features.

The upgrade also provides an enhanced user interface that enables Mac users to group e-mails through a conversation thread, to view e-mails at-a-glance and to save work in progress without having to manually activate the save function.

“This upgrade gives a single infrastructure  and provides a platform choice for our customers. Now all versions have the same capabilities,” Heidi Votaw, senior product manager for IBM, told MacNewsWorld.

Chip Coordination
IBM always staggers its platform releases among its Macintsoh, Windows and Linux versions to allow adequate development cycles, according to Votaw. The last version of Lotus Notes for the Mac platform was version 6.5, which was released more than one year ago, she added.

“Every 12 to 18 months we release a platform-specific upgrade. We do Windows first. This time around we wanted to add more features to the Mac in Notes 7.0,” she noted.

IBM took extra time in releasing version 7.0.2 because it was working with Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL)  to make sure that the Mac release supported what Apple was going to include with its new hardware that runs on the Intel (Nasdaq: INTC)  architecture, Votaw explained.