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indianexpress: The immersion procession that spanned two days lasting 30 hours and 20 minutes in the city appeared to have more zing after Team India won the T20 final at Johannesburg on Monday.

In the Cantonment area, tableaux with children in Team India colours struck a chord, while a few mandals in the city prominently displayed the Tricolour and youth shouting Chak De, India formed a part of the traditional farewell to Ganesh. For the thousands who were on the city’s roads it was all a heady mix of devotion, dance, song, music and colour on Anant Chaturdashi.

The immersion procession that began at 10.30 am on Tuesday from Mahatma Phule market in the heart of the city ended at 4.50 pm on Wednesday. The five manache Ganpati were immersed by 5.25 pm on Tuesday.

Laxmi Road, the main procession route for over 200 mandals began filling up with people from early Tuesday to watch the five prominent mandals.

Mayor Rajlakshmi Bhosale performed the pooja for gram daivat Kasba Ganpati in the presence of police commissioner Jayant Umranikar, guardian minister Ajit Pawar and MLAs Girish Bapat, Chandrakant Shivarkar, Chandrakant Chhajed.

indianexpress: Even as Puneites were bidding adieu to Ganesh on Tuesday evening, there was grim news in store for Lalit Kumar Jain, Chairman of Kumar Builders and president of Pune Builders and Promoters Association (PBAP).

Six members of a group of pilgrims — mostly relatives of Jain were reported missing after the vehicle they were travelling by was washed away by flash floods in the Randhona river in Sihor, some 210 km off Ahmedabad.

Those missing include Sanjay Kothari, Indermal Jain, Dilip Ranka, Jatanraj Jain, Pravin Bhambholi and Keshav Sonegra. The villagers managed to rescue two, Bherumal Viroya and driver Suresh Niranjanlal. According to reports the pilgrims were traveling in two vehicles and the second vehicle, carrying women members of the pilgrim party, escaped the flood fury.

Talking to Newsline over phone, Jain, who was with the rescue team, said, “Though there has been no signs so far, the search operation is on.”

Search operations continued on a war footing for the second consecutive day, but there was no trace of the vehicle — a Qualis — or its passengers. The pilgrims were on their way to Ayoydhyapuram near Vallbhipur after completing the Palitana visit, when the vehicle got caught in the swirling waters of Randhona river.

indianexpress: The newly set-up Pune Metropolitan Transport Corporation Ltd (PMTCL), constituted after the merger of Pune Municipal Transport (PMT) and Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Transport (PCMT), registered a record revenue collection of Rs 5.5 crore during the ten-day Ganesh festival that concluded on Tuesday.

The PMTCL had launched special night service from all bus stands during the festival for the benefit of commuters to enable them to watch tableaux of Ganesh mandals in Pune for the nine days and for the immersion procession on Tuesday. Around 1,000 buses were pressed into service with buses running late in the night on almost all routes.

“The PMTCL collected a revenue of Rs 5.5 crore this year while it was around Rs 4.5 crore in the ten-day festival last year from PMT and PCMT’s combined revenues. The maximum revenue collection of Rs 67.21 lakh of the total Rs 5.5 crore was recorded on Sunday. The PMTCL also raked in the next biggest collection of Rs 67.03 lakh on Saturday,” said PMTCL managing director Subrao Patil. However, the collection went down to Rs 56 lakh on Monday during the Twenty20 final between India and Pakistan.
 

indianexpress: Pune Police will file complaints against mandals found violating the midnight deadline for loudspeakers during the immersion procession. A senior police official said they will initiate action against the erring mandals in the next couple of days once all the police officials resume their duties.

He explained that since the staff was on duty for over one and half days, there were no extra policemen available to register complaints. “We have carried out comprehensive videorecording of those who were blaring music in contravention of the Supreme Court deadline. Definite action will be taken ,’’ the official added.

Police commissioner Jayant Umranikar on Monday had urged mandals to strictly abide by the directives of the apex court on use of loudspeakers and musical instruments during the immersion procession.

The State government has extended the 10 pm deadline to midnight under the power vested in it for 14 days in a year. The city police in September 2005 had registered offences against 32 people on charges of violating the 10 pm deadline for playing loud music, fighting, ransacking a police chowki and rioting.

indianexpress:  If a World Bank team visiting Pune last year was all praise for a slum sanitation project in the city, the Maharashtra State government’s rural sanitation initiatives have now impressed UNICEF and government officials from various developing countries. Strong political commitment, community participation and even women’s empowerment in the state were some of the aspects they are keen to replicate in their own countries.

The delegates were in the state as part of the UNICEF-sponsored International Learning Exchange Programme. The module on rural sanitation held in West Bengal and Maharashtra that ended on Wednesday aimed at providing insights into some successful rural sanitation projects in the country. The team comprised 18 officials representing governments and UNICEF branches of Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan.

