>Indian Railway to start :Real-time Train Information System (RTIS) for tracking trains

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Fade up of getting inaccurate  information on movement of trains? Not able to get correct information about timing of trains? Help is expected soon with the Railways going ahead with the Rs 110 crore satellite-based system to replace manual tracking of trains to provide its exact position on real-time basis.
The real-time train information system (RTIS) aims to provide train running information to the public through internet, SMS on mobile phones, call centres and through train indication boards at stations.
It will also give information to  passengers travelling in train through the provision of display system inside the coaches. Indian railway has already started provision of having internet in some trains.
“Efforts are on to replace the manual recording system with RTIS by connecting 8,000 trains and 8,177 stations across the country,” said a senior Railway Ministry official.
To keep track of trains, currently station masters call up the control room at the divisional headquarters every time a train passes their station.

Railways adopt 5 digit number scheme to monitor trains

The new scheme will create a unique identification number for each train to better monitor the movement of trains across the country and to make the tracking system more logical.

Indian Railways “smoothly” migrated to a five digit number scheme to monitor movement of passenger trains more effectively and facilitate management of train information scientifically for public convenience.
“The migration went of smoothly as the date upgradation was carried out in the systems overnight to cause least inconvenience to passengers,” said a Railway Ministry official.
The pan-India 139 rail enquiry system has also added a new number ‘7’ in the system to enable passengers find the new train numbers.
The migration to five digit number had also become necessary as the four digit numbering scheme had got exhausted with the Indian Railways running more than 10,000 trains every day, the official said.
To make the transition smooth and simple, only a prefix of the digit 1 (one) has been added to the four-digit numbers of the existing trains.
They include all scheduled and regular express or mail and superfast trains including the Durontos, Yuva Trains, Rajdhani, Shatabdi, Jan Shatabdi, Garibrath and Sampark Kranti Express trains.
For example, under the new scheme, the number of Kolkata Rajdhani from now on would be 12302 and 12952 for Mumbai Rajdhani.
“The new system will also make the numbering of trains of railways more scientific, logical, uniform and computer-friendly besides integrating passenger and suburban train services in various information systems,” the official said.
The Railways said the initiative will create a unique train number which will be a national level identity for each train and will cover all the passenger-carrying trains running in the Indian Railways network.
IRCTC, the official agency of Indian Railways for issuing e-tickets and i-tickets through its website www.irctc.co.in, said it “has already begun printing the five digit train numbers on its E Tickets and I Tickets for any date of journey, after 20 December 2010.”
The special trains run by the Railways during holiday and festival season will also be numbered on the pattern of the mail and express trains except that they shall have the prefix of digit ‘0’ (zero).
This shall apply to all special trains, whether superfast, express or passenger train in character, running between any pair of destinations, the Railway statement added.

>Watch world cup match ONLINE

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 Follow these link and watch the match live on your desktop

http://wc2011now.blogspot.com/2011/02/channel-1.html

http://totalwc.blogspot.com/2011/02/channel-2.html

http://world-cup-2011-live-streaming.blogspot.com/2011/02/channel-3.html

http://totalwc.blogspot.com/2011/02/channel-4.html

http://world-cup-2011-live-streaming.blogspot.com/2011/02/channel-5.html

http://world-cup-2011-live-streaming.blogspot.com/2011/02/channel-11.html

http://world-cup-2011-live-streaming.blogspot.com/2011/02/channel-12.html

http://world-cup-2011-live-streaming.blogspot.com/2011/02/channel-13.html

http://world-cup-2011-live-streaming.blogspot.com/2011/02/channel-14.html

http://totalwc.blogspot.com/2011/02/channel-10.html

http://world-cup-2011-live-streaming.blogspot.com/2011/02/channel-15.html

>Now Lock your vehicle using a Password

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Have you spent sleepless nights worried about the safety of your vehicle? Well, now you can be at ease. G Sankar Narayana, a technician in the Indian army and currently attached to the Queen Mary’s Technical Institute (QMTI) at Khadki, has developed a security solution to prevent vehicle thefts.
The kit, developed by Narayana, has the facility to unlock and start the vehicle by entering a password which can prevent vehicle theft. The kit priced at Rs 270 has been developed using parts available in the local market. According to the police, on an average 3,000 cases of vehicle thefts are registered every year in Pune, which has a vehicle population of 20 lakh.

