News

indianexpress: It’s curtains for Transferable Development Rights (TDR) on lands set aside for public purposes as per a notification issued by the State Urban Development department for municipal corporations across Maharashtra.

“TDR shall not be permissible once an award has been declared under the acquisition process and/or the possession has already been delivered to the Municipal Corporation under any Act”, says the notification issued on February 3. The municipal corporations will now have to modify the existing Development Control Regulations (DCR). Pending modification in the DCR, the new rule is already in force with effect from the date of the notification.

The DCR in its present form has provision to grant TDR for lands acquired or reserved for public purposes. The notification says: “And whereas, once the possession is delivered after acquisition, the rights of the owner are transferred to the planning authority and the application by the land owner demanding TDR thereafter can be said to be made without having any rights in (sic) the land”.

The notification, a copy of which is with The Indian Express, is likely to have a far-reaching impact on TDR proposals pending with the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) since the multi-crore Kothrud scam broke out in October 2005 exposing the involvement of some officials in granting of excess TDR for land acquired for a public garden.

indianexpress: The Palliative Care and Training Centre, run by the Cipla Foundation at Warje will conduct its third Certificate Course in Palliative Medicine from February 16 to 18. So far, 196 doctors have taken advantage of the course and spread the message on palliative care.

During the course, doctors will get the opportunity to understand the unique model of palliative care, pioneered by the Cipla Centre. Since its establishment in 1997, the centre has served 5000 patients and their relatives.

According to the National Cancer Registry Programme of the Indian Council of Medical Research, there are 20 to 25 lakh cancer patients in the country at any given time while 7 to 9 lakh new cancer cases are detected every year. At a conservative estimate, 70 percent of the cancer patients in India require palliative care, as a majority of cases are diagnosed at an advanced stage of the disease, resulting in poor survival and high mortality rates. Palliative care aims at providing comfort, maintaining quality of life, replacing despair with empowerment and offers clinical as well as holistic treatment, as long as life remains

The application of lymphoedema compression treatment and other physiotherapy techniques will be a new addition to the third edition of the course.

techtree: Sun Microsystems has developed software, ‘StarOffice 8 Conversion Technology’ that enables two-way conversion of Microsoft Office 2003 suite and ODF (Open Document Format for XML).

The ‘StarOffice 8 Conversion Technology’ Preview plug-in application for Microsoft Office 2003 lets PC users with assistive technologies to access documents written in ODF.

The technology preview is based on the OpenOffice.org platform, the open-source office productivity suite developed by the OpenOffice.org community, including the founder and main contributor, Sun Microsystems.

Initially, the plug-in application will support the conversion of text documents (.doc/.odt), while the support for spreadsheet and presentation documents is expected in April. The company claims the conversion to be absolutely transparent to the user with minimum additional memory footprint.

Rich Green, Executive Vice President of Software, Sun Microsystems, said, “Organizations can now consider switching to ISO/IEC 26300 ODF while protecting employees needing assistive devices only supported by legacy Microsoft software. ODF is important because it ensures documents will still be readable long into the future, while allowing a wide choice of proprietary and open source software choices to work with the documents.”

Adding to it, Marino Marcich, Managing Director of the ODF Alliance that promotes the use of OpenDocument Format as the primary document format for governments, said, “Adoption of the ISO Standard OpenDocument Format has grown significantly in the past year, as more governments and businesses around the world embrace the standard. This plug-in will simplify and further accelerate implementation of ODF by allowing users to standardize their work flows on ODF, so that they become vendor independent, and can choose between multiple implementations and suppliers going forward.”

techtree: Nokia has announced a navigation platform called smart2go mapping, which according to the company, is the most comprehensive map coverage offered on a mobile device. Nokia has also announced a mobile search application for content stored on devices.

Nokia’s smart2go mapping platform allows for mapping and routing in over 150 countries, and has support for full turn-by-turn satellite navigation in over 30 countries.

The application allows people to locate their position on a map, search for points-of-interest (POI) around them, and create routes to get there free of charge. The platform shows over 15 million points of interest that help people explore the most interesting sights, restaurants, or accommodations around them, and send them to friends via MMS, Bluetooth, infrared, or e-mail.

Users can also send map excerpts and routes, or save screen shots on the device. Besides, recognized brands like McDonald’s will have the option of placing their icons on maps across the world.

The smart2go is a hybrid map solution: map data from Tele-Atlas and Navteq can be downloaded directly via wireless network (GPRS/3G/WLAN), and stored on the memory card of the device. Once all the desired map data is stored, no network connection is required for mapping, routing, and navigating.

Moreover, smart2go comes with the option to upgrade to full fledged turn-by-turn navigation, where just a few clicks can turn the device into a voice guided navigation system by purchasing a navigation license. There are licenses available for various terms from one week to three years

itwire: An analyst has tipped the use of flash memory in the next generation of video-capable iPods, but we’re not completely convinced we’ve seen the end of hard disk models.

According to Jesse Tortora of Prudential Equity Group, the next iPod will have 32G of flash memory in place of the current 30 and 80G hard drives. New drives with the same form factor offer as much as 120G of storage.

The advantages of flash over disk is that it is lighter, consumes less power, and is more resistant to impact. Tortora claims Apple is considering   switching exclusively to flash memory for future iPods.

If Apple retained the current ‘full size’ form factor but gave the iPod a facelift plus the choice of 80 or 120G drives, this would open a space of a new incarnation of the iPod mini. We find it easy to imagine a model with 32G of flash storage, an industrial design similar to that of the iPod nano  but closer in width and height to the regular iPod (yet keeping the nano’s lack of thickness) and maybe a 2in screen.

This would be a smaller, lighter model suitable for people who want to carry around a selection of TV shows, music videos and so on, while retaining a high-capacity iPod suitable for substantial movie libraries, or who want higher-resolution copies that give a better picture when connected to a TV or monitor

itwire: Skype rival Gizmo Project has introduced a new service that lets the public make free phone calls from web browsers.

Dubbed Gizmo Call, the service provides free calls to most fixed lines around the world and to “select” mobile phones. We couldn’t find a list of which destinations are accepted for free calls, but it seems a fair guess that they are the same as the “all calls free” list that applies to Gizmo Project users.

Major destinations include Canada, China, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore and South Korea. Landline only nations include most European nations, Japan, several South American countries, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand.

Notable omissions are India and most Middle East countries, presumably due to the relatively high termination charges in those markets.

Free calls to regular phones are limited to 5 minutes a day and 15 minutes a week; registered users get double this allowance and may purchase additional credit.

Free calls can also be made to Gizmo Project and Gtalk users, Nokia N80i WiFi phones, SIP addresses, and North American 1-800 numbers.

So what’s in it for SIPphone, the company behind Gizmo? Presumably it is a loss leader meant to attract customers to its paid services for the rest of the calls they need to make.