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punetimes: Escalation of real estate rates and the information technology boom has taken a toll on student’s accommodation in Pune.

In a span of two years, the average rentals in deccan area in the city have increased by 75-80 per cent. Two years back, the average rent for a one BHK flat was Rs 4,500, while that for a two BHK flat was around Rs 8,000. Today, the average rentals have gone up to Rs 7,000 to Rs 15,000. The cost of ‘cot-basis’ accommodation too has risen from Rs 600-800 to Rs 1,200-1,600. The rising rates have forced many students to move to the outskirts of the city, bringing with it the problem of longer commuting time.

Students say that one factor that has led to an escalation of rentals is the high demand from IT professionals, whose rents are reimbursed by their companies. This has either led to an abnormal increase in the rentals or landlords deciding not to rent out their places to students.

Real estate agents say that IT boom is definitely one of the reasons for the rise in rentals, but besides IT, the cost of production has also escalated rentals. The rise in prices of steel and cement has raised the cost of construction by Rs 200 per sq. ft. in the last three years.

According to property agent Devendra Bhokare, while 40 per cent of his clientele are students, 60 per cent are from the IT, IT-enabled and banking sectors.

Since most of the IT professionals prefer to stay alone in a flat, or at the most share it with a friend, landlords feel that they are easy to manage than a group of students. Moreover, they are reliable as far as payments are concerned and are nuisance-free, he says.

punetimes: Expressing discontent over the new Food Safety Standards Act 2006, the All India Food Processors’ Association (AIFPA) on Friday said the regulations proposed under the Act could discourage the food processing industry.

According to AIFPA president P.L. Kaul, president, there are approximately 2.5 lakh food processing units in the country. While the demand for processed food in the country was on the rise, the stringent food safety norms could harm the growth of the industry.

Most of the regulations and norms proposed under the Act were unreasonable and were anti-industry, Kaul said. “Most of these regulations aimed at laying the onus on the entrepreneurs.”

Kaul proposed that the ‘food safety authority’ to be formulated as per the Act must have suitable representation from the industry. On the contrary, of the 23 members which currently constitute the authority, only two belonged to the industry. Similar was the case with the technical advisory committee which the Act proposed. The committee had 52 members and only two belonged to the industry.

Meanwhile, the AIFPA has proposed formation of a food cluster in Pune. According to Pradeep Chordia, director, Chordia Food Products, the Pune chapter of AIFPA had finalised a draft for a Rs 60-crore food cluster near Pune.

punetimes: Concerned about the latest developments at the Osho international meditation resort, a large number of Osho followers are contemplating strategies to preserve and protect Osho’s samadhi here.

Although no precise action plan has emerged so far, some prominent sanyasins related to the resort told TOI that everyone who feels strongly about Osho’s samadhi wants to ensure that differences over the matter are resolved at the earliest.

“We are still not clear what is to be done, but everyone is deeply hurt,” said Swami Tathagat, who along with Ma Yog Neelam, (Osho’s personal secretary), runs the Osho nisarga meditation centre at Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh. Tathagat said it will take time for the details of the latest samadhi controversy to reach Osho sanyasins in various pockets of the country before a specific action plan could emerge.

Fears over the fate of the samadhi were roused after Amrit Sadhana, a spokesperson of the Osho meditation resort in Pune, categorically told TOI last week that the resort managers were against using the term “Samadhi” to describe the place where Osho’s ashes have been preserved.

“We do not call it a samadhi. It is called Chuang Tzu (hall) where Osho (then Rajneesh) gave his first lectures after arriving in Pune in 1974. As per Osho’s wishes, his ashes were put in an urn and buried there,” Sadhana, a member of the resort’s “management team” had said in an interview with this correspondent early this month (TOI, August 9).
“We are currently doing our best to preserve Osho Chuang Tzu as Osho had asked. He had said very simply, “You just put my ashes in Chuang Tzu under the bed. And then people can come in and meditate there,”" Sadhana said in an email interview.

msnbc: Mobile phones are a potential gold mine for advertisers, the most personal and intimate way to communicate and engage with subscribers — more than 2 billion of them and counting worldwide.

Yet the advertisers’ two-liner text pitches have largely fueled a growing hate club, with recipients quickly equating the messages with spam they abhor on desktops.

Now, thanks to improved technologies, advertisers believe they have struck upon the formula for getting their messages across without irking consumers. The development is important given the mobile handset’s promise to be a “third screen” — after the television and the desktop computer.