Among the sites visited in the state were Hiware Bazar and Wadgaon Amli in Ahmednagar district; Aasgaon, Mahabaleshwar, Pangari and Gureghar in Satara district; and Chivehwadi and Katewadi in Pune district. “The objective was to understand the role of the local Gram Panchayats in mobilising the community for achieving ‘open-defecation-free’ zones,” said UNICEF Water and Environmental Sanitation (WES) specialist Satish Mendiratta.

techtree: Fujitsu Asia Pacific has launched its first ultra-mobile PC (UMPC), the LifeBook U1010.

The LifeBook U1010 weighs just over half-a-kilogram, and features a 0.3mm glass LCD screen and high-density mounting among others. With a convertible, swivel form factor, the LifeBook can be used like a hand-held or tablet or NB PC.

Fujitsu claims the LifeBook is a mini powerhouse capable of handling multiple functions, including watching movies and listening to music, viewing and editing documents, video-conferencing, and surfing the Internet.

The device has a slim 0.2mm Aluminum-plated Qwerty keyboard, and a touch-screen that allows a user’s fingers to do the walking, in the absence of a stylus. The glide point pointing device makes interaction that much easier.

Security features include: platform module support, 2-level BIOS lock, and fingerprint sensor, among others.

techtree: Gigabyte has unveiled a new breed of motherboards, the 73 Series, that includes the GA-73UM-S2H and GA-73PVM-S2H, based on Nvidia GeForce 7 Series GPUs, and featuring high definition video playback with HDMI support among others.

The GA-73UM-S2H and GA-73PVM-S2H motherboards are powered by Nvidia GeForce 7150 and 7100 GPUs respectively. They support the latest Intel processors, including Core 2 Multi-Core processors, up to 1,333 MHz FSB, and DDR2 800MHz memory.

They feature compatibility and performance for all DirectX 9.0 applications, including Shader Model 3.0 support. And provide HDMI connectivity with HDCP (High Definition Content Protection) support, allowing playback of Blu-ray/HD DVD and other protected media content.

The new motherboards also feature DVI and VGA output, as well as rear IO port eSATA connectivity for easy data transfer. They incorporate Realtek ALC889A audio codec with 7.1 + 2 channels of high definition output, and high-performance DAC (Digital-Analog Converter) with 106 dB Signal-to-Noise ratio playback quality.

techtree: Imation India has introduced its plug ‘n’ play optical mouse with PS/2 and USB interface for viewing digital photos; scrolling through documents, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations; and gaming purposes.

The 3-button, 800 dpi optical scrolling mouse is light, and plugs easily into the USB and PS/2 port, sans the need for software. It can work on any surface, and is compatible with all versions of the Windows operating system.

Sanjay Koul, country manager of Imation India, said the mouse has 3D direction control, and a button life of 3,000,000 clicks which is ideal for busy users.

The Imation optical mouse is immediately available through authorized distributors for Rs 200.

cnet: Carnegie Mellon University on Wednesday announced a $300 robot designed to easily enable people to create super-high-resolution panoramic pictures–and a Web site to let anyone in the world dive into them.

The GigaPan robot, built by Charmed Labs, can accommodate most compact cameras and is designed to be relatively inexpensive, said Illah Nourbakhsh, a Carnegie Mellon associate professor of robotics. Images then are uploaded to the new GigaPan Web site. They also can be viewed through the Google Earth software.

The researchers’ project aspirations extend well beyond just flipping through snapshots of foreign lands. “What if you could do imagery that is so high-resolution that the act of looking at the image is an act of exploration?” asked Nourbakhsh in an interview.

The GigaPan project enables people to pan across and zoom into the high-resolution images, such as this one of the Harmandir Sahib, or Golden Temple, in India. You can use either of the interface buttons in the image

msnbc: Intel Corp. said on Wednesday it had won a mobile WiMax chip order from cellphone maker Nokia, which will use its semiconductors in Internet-focused devices from 2008.

Nokia will roll out the first WiMax-enabled Internet tablets using Intel chips in the first half of 2008, a Nokia spokeswoman told Reuters.

Mobile WiMax, the high-speed wireless standard, is expected to support Internet access at speeds as much as five times faster than typical wireless networks, though it will be slower than the fastest wired services.

Intel has had little success in the mobile phone chip market and ended up selling its cellular chip unit to Marvell last year. Its push behind short-range wireless technology Wi-Fi was a big factor in the widespread adoption of that technology.

Texas Instrument is Nokia’s largest chip supplier, and it also uses STMicroelectronics, Broadcom and Infineon as suppliers.

Currently, Nokia is not manufacturing mobile devices using Intel chips.