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Archive for January 29, 2007

Ladies compartment ‘missing’ on Indrayani Express

January 29, 2007 at 8:52 am

· City

indianexpress:  When women passengers enter the ladies compartment in the Pune-Mumbai Indrayani Express, they are in for a surprise: The compartment marked ‘Ladies’ in white chalk, is generally packed with men. The women turn to Central Railway officials only to find that they are confused. While some officials state that the compartment for women has been placed in another position, ticket inspectors insist that the compartment behind the engine is meant for ladies alone.

Assistant Commercial Manager (Ticket Checking) Raj Shekharan says that the compartment reserved for ladies has been shifted to compartment SC1. The compartment has an equal number of seats reserved for reserved and unreserved ticket holders, he adds.

‘‘Earlier, the ladies compartment used to be next to the engine in the Indrayani Express. We have shifted it to SC 1 with 108 seats for women. Another Monthly Season Ticket (MST) coach has been also reserved for women,’’ he elucidates.

However, his ticket inspectors have a different version. With a chart showing the coach arrangement, they point out, ‘‘the compartment behind the engine is the general ladies compartment meant for female passengers who travel with unreserved tickets. There is an additional compartment, which is reserved for women with confirmed tickets.’’ They also promise to take action against men who board the ladies’ compartment

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CDAC’s finishing school provides industry-ready students to IT firms

January 29, 2007 at 8:50 am

· City

indianexpress: On Sunday, when at least 72 infotech companies trooped in to the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) campus in Pune to recruit 900 science and engineering graduates mostly from rural background and ‘B’ class colleges, they were part of the 1,400 industry-ready students to come out of CDAC’s finishing school — Advanced Computing Training School (ACTS).

“Our goal is to increase the quality of engineers in India. Currently, according to National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) estimates, only 25-30 per cent of the IT engineers are of real good quality. CDAC is a finishing school, where an employable student is transformed into a deployable professional,” CDAC director S Ramakrishnan said.

In its fourth year, the Common Campus Placement Programme (CCPP) that began simultaneously in Pune, Mumbai and Bangalore has been a huge success.

If last year, the highest salary offered was Rs 5.8 lakh, with an average of Rs 3.2 lakh per year, this time the placement officials are confident that it would go up to Rs 3.5 lakh and placement exceed last year’s 85 per cent. While 900 students are undergoing placement interviews in Pune, 250 students are taking them in Mumbai and others in Bangalore. Already, the IT firms have recruited 100-120 students.

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Now, a call centre for PCMC voters

January 29, 2007 at 8:48 am

· City

indianexpress: For voters in Pimpri-Chinchwad who do not know which ward they belong, help is just a phone call away. For the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation has started a call centre to help voters locate their ward and polling centre.

The call centre — its number is 155304 — has five lines and is located at the Citizen Facilitation Centre at PCMC headquarters in Pimpri. It was opened by Municipal Commissioner Dilip Band last week.

According to PCMC officials, the call centre will remain open from 8 am to 10 pm till January 30. On February 1, it will function from 8 am to 5.30 pm, when the voting ends. “A voter needs to tell his or her name to the call centre staff who will get information about their ward and polling centre location. With this, voters do not need to approach political parties for their voter’s slip.”

The PCMC has also put information like names of wards, boundaries, polling centres and even names of candidates on its website www.pcmcelection.com.

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Recycled satellite radio planned

January 29, 2007 at 8:45 am

· Technology

bbcnews: An advanced in-car multimedia system that could use recycled television satellites coming to the end of their working lives has been unveiled.
The prototype system, developed by the European Space Agency (Esa), offers high-quality radio, video and data.

The satellite radio component also overcomes problems such as loss of signal when driving through tunnels.

If commercialised, the system would offer the first in-car satellite radio service available to Europeans.

The prototype was demonstrated at the Noordwjk Space Expo in the Netherlands.

Old technology

Satellite radio services already exist in countries like the US where 13 million people subscribe to the two main broadcasters, XM-radio and Sirius.

The digital signal offers near CD-quality sound and can contain up to 100 different radio channels as well as information such as the song title or the name of the artist.

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Chips push through nano-barrier

January 29, 2007 at 8:44 am

· Technology

bbcnews: The next milestone in the relentless pursuit of smaller, higher performance microchips has been unveiled.
Chip-maker Intel has announced that it will start manufacturing processors using transistors just 45 nanometres (billionths of a metre) wide.

Shrinking the basic building blocks of microchips will make them faster and more efficient.

Computer giant IBM has also signalled its intention to start production of chips using the tiny components.

“Big Blue”, which developed the transistor technology with partners Toshiba, Sony and AMD, intends to incorporate them into its chips in 2008.

Intel said it would start commercial fabrication of processors at three factories later this year.

The development means the fundamental “law” that underpins the development of all microchips, known as Moore’s Law, remains intact.

The proposition, articulated by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, states that the number of transistors on a chip could double every 24 months.

 

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YouTubers to get ad money share

January 29, 2007 at 8:42 am

· Technology

bbcnews: People who upload their own films to video-sharing website YouTube will soon get a share of the ad revenue.

YouTube founder Chad Hurley confirmed to the BBC that his team was working on a revenue-sharing mechanism that would “reward creativity”.

The system would be rolled out in a couple of months, he said, and use a mixture of adverts, including short clips shown ahead of the actual film.

YouTube has more than 70m users a month and was recently bought by Google.

The offer applies only to people who own the full copyright of the videos that they are uploading to the YouTube website.

Founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen made $1.65bn with YouTube

The company, which Google bought in November last year for $1.65bn, was currently working on “audio fingerprinting” technologies to identify copyrighted material, Mr Hurley said in a session on social networking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

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Creative ZEN V Plus, Xmod in India

January 29, 2007 at 8:41 am

· Technology

TechTree: Last week, Creative announced the launch of its ZEN V Plus and Xmod in India.

The latest portable media player to join the Creative ZEN family, the ZEN V Plus, is targeted at those looking for cool, ultra-compact audio enjoyment, video playback, and photo viewing while on the go.

Whereas, the Xmod, as Creative puts it, is the first external X-Fi device to improve digital music beyond CD quality. Based upon Creative’s X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity audio platform, the Xmod considerably enhances playback quality for MP3, WMA, iTunes, and AAC songs.

The Creative ZEN V Plus comes in a pocket size of 43.5 x 67.5 x 15.9mm, and weighs 43.5g along with battery.

The ZEN V Plus features: a scratch resistant high resolution 1.5-inch OLED screen; 5-way navigation joystick; staggering 92dB signal-to-noise ratio; audio support for multiple formats, including MP3, WAV, and WMA; video playback for watching video clips/movies on the fly; built-in FM radio with up to 32 preset stations; single-touch voice recorder function; line-in capability for recording music in real time from CD players; headphone out 5~7mW per channel, 3.5mm stereo mini-jack; USB 2.0 (1.1 backward compatible) interface; and the ability to double as a personal organizer, allowing users sync and carry Microsoft Outlook contacts, calendar, and to-do lists.

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