News

punetimes: In an extraordinary case of billing irregularity by the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd (MSEDCL), retired colonel O.P. Verma (65), a resident of Siddharth Complex in Yerwada, was not issued electricity bills from February 2000 to June 2007 despite sending several reminders to the MSEDCL’s Ahmednagar road division office asking them to take meter readings and send regular bills.

Verma had also made numerous trips to the office as well as to the Rasta Peth head office to get the matter resolved without any success.

Finally, Verma got a bill on June 6, 2007 for a whopping Rs 43,400, compelling him to ask for the break-up. Shortly after that, he got two more bills on June 27 and July 16 for Rs 37,228 and Rs 39,217 for the same period.

“The Ahmednagar division office of the MSEDCL issued me a letter on June 27 stating that I was charged for 5,216 units consumed during May 2000-August 2006. The consumption was calculated by deducting 5,600 units recorded when I last paid my bill in January 2000 from the current consumption of 10,816 units on my meter,” Verma told TOI on Tuesday.

Significantly, the letter sent by the Ahmednagar road division clearly acknowledged that Verma had not been issued bills by the MSEDCL during May 2000-August 2006. The letter did not state any reason for the lapse.

punetimes: Din and chaos marred the civic general body (GB) meeting on Tuesday, with elected members grilling the civic administration over its failure to initiate action against the growing number of illegal hawkers on Karve road.

The issue was raised on the floor of the House by deputy mayor Chandrakant Mokate, who pointed out that the officials were showing a lackadaisical attitude in taking action against hawkers, although the corporators have time and again brought to their notice the problems faced by citizens.

The ruling party members refused to allow proceedings of the GB meeting when deputy commissioner Dnyandeo Thube, in reply to their questions, said that whenever PMC initiated drives against hawkers, it was the corporators who pressurised them to stop it.

“Reveal the names of those who put pressure or else we will not allow the proceedings,” the elected members said.

However, while Thube refused to divulge the names, the GB was adjourned by the mayor in spite of protests by Congress party members to continue the meeting.

The standing committee directed the administration to table a revised docket for the controversial ring road project, as it did not contain the details. The proposal to make payments to the MSRDC for the projects undertaken by it in Pune was once again postponed for discussion for a month

punetimes: Even as the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) is trying to develop a network of cycle tracks under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), cycle associations and activists feel that the PMC should first revive the existing ones which are lying in a sorry state.

Presently, cycle tracks run along Canal road and stretch towards Abhinav chowk, sections like SNDT college to Athavale chowk, Athavale chowk to Prabhat road, Deendayal hospital to Dnyaneshwar Paduka chowk, Dnyaneshwar Paduka chowk to Deep Bungalow chowk and Nilgiri society to Ganeshkhind road and Chaphekar colony, which are made out of interlocking blocks.

“It’s not only about constructing a cycle track. Its all about creating an atmosphere for people to use it,” activist Prashant Inamdar, who has been following developments of Canal road cycle track, said.

Citing shortcomings like encroachments, engineering defects and lack of planning, Inamdar said the entry point of the cycle track on Canal road has been encroached by rickshaws. “Children going to schools hardly use the track as the entry point is never open. It portrays a picture that the cycle tracks are hardly used,” he said.

Dilip Sarda, president of Pune Cycle Pratishthan (PCP), agrees. “Even the one at Chapekar road is encroached upon. During a survey with civic commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi, we made him aware of the situation,” he said.
The grim story of cycle tracks has suddenly gained importance as the Union government has made cycle tracks mandatory in bus rapid transit system (BRTS) project under the JNNURM.

punetimes: Panshet, Khadakwasla, Varasgaon, Temghar and Pavana - the five main dams which supply drinking and irrigation water to Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad and the low lying areas in the Mula-Mutha sub-basin - are full.

For the first time during this monsoon, each of these five dams had a 100 per cent storage on Tuesday. The Bhima sub-basin includes 22 dams in Pune district, and the Vir Dam in Satara and Ujjani dam in Solapur. And the good news is that 11 dams are 100 cent per cent full, while 10 dams have a storage exceeding 90 per cent of their capacity.

Thus, not just Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad and the low-lying areas, including Daund and Indapur in Pune rural,
but the drought-prone Solapur and parts of Satara (those connected by Vir dam and not the areas like Mann and Khatau) may also be spared from water shortage this year.

The seven dams in the Mula-Mutha sub-basin today have the highest-ever water storage - 1,546 million cubic metres (MCM). These include the Pavana dam (241 MCM), Temghar (64), Varasgaon (362, Panshet (302) and Khadakwasla (56) dam, which are filled to the brim.

Of the remaining two dams, the Mulshi dam, which has a capacity to store 523 MCM was 97 per cent full on Tuesday, a storage of 505 MCM. The Kasarsai (16.25 MCM capacity) had a storage of 99 per cent (16 MCM) on Tuesday. These two dams are expected to reach the 100 per cent storage mark in next couple of days.

punetimes: Jewellery and cash totally worth over Rs 5 lakh was stolen from two jewellery shops in the city sometime between Sunday and Tuesday afternoon.

The modus operandi of the both the thefts was similar to the last few incidents where unknown people have made holes in the rear walls or roofs of the jewellery shops situated at Laxmi road or Parvati Darshan areas of the city a few days ago.

