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Archive for February 11, 2007
February 11, 2007 at 7:52 am
· City · Politics
indianexpress: AFTER being ignored for years when it came to good roads and water, fringe villages which stand in Pune’s backyard, can look forward to better infrastructure with district guardian minister Ajit Pawar mooting wide internal roads and a ring road network to link all the 23 merged villages.
At a meeting of top officials in Yashwantrao Chavan Academy for Development Administration on Saturday, Pawar said roads in the fringe areas would be at least 24 mt wide and the proposed ring road will be widened from 60 mt to 90 mt.
Pawar has told director of town planning, district collector Prabhakar Deshmukh and municipal commissioner Nitin Kareer to start land acquisition process for the proposed ring roads and complete it within six months. The first ring road will be a 20 km stretch from Undri to Hadapsar via Phursungi.
Pawar has directed the authorities to ensure that the roads in the fringe areas are not narrow. The width of city roads range from 9 mt to 12 mt. “In the fringe areas, all the roads should be more than 24 mt and up to 60 mt wide,” he said.
Improvements will also be made at the Dehu road-Katraj bypass. Pawar has said that the six lane bypass will also have service lanes. “All four-lane bypasses will be made into six lanes,” he said.
The authorities are also planning a road network for Pune city where it will have a four-tier network. The outer network will include the external ring road, an internal ring road connecting the 23 merged villages and a Bus Rapid Transit System network bringing people into the city. Plans are to introduce a metro or sky bus in the central part of the city.
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February 11, 2007 at 7:51 am
· City · Special Mention
indianexpress: PUSHPA dreamt of becoming a doctor, and despite the pressure of household chores and working on the family farm in Baramati, she managed to scrape through Std X. She even secured admission in a college in Pune to study further.
Yet, just days before she was due to join college, Pushpa’s dreams came crashing. Her father refused to let her go, contending she would earn much more working on the farm.
For most girls like Pushpa, who live in villages and even cities in the state, a sound education is still a distant dream. With only 23 per cent girls from denotified tribes and 45 per cent girls in the general category making it to Std X, girl dropouts are a stark reality in both rural and urban areas of the state.
Although Maharashtra women’s literacy rate of 67.5 per cent remains higher than the national average of 45.8 per cent, the percentage of girls in the state schools is low, with 47.95 per cent in primary schools, 46.4 per cent in secondary schools and 43.84 per cent in higher secondary schools.
The root cause of this is disillusionment with the institution of education and a growing rift between the society and the education imparted, said noted educationist Renu Dandekar, at a workshop organised by the Maharshi Karve Stree Shikshan Sanstha’s Mahilashram High School on Saturday.
“There is a need to instil in the people a sense of faith in the education system, so that they feel like sending their daughters to study,” said Dandekar. She said that most educated village girls look down on those less educated than them, and even feel ashamed to go to the farms.
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February 11, 2007 at 7:49 am
· City
indianexpress: FIVE years ago, Ganesh Nagar on the border of the College of Military Engineering near Bopkhel village in Pimpri-Chinchwad, was a place no one wanted to live in. The area depended on irregular tankers for water supply, had kachcha roads and privately owned inverters and emergency lights for electricity supply, no postal service nor public transport and security was negligible.
Today, Ganesh Nagar’s 400-odd houses spread over 125 acres, enjoy all these civic amenities and boast of a bond born and strengthened by common adversity conquered by a long battle by its residents, largely retired defence personnel.
“When I shifted here in 1999, there was no house within one-and-a-half km and security at night comprised two dogs and a gun,” said Lt Col (retd) PM Lokhande, who, in 2002, decided to motivate the residents to take up the onus of bettering their living standards rather than depend on the government or politicians.
“In September 2000, Ganesh Nagar merged with the PCMC. However, when even a year later there were no initiatives to get any services, six ex-servicemen and three civilians came together to form the Ganesh Nagar Defence Welfare Sanstha that was registered in 2002,” said Lokhande who became the chairman.
The first step was to regularise houses under the Gunthewari system announced by the government. The sanstha appointed an architect for the drawings and documents and in the next two years most houses were regularised.
