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indianexpress:  After announcing an increase in the financial assistance to the kin of deceased employees of the conservancy department, based on The Indian Express report of high mortality rate of its conservancy staff, the Pune Municipal Corporation standing committee on Tuesday unanimously passed the proposal to increase the financial assistance to the kin of the deceased to Rs 50,000 from Rs 15,000 now.

On October 17, PMC had announced that it would provide assistance worth Rs one lakh to the kin of deceased conservancy staff - a life insurance cover of Rs 50,000 and financial assistance of Rs 50,000 from the welfare scheme.

The Union Social Justice secretary Arvind Prasad, who visited the city in October, had suggested measures to improve the working conditions of the conservancy staff.

In its proposal, the civic administration said The Indian Express had highlighted the high mortality rate of conservancy staff in the city and the extreme conditions in which they work. It was also highlighted that Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) had withdrawn the insurance cover provided to the PMC conservancy staff.

“PMC had announced the increase in financial assistance to the kin of conservancy staff. As per the announcement, the committee should now approve the sanction of additional Rs 35,000 per person as financial assistance,” Municipal Commissioner Praveensinh Pardeshi had said in the proposal.

“The proposal to increase the financial assistance from Rs 15000 to Rs 50000 for the kin of deceased of conservancy staff was passed unanimously since it was promised earlier,” standing committee chairman Bapu Pathare said.

indianexpress: In a bid to bring transparency and protect small landholders from being fleeced by land sharks, the district collector on Tuesday issued a circular to all revenue officials at the taluka and village levels to ensure that original landholders are notified before making any changes in ‘record of rights’ in official registers.

The circular comes in wake of the multi-crore Manjari land scam that was unearthed on November 1, causing land rights activists like Baba Adhav to demand more transparency and other official measures to safeguard the interests of small landholders most of whom are illiterate.

“From bogus power of attorneys to benami transactions, the issues are plenty and the poor farmers are fleeced. We had several cases of farmers who knew to read and write, still their lands were acquired without any formal consent,” Adhav, chairman of the Maharashtra Rajya Dharan Prakalp and Puragrahast Shetkari Parishad (MRDPPSP), told The Indian Express.

The circular addressed to all talathis, village officers and certifying authorities, directs them to issue notices to land holders before certifying the mutation entry on the Jamabandi (record of rights) register. The revenue officials will now be required to notify the concerned landholder and in case of any complaints / grievances will have to treat the intended transaction as null and void.

indianexpress: While Eka, the fourth fastest super computer in the world and the most powerful one in Asia and Asia-Pacific region developed in Pune by Tata Group subsidiary Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) has certainly put the city on the world map, according to the man who headed the project, what is more significant is the subsequent slew of investments the project is likely to encourage in the city along with the varied applications that the super computer is capable of.

“The project is significant in terms of investment in Pune. We did the entire work here and this is now available in Pune. So what we can definitely expect is a lot of activity related to its use being built around the city,’’ said Sunil Sherlekar, Head of Embedded Systems R&D who was in the city on Tuesday. Earlier this month, the Tata Group developed super computer, with a sustained speed of 117.9 trillion floating operations per second (teraflops) and a peak speed of 170.9 teraflops, was ranked fourth among the 500 super computers the world at an international conference for high performance computing at Reno.

Adding that the breakthrough is also important for showing the world that India can do high-end technical work, Sherlekar said the challenge before the team now is to use the supercomputer for a variety of applications, each of which will have a significant impact. “The super computer is an enabling technology and a lot of design work is capable through it,’’ he said. According to Sherlakar the significant areas where the technology could be used includes the crucial sector of weather and climate modeling which could lead to vastly better weather predictions with far reaching effects in the field of agriculture, space launches and even optimisation of airline routes. “We are in touch with agencies involved in weather forecasts and they have envisaged a keen interest in the application,’’ he said.

indianexpress: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) standing committee on Tuesday decided to maintain the private roads in various housing societies on condition that the society should give no objection certificate (NOC) to the civic administration while giving in writing that the road can be used for public use.

The proposal was tabled by Congress corporator Prassana Jagtap saying that they have to face the wrath of citizens for the poor condition of roads in the society due to lack of funds.

