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indianexpress:  The issue of action against Ganesh mandals for digging up roads does not seem to have died down yet despite the civic administration assuring that there will be no strict action against mandals if they pay the charges for digging up roads. Workers of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) on Wednesday demanded that the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) should not charge any fees from the mandals for digging up roads. MNS workers barged into the office of Additional Municipal Commissioner Mohan Adtani demanding the PMC to announce that it will not charge any money from mandals for digging up of roads for erecting pandals.

However, Adtani said the civic administration will not make such an announcement and the PMC was firm on its decision to charge mandals.

Meanwhile, for the convenience of the citizens thronging the city late night to see decorations prepared by Ganesh mandals during Ganeshotsav, the Pune Metropolitan Transport Corporation Ltd (PMTCL) will be providing special bus service from September 17 to 25. The bus service will be available from 11 locations and the commuters will be charged 25 per cent more than the normal charges after midnight. The buses will leave for their respective destinations only after a minimum strength of 40 on the route.

Regular passes will not be applicable for travelling after midnight. Since most routes from the heart of the city will be closed during the period, all the buses will take alternative available route to the respective destinations.

indianexpress: Researchers from city-based Chest Research Foundation (CRF) have received three international awards at the European Respiratory Society Congress to be held in Stockholm, Sweden from September 15 to 19. Dr Sundeep Salvi, Director of CRF, has received the Gold Sponsorship Travel Award for the second time in three years for his research study on levels and effects of air pollution due to fireworks during the Diwali festival on lung health.

Dr Bill Brashier has received the Boehringer Ingelheim COPD Award for his research work which showed that patients with ischemic heart disease and hypertension have an increased risk of having associated Obstructive Airways Diseases like asthma and COPD. Dr Suruchi Mandrekar has bagged the Young Scientist Award for her research work on the link between airborne fungus in the house and the prevalence of asthma in children.

The awards were given out for the research papers that were chosen from amongst 5,000 other research papers that were submitted for the conference, which will be attended by over 18,000 doctors and scientists from all over the world. According to Salvi, it is a matter of pride for the CRF which has received three awards at the same time for research work.

indianexpress: After a year’s delay, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has begun its effort to give the city’s nearly two lakh slum population homes under the State’s Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) scheme and Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) by inviting bids for tenders to construct the 270 sq ft dwellings.

Under JNNURM, PMC has proposed construction of 40,000 units from 2006 to 2009 —10,000 units in 2006-07, 15,000 in 2007-08 and 15,000 in 2008-09. While this project was delayed because the funds came in late last year, the construction of 1.6 lakh units under the State scheme is stuck in political tangles.

Now, matters appear more settled. “All issues related to the project under JNNURM have been resolved and the civic body has invited bidders for its execution,” said PMC’s building development special officer V R Patil.

indianexpress: Around 90 personnel from 145 Battalion of the Central Reserve Police Force’s National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), in Talegaon have been sent for heli slithering training, to the Para Brigade Centre in Nahar, Himachal Pradesh. The battalion, which left on Wednesday evening, will undergo a five-day training in tackling disaster situations where the helicopters will enable the men to land from heights, using ropes. Assistant Commander Abhik Singh, senior medical officer Dr Ashok Narayan, sub-inspector Ravi Kumar and assistant sub-inspector P C Nag will accompany the trainees.

The National Disaster Management Authority had sent a letter to the Army as well as to NDRF informing them about the training. Assistant Commander Jai Singh said that as part of the preparations, the trainees underwent pre-training for a period of 10 days within the campus, practicing slithering exercises from the available 15-metre water tank.

indianexpress: Junior Commissioned Officers (JCOs) and Army officers of other ranks will soon get low-cost but quality houses in Pune under Jai Jawan Awas Yojana that will be taken up by Army Welfare Housing Association (AWHO) at Hadapsar. Chief of Army Staff General Joginder Jaswant Singh laid the foundation stone for the project on Wednesday.

The AWHO owns nearly 30 acres of land in Hadapsar of which 3.13 acres will be used for the project. Around 195 units of 635 sq feet each with two bedrooms, a multipurpose room, a toilet and a bathroom, a kitchen as well as a verandah or a balcony will be constructed.

While plans and the elevations of the units have been finalised and the drawings submitted to Pune Municipal Corporation for approval, work is likely to begin in October. Similar projects have been completed in Jaipur. Four other housing projects are coming up at Secunderabad, Belgaum, Allahabad and Bhatinda.

The Army chief, a patron of Jai Jawan Awas Yojana, said, “Throughout my 43 years of experience in the Army, I have noticed that jawans who fight for the country face a financial crunch towards retirement. Either they do not have enough money to invest in a house or all their savings are invested in buying a house. This impacts their children’s education, medical facilities and the family’s welfare,” said Singh.

Through the scheme, JCOs and other jawans can get houses in big cities so that their families and children can pursue their studies and careers, uninterrupted, he added.

indianexpress:  To prevent vehicular congestion on the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi, the Traffic Department has made certain traffic and parking arrangements which will be effective from 6 am to midnight on Saturday.
The arrangements have been made to combat traffic snarls in the areas around Anna Bhau Sathe Chowk, between Dengle and Shivaji bridges, between Kasba Peth police chowki and the market around.

