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Indianexpress:  WATER, roads and public health will be the issues that would echo in Pimpri-Chinchwad in the coming days as political parties gear up for the civic elections scheduled on February 1. This became crystal clear at “Lokjagar,” a programme for voter awareness where party leaders came face-to-face with citizens.

The programme, held at Acharya Atre hall in Sant Tukaramnagar on Thursday, was organised jointly by Loksatta and the Nagarai Haqq Suraksha Samiti.

It was attended by citizens, activists, political workers and members of women’s self-help groups.

NCP city unit president Azambhai Pansare, Congress chief Shrirang Barne, BJP president Bhagwan Mansukh, Shiv Sena chief Netaji Chavan, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena president Satish Phuge, RPI’s Laxman Gaikwad and Janata Dal president Vijay Jadhav unfolded their party’s theme for the elections.

What emerged clear was that water shortage, the shoddy state of roads and the health system would be the common issues for the elections. Loksatta resident editor Mukund Sangoram, who anchored the show and posed queries on behalf of citizens, drew more applause than the leaders as he touched on issues that have been agitating the voters

Indianexpress: THE State government on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with DaimlerChrysler India Private Ltd to set up a new Rs 250-crore manufacturing facility at Chakan near Pune.

Spread on a 100-acre area in the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) land at Chakan, the greenfield facility will start production of Mercedes-Benz cars from the first quarter of 2009. At least 5,000 cars from the C, E and S class will be produced here annually.

The company currently has a unit at Chikli near Pune that manufactures 2,000 cars annually. This plant will be relocated to the new facility, along with the 350-strong workforce.

Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, who was present on the occasion, said the new facility would help Pune retain its status of being the ‘Detroit of the East’. Hoping that the new facility would help attract investments into the State, Deshmukh said the government was trying to get corporates to invest in Pune, Nashik and Aurangabad.

DaimlerChrysler India managing director and CEO Wilfried Aulbur said the company’s relationship with India dated back to 1954 when it launched Mercedes-Benz trucks. “The focus has remained to offer Indian customers the best and latest products from the Mercedes-Benz stable, in the least possible time and reinforce the ownership experience through an exhaustive and effective sales and service network across about 30 cities in India,” he said

Indianexpress: THE Pune Municipal Corporation’s Rs 62-crore Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) on Pune-Satara and Pune-Solapur roads will be implemented in 18 other cities, said Central Government’s Urban Development director S K Lohiya, who was in the city on Thursday.

He visited the Katraj-Swargate-Hadapsar corridor and inspected the lanes. He was accompanied by municipal commissioner Nitin Kareer, Pimpri Chinchwad municipal commissioner Dilip Bund, Pune Municipal Transport general manager C K Anil and additional city engineer (projects) Srinivas Bonala.

He was informed about the arrangements to give priority for buses at traffic signals. Lohiya also inspected the BRTS buses, shelters and terminals.

He instructed civic officials to use low floor buses for BRTS, check whether more standing space can be provided, generate more awareness about the bus service and instal e-display boards providing information on BRTS service at bus shelters and bus termini.

Indianexpress: DIRECTOR General of Police (DGP) P S Pasricha on Thursday admitted that Pune was firmly placed on the national crime map. “Pune is the eighth largest metro in the country on the lines of metros like Hyderabad, Bangalore, Baroda and Coimbatore where crimes like economic offences are on the rise. The crime mafia is finding Pune and its suburbs to be a safe haven for their nefarious activities,” Pasricha told the policemen at Shivajinagar police headquarters on Thursday.

He was in the city to inaugurate a new building of the Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad (BDDS) and for laying the foundation stone of the barracks and kitchen for the recreation hall at the headquarters.
 
“The time has come to give importance to Pune in the wake of phenomenal growth being witnessed in the city,” he said. Pasricha said with Pune emerging as a major IT hub and with vital defence installations and military training institutions like the National Defence Academy, numerous academic institutions of national and international repute and the approaching Commonwealth Youth Games in 2008, there was a need to keep constant vigil on the city for the next five years.

Hinting at tougher times for the police, he said 6,700 policemen in Pune were ensuring the safety of 60 lakh population compared with 41,000 policemen in Mumbai looking after 1.8 crore population.

Indianexpress: THE Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST), an NGO that plans to generate 1 million jobs in the country over the next 5 years by encouraging entrepreneurship, launched an online mentor training program and a mentor network chapter in the city on Thursday.

Designed to encourage more mentors to help underprivileged entrepreneurs, the course and chapter will run as a pilot project for one year before being scaled up to rest of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana.

“We want to create over 1,00,000 entrepreneurs in the country in the next five years who will be able to generate one million jobs. To achieve this, we have to raise 30,000 mentors and train them to get a standardised benchmark of skills,” BYST founding trustee and executive vice president Lakshmi Venkatesan said. Thermax Director Anu Aga and CII Western Region Chairman Farhad Forbes flagged off the project.