The PMC had earlier made provision of Rs five crore in the budget for repairing private roads of the society on demand by citizens.

Jagtap said that roads in many societies are in bad state and despite the residents ready to hand it over to PMC nothing is being done.

indianexpress: Following demand s from party corporators, Pune Municipal Commissioner Praveensinh Pardeshi has decided to empower ward officers to check the quality of work up to Rs five lakh for filling up potholes on the road that is presently being carried out by a private agency Engineers India Ltd (EIL).

Raising the issue in the general body meeting on Monday, Shiv Sena leader Shyam Deshpande had complained that the road repair work was getting delayed due to the quality management handed over to a private agency.

In his reply, Pardeshi said that EIL has got credibility as it is a company of the Union Government.

“The EIL is falling short of staff to carry out the responsibility because of which the work is getting delayed,” he said adding the PMC will soon discuss the issue with EIL officers.

Pardeshi assured that the civic administration will empower its ward officers to check the quality of road repair work up to Rs five lakh while EIL will look after work above Rs five lakh.

Earlier, Mayor Rajlaxmi Bhosale directed the civic administration to submit the report of various development work being conducted in the city through private contractors along with the status of the work.

techtree: Hewlett Packard (HP) India claims it has introduced the new Elite in high definition entertainment with the launch of the HP Pavilion Elite m9000 series.

The HP Pavilion Elite m9000 series comprises sleek multimedia Home PCs sporting a high-gloss finish, highlighted by signature HP Zen Imprint detailing, accompanied by a matching mouse and a wireless keyboard that docks neatly below the Black-framed wide-screen monitor.

The m9000 series is built with Intel Core2 Quad processor, Windows Vista Premium, and Nvidia GeForce 8 series graphics card. It introduces a new dual format Blue Laser Combo Drive — one single drive which can read both Blu Ray and HD-DVD formats. In addition, it incorporates a LightScribe DVD drive to write on DVD/CD media.

Moreover, Elite PCs are positioned as the first Terabyte Home PCs in the country, which come with internal 1000GB (2 x 500GB) hard disk space. They also have two dedicated bays for the HP Personal Media Drive and HP Pocket Media Drive for added flexibility.

With HP Easy Backup, users can back-up their internal hard drives to HP Pocket Media Drive, HP Personal Media Drive, or their own external storage devices. Or they can just configure their preferred back-up settings/schedules, and let the computer do the work for them.

techtree: One more application with online-offline functionality!

Zoho, the online office software company, has released its fully functional offline word processor named “Zoho Writer”.

“Zoho Writer” enables users to save- and work on- a document in offline mode. Once completely edited, users can then go back online and sync the changes to the same document.

To switch between the offline and online mode, users can simply hit the “Go Offline” button at the top, and to get back Internet access, they can hit “Go Online”.

The application is very similar to ‘Google Docs’, which allows users work on Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files without using the Internet.

Earlier on, Zoho had released the same service, but with partial functionality, which allowed users to read documents but not edit.

The new version “Zoho Writer” uses ‘Google Gears’, an open-source project that allows all Web applications to work offline. Users have to download the beta version of ‘Google Gears’ to enjoy all functions.

The fully functional “Zoho Writer” works on Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

techtree: Software updates from Nikon and Canon this month bring Windows Vista support for “raw” images taken with the companies’ newest SLRs–and in Canon’s case, a number of older cameras as well.

Raw images contain more data than JPEG and give photographers more control over processing, but different cameras and manufacturers use different proprietary formats, making support a challenge. Microsoft relies on camera makers to supply customers with “codec” software that lets Windows Vista–and any programs that use its image-handling abilities–read the proprietary raw image formats. In contrast, Apple writes its own codecs, and Windows XP doesn’t have any built-in support for viewing raw images.

Version 1.1 of Nikon’s codec adds support for the new $5,000 top-end D3, due to ship imminently, and the $1,800 D300, which just began shipping.

The new version 1.2 of Canon’s codec supports its new $8,000 top-end EOS-1Ds Mark III, also imminent, and the $1,300 EOS 40D that’s been on the market for a few weeks.

The software also supports a number of older compact and SLR cameras from years past that supported raw files, said Chuck Westfall, a Canon spokesman and tech guru, and works with the Windows Live Photo Gallery software on Windows XP.