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indianexpress: For Anita, an outstation student in Pune, it was the postal services that helped her get ‘ready cash’ from her parents living in Chennai. Not having a bank account, all she did was head to the nearest post office and blurt out a 16-digit code number — which her parents gave over the phone — and show her college I-card. Within minutes, she was given the amount at the Shivajinagar post office.

That’s how Instant Money Order (IMO) services cater to students who may not have bank accounts, but stand to get money within minutes.
 
Launched two months ago — by India Post at select computerised post offices in the city — the IMO services are fast becoming a hit with students, travellers and hospital patients. With a minimum of Rs 1,000 and a maximum of Rs 50,000, the ‘sender’ only has to fill up a remit payment form and hand it over to the post office counter clerk, along with the money.

A printed receipt with a sealed computer-generated 16-digit IMO number is given to the sender, which he or she needs to convey to the payee by phone, text message, email or any other means. In the last two months, there have been over 104 transactions in the Pune region — comprising Pune, Satara, Solapur and Ahmednagar — and the numbers are picking up according to SC Jarodia, Postmaster General of the Pune region. “Most outstation students find it easier to have their parents deposit the money at their post office. In a fraction of a second, they get the amount at a computerised post office here, with hardly any paper work,” he said.

Payment of up to Rs 19,999 can be collected in cash; and anything more by cheque. An I-card proof comprising a voter’s I-card, PAN card, driving licence, ration card or even a passport can be presented as proof of identity during the collection. The commission for Rs 1,000-5,000 is Rs 150 and for every Rs 5,000 more, Rs 20 is charged.

Some 53 post offices provide this service in Maharashtra, with three — including the General Post Office, the Pune city office and Shivajinagar post office — in Pune. It’s only a matter of time when all 175 centres in the region will follow suit.

indianexpress: Here’s some news for those who think that the Pune Railway Station needs some serious revamp when it comes to facilities. On Tuesday, Mohammad Iliyas Hussain, chairman of Passenger Amenities Committee of Railway Board expressed displeasure at the amenities currently being provided to passengers at the railway Station. He has therefore directed railway authorities to provide better facilities to commuters.

During the inspection procedure, Hussain said considering that Pune is one among the list of world class stations, the services being available are not sufficient and that it was important to make efforts for elevating it to world-class category.

According to Hussain, station authorities should give a thrust on issues like parking facilities, better quality food in canteens and maintaining cleanliness in the circulating areas, platforms and in trains.

In fact, most platforms on the Pune Railway Station except for platform number 1, are in a sorry state, with broken floor tiles and leaking taps.

Hussain inspected the platforms, cleanliness of trains, 2 and 3 tier AC coaches. He also checked passenger amenities like food, rest rooms, bookstalls, lavatories, parcel and booking offices.

He said the Railway Ministry has termed the current fiscal as a ‘cleanliness’ year where increasing importance should be given to passenger amenities and providing them with the option of a safe and comfortable journey.

indianexpress: Close on the heels of the Mars occultation two months ago, skywatchers will get to see another one on Wednesday. This time the moon will eclipse Regulus — the brightest star in the Leo constellation. This event is scheduled to take place after about 10:15 pm Indian Standard Time, but the exact time of the event will depend upon the location of the observer.

In this case the moon will come directly between Regulus and Earth and it is expected that Regulus will remain behind it for an hour or so. At the time of sunset Regulus will be right overhead, shining quite brightly in the phenomenon which will be visible throughout the country.
 
This time the Moon which will be to its west will outshine Regulus, otherwise one of the brightest stars visible in the night sky. Further west and a bit north, one will be able to see Saturn.

Gradually, one would see the gap between the Moon and Regulus becoming lesser. Closer to the event it might become difficult for people to see the star with naked eyes in the glare of the Moon, which would be almost 48 pe cent illuminated as seen from the Earth. The event will take place above the western horizon. The giant ringed planet Saturn will be below and to the right of the Moon. Even a pair of 10×50 binoculars would be useful for seeing the disappearance phase of the event.

indianexpress: Citizens can look forward to less dangerous roads this monsoon after the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) on Tuesday decided to ban digging up of roads. After a meeting of PMC officials, telecom companies, MSEDCL and water supply departments, deputy municipal commissioner Dnyaneshwar Molak said no road digging will be allowed during the monsoon.