The organisation will get accreditation for its online training programme from a US or UK based international agency next month. BYST is also eyeing the Indian diaspora including Silicon Valley based Indus Entrepreneurs. “We are looking at linkages with diaspora in places like the Silicon Valley and Australia who can act as key mentors to support the existing mentor network,” Venkatesan said

TechTree: Microsoft, along with Bungie Studios, has reportedly announced two new ways to enter the the Xbox Live Halo 3 multiplayer public beta program.

The Halo 3 multiplayer beta is a pre-release version of the multiplayer experience of Halo 3 being developed by Bungie Studios, and is scheduled for availability in Spring 2007. This beta will provide gamers with an opportunity to give information that will help in the development of Halo 3.

Under the two new ways, those who were not able to register for the beta in December can now register by playing Halo 2 over Xbox Live (XBL) and registering online, or by purchasing the upcoming title ‘Crackdown’.

The first way to enter the beta will be by following the “rule of 3″ at http://www.halo3.com. It will be open from February 1, 12.00 AM (EST), and will end on February 3, 11:59 PM. The first 13,333 people playing Halo 2 over XBL for three hours, and registering online at Halo3.com will be eligible for the beta program.

In the second option, Microsoft is selling beta invitations, only through another game. Purchasing of an initial copy of the Xbox 360 game ‘Crackdown’, specially marked, indicating the inclusion of an invite to the Halo 3 beta will get a person an entry in the program. It will allow them to download the beta program from the Xbox Live Marketplace. ‘Crackdown’ will be available in the US on February 20, at a price of $60 (Rs 2,667).

However, both new methods of entering the beta program require the user to have an Xbox 360 with a hard drive, which comes pre-installed in the $400 “pro” bundle, and require the user to be an active Xbox Live Gold subscriber.
 

TechTree: MSI is expanding its notebook line-up with the unveiling of the MSI S300 Crystal Collection.

Presented as the world’s first 13.3-inch notebook with crystals, the MSI S300 Crystal Collection is inlayed with 120 pieces of genuine Swarovski crystals known all over the world for their excellent quality and prismatic intensity.

The S300 Crystal Collection features a strong set of components, including a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, Intel 945GM , a 120GB SATA hard drive, and a super multi DVD burner. Powered by Intel’s latest Core 2 Duo platform, S300 is optimized for multi-tasking and is Windows Vista ready. It is capable of simultaneously running multiple demanding applications such as graphics-intensive games or serious number-crunching business productivity applications, even while downloading or running virus-scanning security programs in the background.

Further, the S300 Crystal Collection features ACV (Amazing Crystal Vision) wide-screen display, 4 integrated high-quality speakers, the shiny UV light glossy coating, and Intel Centrino Duo Mobile Technology.

According to MSI, the 13.3-inch display is perfect for reading both large and small text. It surpasses text viewing on a 12-inch notebook display, and is more portable than a 14-inch notebook. Moreover, ACV technology gives the most detailed and intricate images, resulting in high saturation and high definition quality.

Integration of 4 high-quality speakers, of which two are located on the top of the keyboard and another two located on the left-hand and right-hand sides of the notebook - makes S300 stand out from other 13.3-inch notebooks in the market.

TechTree: The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is expecting to deliver its first machines into the hands of children by July this year in countries including Libya, Egypt, Venezuela, and Rwanda - which has recently committed to providing one laptop per child to all primary school children within the next five years.

The devices, dubbed ‘XO’, feature a free Linux operating system with a user interface (UI), called ‘Sugar’, which is due for a beta pre-production release in February.

It is learnt that ‘Sugar’ has been designed to allow interaction with other nearby ‘XO’ users using inbuilt Wi-Fi, and to encourage collaborative applications and communications.

The ‘Sugar’ UI features four main views, including home, friends, neighborhood, and activity. Through the home view, users can specify their preferences like color, then users can move to the friends view to see which of their friends are on the network and what they are doing, besides chatting with them. The neighborhood view shows everyone connected to the mesh network and the activities they are engaged in. At any point, the user can also choose to join in with group activities.

Besides, each laptop can act as a node in a mesh peer-to-peer ad hoc network, so that if one laptop is directly accessing the Internet, when other machines in the network power on, they can share that single online connection.

The activity view allows a child to focus on a specific activity using the laptop’s full-screen mode. There is also a journal view that can be thought of as another activity, where a child can see what he or she has created on the desktop, save, and add to that content, and share it with friends.

Moreover, the ‘Sugar’ UI has a frame equivalent to the menu bar on more traditional computer user interfaces. The child can click on people, places, and things around the right, left, and topsides of the frame, while the bottom side is reserved for accessing activities. There is also a context-sensitive search bar on the top of the frame, so that the child can easily locate things on the desktop.