Narayana belongs to 127 Sata Regiment of Artillery (ARMY). Following an accident in Bikaner five years ago, he has been placed in a low medical category (LMC). He then enrolled at QMTI for a rehabilitation electrician training course.

According to Narayana, the idea of the kit came while observing his family at home. “At home my wife forgets to switch off kitchen appliances and my son plays with these equipment. I always worry that he might get injured, so I developed a ‘password kit to control the mixer grinder’. Now, switching on and switching off the grinder is far safer,” he said.

The same kit was kept in an internal exhibition of the QMTI. “A team of experts from a leading car manufacturing company happened to visit the exhibition and enquired if the kit can be modified for vehicles. I began thinking on those lines and developed it after working for two months,” he said.

Highlighting one more advantage of the kit, Narayana explained that a back up starter is provided in the kit in case of emergency. This starter can be controlled using a normal metal key. The kit can be fixed anywhere in the vehicle in such a manner that it is not easily visible.

“If a thief tries to dismantle the kit or cut the wires to steal the vehicle, he will not be able to start the vehicle. But when the owner returns he can start the vehicle even if the kit is dismantled, with the help of the backup kit,” he explained.

“We have named the kit ‘security code engine starter’. It has been tested by us. Now we are approaching higher authorities for large scale production,” said S L Patil, trainer at the QMTI.

Patil said that tests done at the QMTI have proved successful. “A leading car company has already enquired about the kit. But before taking any final decision, steps would be taken to keep the intellectual property rights with Narayana,” he said.

“It is a very low cost solution to prevent vehicle theft. If produced on a larger scale it can be even cheaper,” said Nitin Gaikwad, a batchmate of Narayana.

Gaikwad said that the kit could prove helpful in rural as well as urban areas. “An option to change the password is available with the owner, making it more secure,” Gaikwad stated.

>Know your MLA,MP better : Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR)

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Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) was established in August 1999 by a group of Professors from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. It started working on building fair and transparent electoral and political processes in the country by filing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in August 1999 in the Delhi High Court asking for mandatory disclosure of criminal, financial and educational background of candidates contesting elections to the Parliament and State Legislatures, prior to the polls. In November 2000, ADR got its first achievement when the Delhi High Court gave its judgment in favor of ADR. The Government of India however challenged the PIL in December 2000 opposing the Delhi High Court. Several political parties also intervened in the matter favoring the stand taken by the government. After a long discussion and hearing, the Supreme Court of India in May 2002, rejected the Government of India’s appeal and asked the Election Commission of India (ECI) to issue orders making it necessary for candidates nominating themselves in elections to Parliament and State Assemblies to submit their nomination forms along with the affidavits containing the following information: 

·         Affidavits of candidates with their criminal cases pending against them, if any

·         Financial assets of the candidate,

·         Financial assets of candidate’s spouse and his/her dependents,

·         Financial liabilities and educational qualifications of the candidate.d

Know Your Neta

     Taking forward our efforts to enable people to know their candidates better and make informed choices, all the information regarding criminal and financial details of the contestants declared by them in their affidavits has been made available on http://myneta.info. e

View

In order to prevent and dilute the Supreme Court’s order, the Union Government of India decided to issue an Ordinance in August 2002, amending the Representation of the People’s Act 1951. ADR challenged the ordinance and amendment of act in October 2002, seeking its constitutional validity of the amendment to the Representation of People’s Act. In March 2003, the Supreme Court of India gave a landmark judgment by restoring its May 2002 judgment and declaring the amendment of the Representation of People’s Act as ‘illegal, null and void’. Subsequently, in order to fulfill the Supreme Court’s judgment, the Election Commission of India passed orders making such declarations mandatory for the State, Panchayat and Local Bodies’ elections. Since then, ADR has been doing Election Watches in almost all State Assembly and Lok Sabha elections – focusing on the issues of criminalization, corruption and the use of money power in politics. It continues to work towards strengthening democracy and governance in India by focusing on fair and transparent electoral and political processes. Recently, it has also taken several initiatives to make our political parties more transparent and accountable.