However, in an emergency related to addressing leaking pipelines or choked drains, roads may be dug up after seeking permission from the additional municipal commissioner Mohan Adtani. Telecom companies and the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited will also have to seek prior permission of the additional municipal commissioner before digging roads for any purpose.
 
Last year, roads were left untarred and unlevelled after several agencies and utilities scooped them out. The condition of roads lead to waterlogging, potholes and snarls which ended up adding to the misery of citizens.

Meanwhile, the standing committee on Monday cleared a majority of the roadwork and storm water-cleaning tenders. “The PMC wants to complete all road work in the next fifteen days,” said standing committee chairman Bapu Pathare.

The committee, on Tuesday, sanctioned two major tenders worth Rs 22 crore for resurfacing of roads in Warje-Karvenagar and Ghole Road.

However, Congress members in the standing committee alleged that the NCP-BJP and the Shiv Sena had hastily cleared tenders causing a loss to the PMC. “ The ruling combine sanctioned work tenders that were higher compared to other tenders submitted. This has caused a loss of Rs 4 crore to the PMC,” said Congress leader in the house Aba Bagul.

indianexpress: Scrapping its earlier decision to hand over the synthetic track on Baburao Sanas ground to Pune district athletics association governed by Congress, the standing committee on Tuesday decided to open the track for all players.

It has now been decided to appoint a committee of eight sport experts under the chairmanship of the mayor, which will work out details of the regulations for the use of track.

“The standing committee felt that the track should not become the property of any organisation. It should be open for use of all sportsmen. The PMC plans to train students on at its own expense,” said standing committee chairman Bapu Pathare. He said the committee had earlier passed resolution to hand over the track to athletics association as per administration’s proposal.
 

indianexpress: To allow greater debate and generate a consensus on the issue of a single regulatory body in higher education as recommended by the National Knowledge Commission (NKC), the Pune University will host a meeting of experts from the field of higher education in June.

The NKC, formulated in August 2005, had submitted its recommendations on higher education to the Prime Minister in December 2006. In its report, the NKC had criticised the regulatory system for higher education in the country, calling it cumbersome. “There is a multiplicity of regulatory agencies where mandates are confusing and overlapping… We believe that there is a clear need to establish an Independent Regulatory Authority for Higher Education (IRAHE),” the NKC recommendations said.
 
According to the NKC, the IRAHE would be the only authority for degree granting and licensing accreditation, and the functions of other regulatory bodies like the University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), and so on, would be redefined.

At a meeting of Vice Chancellors from non-agricultural universities across the state held on Monday, a demand had been made for greater cohesion between regulatory bodies like the universities, the State Government, the UGC, and the AICTE. This was in the light of the recent crackdown by the AICTE on institutes without their sanction, many of which were already affiliated to the varsities.

In this context, Jadhav said that the NKC recommendations assumed significance. “There is no single national policy on regulation of education. A meeting of educational experts across the state will be held to facilitate debate on this issue and on the recommendations of the NKC,” said Jadhav.

techtree: The XNote C1 Tablet PC has just been unveiled by LG Electronics India.

XNote C1 features both finger touch input with auto-sensing technology, and stylus input for making input a breeze especially when using dial keys.

Besides, the notebook is equipped with enhanced security features like TPM (Trusted Platform Module) and HDD security.

The C1 Express Dual sports a 10.6-inch widescreen finger touch LCD panel. At 1.31kg weight and just 27mm thickness, the tablet PC, according to LG, is lightweight enough to be ferried around.

Other features include SRS WOW HD quality sound, 24-bit HD backed by Nvidia GeForce Go 7300 that provides special graphics, and standard keyboard with 82 keys.

At the launch, R Manikandan, Product Group Head IT Division, LG Electronics, said, “We at LG believe that with these new LG Express Dual Notebooks, customers will have a unique experience of great combination of design, performance, entertainment, and security. These ultra light weight tablet notebooks will help redefine the style quotient of consumers.”

techtree: IBM has launched its ‘Power6′ processor, which it claims is the fastest microprocessor ever built, yet consuming nearly the same amount of electricity.

IBM says the lower power consumption of ‘Power6′ is tantamount to its bearing ‘Green’ credentials, which the company is stressing upon.

