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indianexpress:  The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) repeated its February showing in the Pune civic elections where it emerged as the single largest party, in the Pune Zilla Parishad elections. The party increased its strength from 38 in 2002 elections to 45. The Congress however failed to make much of an impression and garnered 13 seats, four more than what it had in the 2002 elections.

There are a total of 75 seats in Pune Zilla Parishad of which results for all seats were announced on Monday.

The increase in the strength of NCP and Congress spells a loss of strength for Shiv Sena, Bharatiya Janata Party and Janata Dal (United). The number of Shiv Sena ZP members declined from 12 in 2002 election to 6. The BJP won three seats, one less from its 2002 showing while the JD (U) was down to two seats from the four in the last polls. Independents won 6 seats.

The ZP elections were important for both the Congress and the NCP. It came close on the heels of defeat for the NCP in four of the seven municipal councils in December and the NCP emerging as the single largest party in Pune Municipal Corporation.

indianexpress: World Cup 2007 is finally here and everyone seems to have contracted the cricket fever. And this means no one wants be caught without answers to all-important questions like how many runs did India score in the last World Cup final or which teams pose the biggest threat to India.

Coming to the rescue are the book stores, who have dutifully whisked out their collection of books on the game and are having a field day watching the sales soar.
 
Giridhar Agarwal, manager, Crosswords International Convention Centre, Senapati Bapat Road said: “We have quite a few books on the World Cup and they are moving fast. As our team progresses in the World Cup, we hope the sales will too.”

With prices ranging from Rs 295 to Rs 695, he said the fastest moving book is the World Cup Cricket 2007, and mainly because it has M S Dhoni on the cover.

Peter Murray and Rajesh Kumar’s 2007 World Cup Cricket, Devendra Prabhudesai’s Cricket World Cup, Chris Hawke’s Cricket World Cup 2007 Guide and The Penguin World Cup Cricket Companion by Quaiser Mohammad Ali hit one’s eye as one enters Manney’s Book Store, Moledina Road.

techtree: Microsoft has unveiled a new file format for end-to-end digital photography, called HD Photo, which offers better image quality, better preservation of data, and advanced features for digital-imaging applications.

The company said this new next-generation digital image format provides the best solution for digital image editing and storage, and unleashes potential for digital photography on devices, applications, and services.

Microsoft announced it intends to standardize the technology, and will be submitting HD Photo to an appropriate standards organization shortly.

Talking about it, Amir Majidimehr, Corporate Vice President of Consumer Media Technology Group, Microsoft, said, “With HD Photo, we are taking a new approach to creating and editing photos that simply isn’t available to photographers with today’s formats. HD Photo fully preserves the original image fidelity with high dynamic range, while allowing for significant improvement in compression size.”

HD Photo offers compression with up to twice the efficiency of JPEG, with fewer damaging artifacts, resulting in higher-quality images that are one-half the file size. It also gives increased image fidelity, preserving the entire original image content, and enabling higher-quality exposure and color adjustments in the image.

Microsoft has also announced the beta release of a set of HD Photo plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop software, developed with the help of Adobe Systems. These plug-ins enable users to both read and write HD Photo files from within Adobe Photoshop software, and include support for high dynamic range pixel formats.

techtree: SanDisk has expanded its Extreme III pro line with a 4GB SD High Capacity (SDHC) Class 6 memory card, and a 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo card.

The company said that a 4GB Extreme III card could store more than 2,000 high-resolution pictures, or up to 8 hours of MPEG 4 video.

In a statement, Tanya Chuang, Director of Retail Product Marketing, Global Imaging Market, Sandisk, said, “The SanDisk Extreme III line has become a best-of-class standard for professional photographers who demand speed, durability, and reliability. Now we are raising the bar again with these new cards. And by including an SDHC-compatible reader with each SDHC card, we are enabling users to easily transfer images from their cameras to their computers.”

The Extreme III 4GB SDHC card has a sequential read/write speed of 20MB per second, while the Extreme III 4GB Memory Stick PRO Duo card has a sequential read/write speed of 18MB per second.

It is learnt that both cards are designed for shooting in extreme temperatures (-13 to 185 degrees Fahrenheit or -25 to 85 degrees Celsius), high altitudes, and other demanding situations.

Moreover, Extreme III SDHC cards have a speed rating of Class 6, the highest available, meaning that they have a minimum continuous data transfer rate of 6MB per second. And the cards offer ESP Technology to streamline data transfer; RescuePRO software to recover accidentally deleted files and images; a dedicated technical support telephone hotline; and a limited lifetime warranty

computerworld: Seagate Technologies today announced the availability of the first laptop hard drive with native encryption capabilities, which is aimed at protecting data if a machine is lost or stolen.

Seagate’s Momentus 5400 FDE.2 drive, with native 128-bit AES encryption, can also be purchased with Wave Systems Embassy Trust Suite management software from Wave Systems Corp., which will allow IT administrators to manage data encryption, keys and passwords at the enterprise level.

“This is a standard ATA drive that’s encrypting all the time. It acts like a regular drive, you wouldn’t know the difference,” said Lark Allen, executive vice president of corporate development at Wave Systems.

While there are many software-based encryption technologies available, Seagate’s Momentus drive is the first to employ firmware-based encryption at the laptop drive level, which is less expensive than encryption software and does not eat up CPU cycles, said Melissa Johnson, head of product marketing at Seagate.

The Momentus is a serial ATA drive that spins at 5,400 rpm, has a 1.5Gbit/sec throughput and comes with pre-boot authentication and a secure data erasure feature, which overwrites data several times to allow repurposing of the drive. The drive comes in 80GB, 120GB and 160GB capacities. The encryption feature will add about 25% more to the cost of standard Seagate SATA drives and will retail anywhere $130 to $175 for an 80GB drive, a Seagate spokesman said.

ASI Computer Technologies Inc. announced today it will be distributing the very first laptop to sport the new Seagate encrypted drive. Kent Tibbils, senior director of platforms, said the ASI NB Model C8015 and C8015+ laptops will also begin shipping today.