‘Improving and Strengthening Democracy in India’ is the motto of the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR). ADR specifically focuses on:

•        Working actively towards Electoral and Political Reforms,

·         Working towards strengthening Right to Information as a tool and facilitating the process for attaining greater transparency of those people who are in power,

·         Mobilizing public opinion, facilitating a dialogue between policy makers and civil society organizations for the empowerment of citizens.

What ADR do?

ADR, in its quest for improving governance and strengthening democracy, is implementing activities that can be broadly categorized under two programs –

•        Electoral Process Reform

Election Watch of Parliament and State Assembly elections is more or less a continued activity of ADR. Under the Election Watch of Parliament and State Assembly elections, ADR discloses background (criminal, financial and educational) of candidates who are contesting elections. Since the landmark judgment of Supreme Court, ADR has done election watches for almost all State Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in the country. ADR has also successfully mobilized and networked with a large number of civil society organizations all over the country. This, in turn, has helped in taking the campaign to grass roots while strengthening our network across the country. ADR has also got great support from the various media organizations. All our press releases and reports have been extensively covered by the media – both the print and visual.

·         Political Process Reform

ADR has also expanded its agenda to encompass political process reforms. Political parties function as the key link between the people and their representatives, and thus, in their structure and working, political parties must adhere to democratic norms and transparency. ADR sought disclosure of financial information by the political parties, in line with the recommendations of the Indrajit Gupta Committee Report (1998) on state funding of election expenses and the 170th report of the Law Commission. The Chief Information Commissioner vide his order dated April 29, 2008, has held that copies of the Income Tax returns of the political parties filed with the public authorities and the assessment orders passed on them will be available to the citizens. Taking it forward, ADR has been scrutinizing the copies of the IT returns of political parties collected using RTI. ADR has also been working on the creating an environment for bringing political parties under the ambit of law.

>Today is Thomas Edison’s Birthday : Greatest invention which enlightened the world: The electric Bulb

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Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor, scientist, and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed “The Wizard of Menlo Park” (now Edison, New Jersey) by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large teamwork to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.

First Electric Bulb

Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications. These included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures. His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator. Edison originated the concept and implementation of electric-power generation and distribution to homes, businesses, and factories – a crucial development in the modern industrialized world. His first power station was on Manhattan Island, New York.

>Top 10 indian Recipe site

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Indian food is varied and distinct to the state and culture. It is amazing to notice how people accustom to the environment and climate conditions and adopt foods either by the local produce or suiting the climate. The quantity of tamarind used in the South per day could amount to the month’s utilization in the North. Spices, condiments and vegetables vary per state. With transport facilities and a seamless geography, people are nowadays transforming their cuisines into much variety. A Gujarati is equally found of rajma-chawal as a Punjabi adopts a oondhiyu.

Here I am going to tell you some top 10 Indian Recipe website
http://www.vahrehvah.com/
http://www.indianfoodrecipes.net
http://www.sanjeevkapoor.com/
http://www.indianrecipes.co.in/
http://www.indianfoodforever.com/
http://www.tarladalal.com/
http://food.sify.com/
http://www.awesomecuisine.com
http://www.recipedelights.com  
http://www.chooseindia.com 

>TV signals to go digital by 2015

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The days of hooking a wire to get cable television could soon be over with the I&B ministry on Thursday setting a March 31, 2015 deadline for shift from analog to digital systems.
    This will ensure better quality picture and services, choice of channels and interactive services. The industry will benefit as the move is expected to bring greater transparency in subscriber base and reduction in carriage fees. “This is the way ahead for the industry,” a government official said.
    The proposal has been sent to broadcast regulator TRAI and will be put before the cabinet for approval. Digitisation, where the feed will be received through set-top boxes, is expected to be executed in phases and the four metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai have to shift to digital addressability by March 31, 2012. Phase II will include 35 cities with population of more than 1 million like Patna, Chandigarh, Pune and Bangalore by March 31, 2013. Digitization will bring set-top box prices down
New Delhi: Moves are afoot to digitize television signals. All urban areas are expected to digitize by November 30, 2014 and the remaining areas by March 31, 2015.
    Zee News CEO Barun Das said, “Digitization will help industry grow at an accelerated speed. It is the key to problems like distrbution bottlenecks and under-declaration leading to loss of subscription revenue that broadcasters face today.”
    Industry insiders said digitization was the world norm and would bring prices down not just of set-top boxes but also carriage fees.
    Consumers are likely to spend Rs 1,000 for a set-top box but the monthly subscription could remain the same — around Rs 250-Rs 500 or even drop further.