Several blue-chip brands like Nokia Corp. and McDonald’s Corp. have been experimenting with interactive ads on cell phones, taking advantage of the device’s ability to know where you are. Customers have the option of finding the nearest retail or restaurant outlet with the press of a key.

Others partner with search engines and e-mail services to slip in an ad or two, similar to how Google has mastered the use of e-mail and search keywords on the desktop to help determine which topics users find interesting and, in turn, what ads appear.

Better handsets and faster networks mean “more brands utilizing mobile devices for more advanced marketing and advertising initiatives,” said Laura Marriott, executive director of the Denver-based industry trade group Mobile Marketing Association.
 

cnet: Hydrogen is a better source of energy than you think, according to Fujitsu.

The Japanese electronics giant inaugurated a 200-kilowatt hydrogen fuel cell from UTC on Friday that will provide electricity as well as heat to the buildings on its campus here.

The fuel cell–which sits in the parking lot and looks like a pair of giant green dumpsters–provides two types of energy to the facility. First, a unit heats methane with steam to create hydrogen. The hydrogen is passed through a proton exchange membrane (PEM). The electricity produced by the reaction with the PEM runs lights, computers and other equipment.

Additionally, the hot water from the methane-hydrogen reaction is cycled through the building to create heat. More waste heat could be recaptured from the PEM unit, but the water is too hot for Fujitsu’s internal systems, so it is just vented off. Someday, however, it may be piped into the building.

Although carbon dioxide is expelled when producing hydrogen, the fuel cell will result in about 35 percent less greenhouse gas emissions overall, according to Homer Purcell, UTC vice president of sales. That’s about 500 tons of carbon dioxide not emitted a year. It will also save about 800,000 gallons of water a year, he added. Conventional power plants require more water.

cnet: Owners of PCs with Intel’s 965 chipsets can finally download drivers that will immediately improve the performance of games running on those systems.

The 965 chipsets were supposed to be a dramatic step forward for integrated graphics performance. Most PCs come with graphics technology built right onto the chipset that connects the processor to memory and the rest of a PC. Serious gamers opt for discrete graphics made by Nvidia or AMD’s ATI division, but most people save a little money and get the basic graphics.

Intel wanted to make an integrated graphics chipset with more powerful graphics performance that would allow basic PC users to play some of the latest and greatest 3D games when it shipped the 965. But it has been unable to write the drivers needed to enable that performance until now.

Windows XP drivers are available here, but if you’re on a Vista PC with Intel’s 965 chipset, you’ll have to wait a little longer. Intel put together a video here that shows the improved performance of PCs with the new drivers.

cnn: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new technology that is designed to arm professionals with the ability to combine information from different sources to create just-in-time applications needed to help close a big deal, deliver an important presentation or just get through the weather. Key to employee productivity, these situational applications or “mashups” blend Web services like news feeds, weather reports, maps or traffic conditions, with enterprise content and services from databases, spread sheets and documents, helping to create a fast, flexible and affordable application for specific, timely business needs.

IBM Lotus Expeditor 6.1.1 software is a standards-based managed client that can extend mashups in the enterprise to a wide variety of desktop, laptop, and mobile devices on the market, helping to give customers immediate access to critical business information such as insurance and expense forms, inventory data and mobile customer relationship management (CRM). Using the next generation of the Web, or Web 2.0, IBM’s Lotus Expeditor gives users the ability to be productive both on the road and on their desktops.

techtree: Genius has introduced it’s latest Bluetooth laser mouse that doubles as a presenter, the Traveler 915BT Laser, which is about the size of a mobile phone.

The Traveler 915BT Laser incorporates three latest technology trends; namely, Bluetooth wireless, laser mousing, and size/portability.

Users can easily connect the Traveler 915BT Laser to the Bluetooth enabled notebook, eliminating the need for a receiver as also all kinds of cords and tangles.

Genius claims the high precision 1600 dpi laser sensor can track better on a variety of surfaces as compared to an optical device on tricky polished or wood-grain surfaces.

Traveler 915BT Laser sports a unique metal cover finish, and features a 4D scrolling roller for faster browsing — be it left, right, up, or down.

Significantly, the Traveler 915BT Laser acts as both a mouse and a presenter. With a press of the switch mode button, the device alternates between a mouse and a presenter. As presenter, the 915BT Laser gives full control over Laser Pointer, Page up/down, ESC, and F5 to accomplish the purpose of presentations.

According to Genius, the Traveler 915BT Laser offers up to 20 times the sensitivity of a standard optical mouse, and lets users switch from 800 dpi to 1600 dpi on the fly.