The next generation ‘Power6′ processor for IBM’s Unix and Linux systems has a record speed of 4.7 GHz, and offers double the speed of previous generation ‘Power5′ processors at almost the same power consumption.

The ‘Power6′ has an 8MB L2 cache, 790 million transistors built on a 65nm scale, and a processor bandwidth of 300GB per second.

According to IBM, the ‘Power6′ is the first Unix microprocessor able to calculate decimal floating-point Arithmetic in hardware. Until now, calculations involving floating decimal points were done using software.

Talking about the product, Bill Zeitler, Senior Vice President of IBM Systems and Technology Group, said, “Like the victory of IBM’s Deep Blue chess-playing supercomputer 10 years ago, the debut of ‘Power6′ processor-based systems proves that relentless innovation brings ‘impossible’ goals within reach. The ‘Power6′ processor forges blazing performance and energy conservation technologies into a single piece of silicon, driving unprecedented business value for our customers.”

The ‘Power6′ chip includes additional techniques to conserve power and reduce heat. For instance, processor clocks can be dynamically turned off when there is no useful work to be done, and turned back on when there are instructions to be executed.

It is learnt that IBM has built the ‘Power6′ into a new server, the System p570, which is touted as the company’s fastest server. In addition to the System p570, IBM plans to introduce the new processor in its System ‘p’ and ‘i’ server lines.

Later this year, the company plans to release a feature named ‘Power6 Live Partition Mobility’ that will allow customers move a running instance of Unix from one physical machine to another.

techtree: Google is now getting into the business of trend-spotting, of telling us what’s hot and what’s not…

The search giant is reportedly today unveiling a new feature named ‘Hot Trends’ which tracks current top-100 fastest-rising search trends. And the top-100 list would be refreshed several times daily, basis data from millions of Google Web searches conducted up until an hour before each update, Google says.

A combination of two of Google’s existing products, Zeitgeist and Trends, ‘Hot Trends’ will also offer a glimpse into users’ Web search habits, although not as dated.

Google says the new feature will provide a sneak-peek into what’s hot and not - in ways that even social philosophers could not have imagined.

According to ‘Hot Trends’ Software Engineer, Amit Patel, there are things happening around us all the time that we are not even aware of, and it is this gap that ‘Hot Trends’ intends to address.

As it is, Google is privy to a wide range of searches, ranging from the sublime to the mundane, the profound to the plain idiotic.

While Google Zeitgeist is like a retrospective look at what users’ had on their minds - say a week or a month or a year back, ‘Hot Trends’ will give a more contemporary, ‘here and now’ snapshot of what is on people’s minds.

Besides, ‘Hot Trends’ will add depth by linking to not only related sites, but also to associated Google News stories and blog searches, Google claims. The feature will also allow users go back in time to check top-rising trends on a particular day or at a particular time.

Apart from unveiling ‘Hot Trends,’ Google is also ramping up its ‘Trends’ service to help users find not only the top countries or cities that searched for a particular term, but also to see how search habits differ from region to region, spanning a total of 70 countries.

techtree: Kingston Technology has announced the launch of ‘MobileLite’, a 9-in-1 USB card reader.

The company says that ‘MobileLite’ helps consumers of mobile devices more easily navigate multiple expansion memory card formats when moving between mobile phones, digital cameras, PCs, and other portable devices.

Launching the product, Scott Chen, Vice-President of APAC Business Development, Kingston Technology, said, “There are so many flash memory card formats currently used by different digital devices that the Kingston ‘MobileLite’ will be a welcome tool that simplifies managing digital content between one’s cell phone, digital camera, PC, and MP3 player.”

The ‘MobileLite’ is a 9-in-1 USB card reader that works with nine different memory card formats, including microSD, miniSD, full-size Secure Digital, SDHC, MMCmicro, MMCmobile, RS-MMC, MMCplus, and full-size MMC.

When ‘MobileLite’ is in use, it appears as three drive letters (for example G:\, H:\, and I:\), and data transfer is as simple as drag and drop, Kingston says.

Meanwhile, the ‘MobileLite’ 9-in-1 USB card reader, which is priced at $8.99 (Rs 370 approx), will be available in India through the company’s network of distributors including AA Infoways, Avnet India, Ingram Micro, Kobian Electronics, and Transtek Infoways.