On Tuesday, Vinayak Dahale of Kasba Peth lodged a complaint with the Vishrambaug police saying that some unidentified people made a hole in the rear wall of his shop in Shaniwar Peth, and fled with silver ornaments and utensils worth Rs 4.88 lakh, sometime between Sunday and Tuesday.

His jewellery shop ‘V.S. Dahale and Sons’ is on the ground floor of a three storey building at Shaniwar Peth. The shop was closed on Sunday and Monday. The incident came to light only when Dahale opened the shop on Tuesday afternoon. According to the police, the shop shares its rear wall with a public toilet. Unknown people entered the toilet and made a hole in the wall. The suspects kept the toilet doors closed while committing the crime.

All the gold ornaments in the shop were in a safe and the suspects failed to break it open, but they did manage to flee with 27 kg of silver goods.

The second incident was reported from Ghorpadi. According to the Hadapsar police, the jewellery shop owner Gopaldas Gangaramji Ranka (35) of Chandannagar, lodged a complaint saying that unknown persons made a huge hole in the cement tin sheets on the roof of the shop and fled with cash and jewellery worth Rs 67,000.

techtree: I-mate has reportedly launched the JAMA Windows Mobile 5.0 PDA phone, which the company says is akin to a personal computer in one’s pocket.

The JAMA is about 15.6-mm thin, and sports a 2.4-inch 65K color TFT 240 x 320 display, and a 2MP effect camera among other features.

Significantly, the pocket PC is equipped with Windows Mobile 5.0 offering users a complete Microsoft Windows experience comprising MSN Mobile, Instant Messenger, Media Player 10 Mobile, and Internet Explorer.

Besides, JAMA has the usual Microsoft Office Mobile applications including Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Mobile.

Other features of the phone include: dual-band (900/1800MHz) GSM/GPRS and Bluetooth v1.2 for connectivity, up to 128MB ROM, 64MB RAM and a microSD memory expansion slot for storage, and a 300MHz Samsung processor.

techtree: Google India has reportedly announced India specific services, including Google Local Search and Google Local Business Centre. The company has also launched an innovation platform for India named Google India Labs.

Google Local Search is meant for Indian users to search for locally relevant information on the Web. With this tool, they can find information on local restaurants, shops, malls, hotels, other businesses by searching on http://local.google.co.in.

Whereas with Google Local Business Centre, even small businesses can add their information to Google Local for free.

The two products are meant to be mutually useful to consumers and businesses; providing one the information, and the latter the required visibility on the Web.

Meanwhile, Google describes it’s Google India Labs, launched under the sub-domain labs.google.co.in, as a ‘technology playground’ for products in the process of development needing market feedback for improvement.

The innovations showcased will be specifically for the Indian market though they might come from any of the Google offices across the globe, the company said.

Google says globally, it has 7 such labs panning across the US, China, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and now India.

technews: Nine new 2.5-inch hard disk drives (HDD) that employ the latest advances in HDD technology, from Toshiba Corporation. The new drives include the MK3252GSX, which achieves a capacity of 320GB, and the MK2049GSY, which improves performance with a 7,200rpm rotational speed. Toshiba will mass produce the drives in turn, starting from November.

The MK3252GSX uses an improved read-write head and enhanced magnetic layer to boost areal density and achieves a storage capacity of 320GB. The high-speed MK2049GSY offers a rotation speed of 7,200rpm and also integrates a large capacity 16MB buffer memory, supporting high-speed processing of large volumes of data: the drive improves the maximum internal data transfer rate by approximately 46%*2 and increases the average random access time by some 8%*2.

Both models support an optional Free Fall Sensor function, which detects falling HDD and parks the head before it crashes.

technewsworld: Adobe has unveiled its new Flash Player upgrade, called “Moviestar.” The upgrade allows the playback of video encoded using H.264, which is the standard deployed in HD DVD and Blu-ray players. It is currently available in beta as a free download, and the final version is expected this fall.

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Adobe Systems (Nasdaq: ADBE)  has upgraded its Flash Player with support for the H.264 video-encoding standard and improved audio-compression technology, the company announced Tuesday.

Dubbed “Moviestar,” the upgrade permits the playback of video encoded using H.264, the same standard deployed in Blu-ray and HD DVD high-definition video players for increased compression without quality degradation. Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects software already support the standard.

Moviestar also incorporates High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) audio support, as well as hardware-accelerated, multi-core enhanced, full-screen video playback.

msnbc: Bubbles add fizz to champagne and spring to foam mattresses, but the details about how they form have been murky.

A new computer simulation now challenges a theory about bubble formation that has been around since the 1920s and suggests they might form more simply, and faster, than was previously thought.

The finding, detailed online in the journal Physical Review Letters, could lead to a more precise understanding of the “phase transition” that takes place when bubbles form and could have implications for industries that rely on bubbles to make their products.

Bubbles and mountain passes
Scientists had thought bubbles form when jostling liquid molecules create pockets of low density in the liquid containing relatively fewer molecules than surrounding regions. Most of the time, other molecules will just rush in to fill in these air pockets. However, an exodus of molecules can also occur, causing the pockets, or bubbles, to grow.

David Corti, a chemical engineer at Purdue University in Indiana, compares the process to scaling a mountain. A pocket of air begins at the bottom of one side of the mountain (the liquid phase) and must climb the mountain and reach a destination on the other side (the vapor phase) to become a bubble.