Arrangements have also been made on the Shivaji Road and the police have exhorted citizens to refrain from parking their vehicles in the no-parking lane opposite Mangala talkies.

All vehicles will be prevented from entering the road between the Gadgil statue and Gotiram Bhaiiya Chowk and the traffic from these areas will be diverted through Jijamata Chowk to Phutka Buruj, Appa Balwant Chowk to Budhwar and Mata Chowk and Sonya Maruti Chowk to Sevasadan Chowk.

techtree: Genius has launched PF-A01 - A new digital photo frame.

PF-A01 features a large 10.4-inch display and comes in either an oak or walnut finish. The photo frame enables users to display even pictures that have got stuck in the flash card inside the camera.

Its high-density screen has a panel ratio of 4:3. It has multimedia functions to support MP3 music, AVI Motion-JPEG video files, and a slide show for pictures.

PF-A01’s internal 128 MB flash memory can store up to 700 images. The frame supports Compact Flash (CF), Super Density (SD), MultiMedia Card (MMC), Memory Stick (MS), Memory Stick Pro (MS-Pr), and MiniDisk (MD) memory cards. It supports USB host, which means that you can connect external USB drives. Other features include a real-time clock, calendar function, and a remote control.

The frame’s playback button shows up to 4 pictures at different speeds on the screen. It can display pictures in landscape or portrait modes. And it supports auto-photo resizing.

Genius PF-A01 is available with the company’s authorized distributors: Transtek, Tirupati, Ingram Micro, and Redington. The price for this product is Rs.13,999.

techtree:  Two days back, when Apple celebrated the sale of it’s one millionth iPhone, simultaneously a group of coders also celebrated for their iPhone unlocking software going on sale.

Earlier this month, a group of software developers from iPhoneSIMfree claimed to have developed a program that unlocks Apple’s iPhone, thus making it operational on any Global System for Mobile (GSM) network across the globe.

Reportedly, the group has announced the retail availability of their unlocking software through several resellers.

Presently, the company is selling the software only to resellers that can purchase licenses in 50 to 5,000 license batches. However, a consumer can get their hands on it from the resellers for a cost of about USD 50.

To use the software - after making the payment - the buyer has to download and install the application on the iPhone, which executes once the user inserts a new Subscriber Identity Module (SIM). The buyer would have to execute the software each time they insert a new SIM.

The company, however, gives no guarantee that the software would work after any future updates to iPhone.

It’s quite likely that Apple or AT&T comes up with a firmware update to stop this unauthorized usage of iPhone. However, it’s anybody’s guess that this cracking the code and patching up the cracks will be continue till Apple makes the popular iPhone available across the globe.

techtree: O2 has launched its PDA phone, Xda Flame, with multimedia capabilities of a 3D graphics processor.

The NVIDIA GoForce 5500 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) accelerates multimedia tasks such as audio and video in hardware - the improved speed gives customers console-class 3D gaming, DVD-quality video, sharp photo playback, as well as the ability to display interactive 3D charts and diagrams during presentations.

The phone has 2 processors, the other being an Intel Central Processing Unit (CPU). This allows for the workload to be split between the 2 processors, leading to overall device efficiency and a smoother end-user experience.

For customers with a need for heavy business usage could rely on device’s productivity features, including Microsoft Office Programs for Windows Mobile, Microsoft Office Outlook Mobile with Direct Push Technology, Adobe Reader, and popular stalwart applications like - O2 SMS Plus, O2 Menu, O2 MediaPlus, Worldmate, and Codewallet Pro.

For customers who need to stay globally connected, the phone has connectivity options like 3G, Wireless LAN, Bluetooth v2.0, and a micro-SD card slot the phone has 2GB ROM and 128MB RAM of onboard memory.

techtree: SanDisk has announced the new Sansa View, a video MP3 player. The sleek-looking Sansa View with full-motion video support and a larger screen comes in a handy package.

The slim Sansa View features voice recorder with built-in microphone, music, photos, FM radio, audio books, and easy video transferring capabilities with memory capabilities of up to 24 GB (by using an optional 8 GB microSD/microSDHC card).

“The video MP3 player has the video capabilities of a PMP, and packs it into a pocketable device,” said Eric Bone, vice president of marketing for SanDisk’s Sansa audio/video product line.

SanDisk’s Sansa enables consumers to easily transfer videos natively using widely available software. The most popular formats are supported via embedded player functionality (H.264, WMV, and MPEG4) or via a one-time software download of the Sansa Media Converter, which quickly transcodes numerous video files, including DivX.

Consumers can purchase and insert one of SanDisk’s microSD/microSDHC cards to play up to 24 GB of music, video, and photos on their Sansa View.

The backlit scroll wheel and 2.4″ TFT color screen, with 320×240 resolution, enable to navigate to a music library, video collection, digital photos, digital FM radio with 20 pre-sets, an integrated microphone and voice recording, and audible audiobooks.