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February 11, 2007 at 7:48 am
· City
indianexpress: FOCUS on innovations instead of imitation and collaborations in research cutting across all disciplines, management guru CK Prahalad said, speaking at the University of Pune’s (UoP) 58th Foundation Day “Scientific progress cannot be achieved by extrapolating the current situation and practices in the future. India must become a source of ‘next practices’ or innovations for the West,” said Prahalad.
For this purpose, Prahalad said universities should ensure high quality research in all areas. “Attention should be paid to the development of standards, and governance models for collaborations between universities and private players from the industry,” said Prahalad, stating the example of universities in the US, which raised funds for their laboratory research projects by fulfilling the needs of the industry.
“In many educational institutes in the US, private funding for university-level research is the order of the day. A similar model should be adopted in India, wherein there will be no bureaucratic hurdles,” said Prahalad. This would include allowing diaspora to return to the country and contribute to its growth.
The Foundation Day saw the presentation of the Jeevan Gaurav Sadhana Puraskar to veteran actor Shriram Lagoo, Loksabha MP Balasaheb Vikhe Patil, former agriculture minister Shankarrao Kolhe, freedom fighter Baburao Yashwant Parit Guruji, Shakuntala Kharat, and educationist PA Inamdar. Excellence awards were also presented to outstanding colleges, teachers, as well as teaching and non-teaching staff and employees of the UoP.
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February 11, 2007 at 7:47 am
· City · Environment
indianexpress: ON Friday, when about 2 lakh devotees will descend on Bheemashankar, one of the 12 Jyotirlingas located in Khed taluka some 110 km from Pune, to worship Lord Shiva on Mahashivratri, about 200 volunteers from NGOs and 20 forest officials will grab the opportunity to spread awareness about ecology and wildlife conservation by undertaking a special drive between February 16 and 18.
There is a reason for this— Bheemashankar, which is also the source of the Bheema river, has a wildlife sanctuary spread over 130 km area which has been under the siege of plastic for almost a decade now.
“Disposal of plastic by tourists and pilgrims has been endangering the ecology and wildlife in the area. Seven years ago, some animals were found dead and their post-mortem led to recovery of plastic in their intestines. During the month of Shravan, the forest officials and NGO volunteers collected plastic dumped in the forest reserve. It filled up a 10 feet by 10 feet room full. This picture is worrisome,” says Range Forest Officer (Wildlife) Prabbhakar Kukdolkar.
Worried about the effect of the pollution on ecology and wildlife, NGOs like Kalpavriksh Environmental Action Group. Tekdi, Ghodegaon Nisarga Group and Khed Nisarga Group have come together to spread public awareness about ecology and wildlife, says Kukdolkar.
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February 11, 2007 at 7:46 am
· City
indianexpress: We’ve watched them on television for years, but can now see them in a new pixellated avatar. From ‘Baichung Bhutia’s Football Frenzy’ and ‘Bappi da disco king’ to ‘Madhavan’s MiG’ and ‘Sameera the Street Fighter’, mobile gaming services provided by Jump games are giving a new look to India’s idols. Called Paradox Studios earlier, the company had donned the new name of ‘Jump Games’ late last year, and has now restructured its operations to shift base to Pune.
The Pune offices, established with an investment of half a million dollars, will have 75 employees on board and will house the entire 3D team of the company.
“The Pune team will work on mobile gaming, and 20 of these people will look at creating six 3D titles which will be released worldwide by March. As such games cost $ 15 per download on the US, we plan to launch them in markets like Japan, Europe and Hong Kong,” said Salil Bhargava, chief executive officer of Jump Games, while speaking at the launch of the Pune office.
The company is also in the process of setting up a sales office in New York next quarter.
Jump Games has also undertaken tie-ups with Virgin Comics to launch gaming content based on comics like Devi and Ramayan among others.
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February 11, 2007 at 7:35 am
· Technology
bbc: At Yahoo’s finance site, stock quotes update automatically and continually, the numbers flashing green and red as prices rise and fall. Wall Street investors can easily leave a single Web page up all day.
Ajax — the software trick used on the page, Yahoo Inc.’s e-mail service and elsewhere — is enabling flashier, more convenient sites. It’s also contributing to Yahoo’s decline in page views, a yardstick long used for bragging rights and advertising sales.