>GET SMS alert as your vehicle get STOLEN

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Henceforth, bike and car thieves can run but not hide. And vehicle owners, apprehensive of ever-increasing thefts of cars and bikes in the city and their prized possessions going missing for ever, can heave a sigh of relief. All they need to do is instal a device, the size of a mobile phone with a sim, inside their vehicle.
    The moment their vehicle is stolen or tampered with, the device will send them an SMS alert. Thereafter, the thief and his movements will be like iridescent squiggles on a radar and can be tracked live on a mapbased platform such as Google Earth. With about 7,000 vehicles reported stolen every year, it makes the police’s task much easier and, what’s more, the device is affordably priced.
    The device, called ‘Tcop’, has been developed by iTrans Technologies (India) Pvt Ltd, located on Bannerghatta Road. In bikes, the device can be fitted beneath the seat or near the battery. In cars, it can be placed inside the glove box. It has a set of wires and one wire is connected to the battery. It draws a small amount of power from the battery and doesn’t require recharging.

    “It works on the GSM infrastructure of Vodafone. The product will be just the size of a mobile phone and it is not a GPS device. The product will have a sim card inside it,” explained Mallesh Reddy, chairman of iTrack technology Ltd. “The owner has to register once and an SMS will be sent to the owner’s mobile. The owner will have two options. Either he can opt for SMS tracking or he can opt for internet tracking on map-based platform like Google Earth,” he added.
TRACKING LIVE 

If a bike is stolen, the owner can send an SMS to the device which triggers a siren in the bike, thus attracting attention of passersby and disorienting the bike thief. The technology also enables the owner to retrace the route taken by the bike thief in the past 72 hours. The SMS will have details like location, time and speed of the bike, thus tracking the bike continuously and help secure it without much difficulty. The device’s cost ranges from Rs 1,500 to 6,000 and a buyer will have to spend an additional Rs 100 for a pre-paid card to get SMSes for an entire year. “Bike and car thefts are increasing nowadays. In Bangalore itself, stats reveal 5,851 cases of bike thefts. Four-wheeler thefts are supposed to be just one-fourth of the two-wheeler thefts in India. The need to secure and track mobile assets has gained importance,” Reddy contends. An encouraging sign is that even insurance companies give a discount on premium for vehicles fitted with an anti-theft device. Reddy revealed that his company has already got the patent for the product.
    The city police are yet to formally try out this device but they are definitely thrilled. “There are about 25 lakh two-wheelers in the city and they form a majority of the vehicles stolen. Tracing these vehicles is a physically tough task; that is where we are looking at technological intervention,” a top police official said.

>3G data card @ Rs 1300 : Made in India

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BHUBANESWAR: The 3G device market seems to be hotting up with the latest and cheapest offer from iWEBLEAF, a city based company launched by two young Oriyas, who just completed B.Tech from the Techno School under Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT) this year.

They are all set to offer 3G data card (USB modem) at an unbelievable price tag of Rs. 1300 at least for the time being.
Chandrasekhar Panda and Saswat Swain have designed the first ever 3G technology-based data card that provides high speed internet at a very low cost. The Wi-Fi and 3G enabled data card is designed to work on the spectrum of any telecom operator providing high speed internet service all the time.
This invention is expected to be a major breakthrough in providing mobile broadband connectivity as the biggest challenge in the country to-day is to provide broadband in rural villages and remote areas of the country.

“Our goal is to drive a ‘highway’ of high-speed internet uniting 410 rural regions, where private telecom companies do not develop broadband internet infrastructure due to low demand.

By using only 3 to 4 data cards, an entire village with around 150 families can be provided internet connectivity with a net spending of just Rs 900 per month. Similarly, an urban user will get high speed internet at just Rs 99 per month,” Saswat on Thursday told “The ET” while giving a demo of the new data card.

Interestingly, by using this data card, a person can get to view more than 150 television channels, free of cost without using any television tuner or additional gadgets. “The user can also switch to different networks within two days,” he added.

The twin inventor’s problem is that their innovation is yet to be recognized by the state government. “We are unable to go for commercial production of the device as it requires at least Rs two crores, which we just can’t dream of. Currently we are talking with Future Group.

Several network operators have shown interest in buying the technology. But we want to bring this service for the common public for which we need the intervention of the state government. This project will create direct as well as indirect employment opportunity in the state. If the volume of this product is increased we can drastically reduce the product price to Rs. 900.”

These young entrepreneurs have already written letters to the President, Prime Minister, Chief Minister but they are yet to get any positive response from the state apparatus.

Compared to market’s average price of 3G data card Rs. 2500, iWEBLEAF’s 3G data card which comes at half of that certainly will draw attention and lure more users to try high-speed wireless internet services on 3G network.

“Our iWEBLEAF 3G HSDPA Data Card can offer up to 7.2Mbps download speed (HSDPA) and 384kbps upload speed. It also supports 2G network – GPRS/EDGE. It comes with genuine IMEI number and a SIM card slot, to use with any GSM operator”, Saswat added saying that it also has a microSD card slot to double the device as 4GB pen drive.

Currently it is supporting data/sms/call function with USB 2.0 interface and can be used on any Windows (200/XP/Vista/7), Mac and Linux system.

The device will autoinstall all required drivers and softwares, which includes a mobile TV application which offers 150+ channels, including three Odia channels, including the OTV, ETV and Naxatra TV free of cost without using any TV Tuner or any additional gadgets.
Source : Times of India

>Aadhaar: How to get your unique ID from govt of India

>India’s ambitious Unique ID project dubbed “Aadhaar”, which aims to give every Indian citizen a unique number mapped to biometrics, was launched on Wednesday in the Nadurbar district of Maharashtra. The Technoholik.com team got a sneak peek at the UIDAI (Unique ID Authority of India) tech centre in Bangalore, to tell you everything you need to know about the enrolment process.

The setup

The enrollment officer (EO) sits at right angles to you and enters data into a laptop. The insight of the Aadhaar team here is that the person getting enrolled must see what is being entered. Thus there’s a monitor in front of you, which mirrors the enrolment officer’s screen so that you can point out spelling mistakes or other errors. If the person getting enrolled is illiterate, he or she can nominate someone to accompany and verify. There’s a small laser printer behind the EO’s laptop and a webcam, fingerprint reader and iris scanner account for the remainder of the hardware setup. Unless, of course, you count the light bulb hanging from the ceiling and a white “roll-up” chart behind you for the “passport photo studio” effect!

Compulsory information

Name (first and last name compulsory but middle name optional), Gender (Male/Female/Transgender) and Date of Birth are the compulsory fields. Whereas postal address is also required, it’s more for the sake of mailing your UID number than strictly being a proof of residence. The EO asks you for a PIN code and the city/district fields are automatically populated. The rest of the address is entered manually.

Supporting documents

The UID team acknowledges the fact that a large number of people may not have any supporting documents to prove their identity. In this case, one is allowed to bring another resident who is already in possession of an Aadhaar number to be an “introducer” by vouching for the person seeking to enroll. Of course, there is scope for fraud either with a colluding introducer or by just using fake supporting documents. However, the whole point of Aadhaar is that one can only fake one’s identity once and this prevents large-scale “ghost identity” creation, which is the bane of most Indian government schemes. The great PAN (Permanent Account Number with the Income Tax department) card scam after all involved a single person creating thousands of different PAN numbers.

Photograph

A photograph is taken of the person getting enrolled, purely for the purpose of printing it out on the enrolment receipt, so that illiterate residents have some way of knowing that the receipt indeed belongs to them. Beyond that, the photograph serves no biometric or authentication purpose.

Biometrics

First there’s an iris scan where you look into a binocular-like device held up to your eyes by the EO. After that it’s the four fingers of each hand, followed by both thumbs (a process familiar to those entering the US) for your 10 fingerprints.

The wait

The EO makes you review the data entered one final time before giving you a laser-printed receipt. We’ll only get to walk away with our receipts and have to wait for the actual number to be delivered by India Post! 

(Courtesy: TECHNOHOLIK.COM)