“These technologies have outgrown the metrics,” said Peter Daboll, Yahoo’s chief of insights and the former chief executive of comScore Media Metrix, the measurement company that declared Yahoo second to the online hangout MySpace in page views. “It’s really important as an industry to come back down to earth and off this chest-thumping about who’s biggest.”
More important than “truckloads of page views,” Daboll said, are visitors’ loyalty and their willingness to respond to ads — qualities harder to measure. If a page updates on its own without reloading in its entirety, people may be sticking around longer than the measurements suggest.
Experts say the stubborn attachment to page views also may be keeping some sites from improving their usability.
Jakob Nielsen, a Web design expert with Nielsen Norman Group, notes that many news sites force visitors to click multiple times to read longer stories in sections, even though he would much prefer scrolling down a long story and avoiding interruptions.
“Because you are measuring the wrong things, you are driving your project in the wrong direction,” Nielsen said. “You are not maximizing what causes value. You are maximizing the things a computer can count easily.”
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February 11, 2007 at 7:32 am
· Technology
msnbc: Samsung Electronics Co. has unveiled a new mobile phone that features some of the sleek design and functions of Apple Inc.’s much-hyped iPhone.
Samsung’s Ultra Smart F700 will be exhibited at next week’s 3GSM World Congress, a telecommunications exhibition in Barcelona, Samsung spokeswoman Sonia Kim said Friday.
Mobile phone makers have been scrambling to match the iPhone, unveiled last month by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. The device, which will be available starting in June, marks the iPod and Macintosh computer maker’s entry into the mobile phone business.
The ultra-thin iPhone is controlled by a large touch screen. It plays music, surfs the Internet, and runs a version of the Mac OS X operating system, among other functions.
Samsung said the Ultra Smart F700 also has a full touch screen as well as a traditional QWERTY key pad that slides out “for users who are not yet familiar with a touch-screen-only user interface.”
The phone can also access the Internet, play music, take pictures, show videos, handle e-mail and share photos, said Samsung, the world’s third-largest manufacturer of mobile phone handsets.
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February 11, 2007 at 7:30 am
· Technology
bbc: With music downloads outselling CD singles by four to one in the UK and the music charts revamped to include download sales, the digital revolution is having a big impact on the music industry.
Snow Patrol were the first band to benefit from the revamped charts
Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars was one of the biggest selling singles of 2006. On sales of CDs and downloads it went as high as number six in the UK charts.
As is standard practice, a few weeks later the record company deleted the CD and removed it from the shops.
With no physical format available to buy, the song no longer qualified for a chart position and disappeared from the top 40.
But with music download sites now the UK’s favourite place to buy singles, each with massive back catalogues of songs, it was decided that just listing the singles currently on release may not reflect the way people were actually buying songs.
So from 1 January 2007, every song that is available to download is now allowed to chart.
“In the days of the physical single you were basically restricted to what record companies released in a particular week, and what physical retailers were able to stock,” explained Steve Redford of the Official UK Charts Company.
“And even the biggest store wasn’t going to stock more than about 100 singles at any one time.”
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February 11, 2007 at 7:29 am
· Technology
bbc: A plan to make it easier for web users to manage their online identities has won the support of Microsoft.
The Open ID scheme uses web addresses that people already own to help authenticate their identity.
In this way it tries to reduce the number of names and passwords that people have to remember and manage.
As part of the deal Microsoft is sharing some of its technology with Open ID developers and will include it in future identity-related products.
The Open ID community, which is a loose coalition of programmers, is wrestling with ways to handle the different sorts of identification that use of the web demands.
Sites such as online banks understandably demand far more rigorous guarantees about someone’s identity than places such as discussion forums which are far more informal.
However, many sites still rely on one-size-fits-all user name and password systems which get increasingly cumbersome to manage and have many well-documented shortcomings.
“Some blog environments want anonymous people to say anything, and in other environments, they want you to represent some credentials about who you are,” said Bill Gates announcing the tie-up between Microsoft and the Open ID scheme. “And that’s just not going to scale with the kind of password thing we have today.”
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