Kolkata in Cyberspace

Delhi/NCR city is to have a radio taxi services providers -- RadioCabs.in. This is first portal where you can get any types of information related to Radio cabs in Delhi/NCR and all over India says Mr. Rakesh Singh, Managing Director of Radiocabs.in.

RadioCabs.in - India's leading portal offering useful listing of Radio Cabs Companies in India that ensures you complete convenience, comfort and safety in traveling. You can find all type of information about most reputed, known and dependable travel companies offering Radio Taxi Services who serve in your city facilitating you with quality & efficient travel services, which they offer.

RadioCabs.in is the premier Indian portal with all relevant information to hire fastest online Radio Cabs where Radio Cab operators in major cities of India are listed. With RadioCabs.in you can easily reach Radio Taxi operators in your city with 24*7 connectivity with airport and Railway stations, providing you for easy Railway and Airport pick & drop facilities. Also, avail most personalized cab Rentals to go for City tours, for Local usage or even usage of cabs on monthly basis.. Radio cabs an always-connected network of air -conditioned cabs gives you the peace of mind and convenience of knowing that there is a driver waiting for you to take you to your destination.

India-based RadioCabs.in provides a listing of radio taxi services providers they provides all types of brand new cars like, Versa, Innova, Indigo Marina, Tavera, Tata Indica, Esteem and all types of cars. All 1000 CC cars will become operational from today. These are the GPRS-enabled `Radio Cabs'. Unlike the regular taxi cabs, radio cabs are installed with alarm signals and special radio equipment to provide enough security to commuters. Equipped with electronic chips, radio cabs would be connected to a central server at the call centre and movement of the cabs would be monitored on a special screen through out the day irrespective of the route the vehicle operates on.

RadioCabs.in is the First portal in India, which provides these types of information. Giving details Mr. Rakesh Singh, Managing Director - Radio Cabs said RadioCabs.in provides you a useful listing of Best Radio Taxi operators offering services in metro and all major cities of India, like Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Faridabad Jaipur, Sonipat, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Ludhiana, Mumbai, Chandigarh Kolkata, Agra and many other cities, he informed. Radio Cabs offers more choice for the customer in terms of the type of vehicle available i.e. Versa, Innova and Indigo Marina.

Call for a listing at Radiocabs.in on 9810176064 and get more queries for taxi services, he added.

The library or the digital archive is being called the South Asian Gateway (SAG) and is the joint initiative of the South Asia Research
Foundation (SARF) and the Shelter Group.

While the former is a venture of scholars and teachers, who teach in premier universities in the UK and US, many of whom are Kolkata born, the latter is a real estate group that is building Barnaparichay, the upcoming book mall off College Street, where the library would be housed.

SARF is in possession of at least five million pages of rare documents spanning two centuries from 1750 to 1950. It comprises numerous topics of interest on South Asia that includes out-of-print editions of books, journals, reports, copies of legislations, manuscripts, pamphlets, souvenirs and other printed materials. This vast collection covers a wide range of subjects -- social and economic history, sociology, Indology, linguistics, anthropology, film studies, sports studies, history of science, medicine, musicology, political science and environmental sciences.
The texts will be digitized and the hard copies preserved so that it becomes globally accessible via a searchable online database.

Civic officials said the entire GIS project has been divided into two parts ~ the first part deals with the door-to-door survey while the second works with system development.

Recently, an expression of interest was floated and two agencies, Infotech and Spec Systems, have already been selected for carrying out a door-to-door survey. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) will be the third agency, which has been assigned the responsibility of coordination and GIS development.

"A door-to-door survey has already been initiated and a pilot project is being carried out in several wards of the city. The pilot project is expected to be completed by September," a civic official said. The pilot project is presently been initiated in wards 10, 40, 69, 92 and 128.
In order to ensure that the survey work goes on uninterrupted, the municipal commissioner has already made an appeal to all citizens through newspapers asking people to cooperate with the surveyors who will be visiting each household and gathering necessary information.

The network, which is based on Internet Protocol (IP) technology, supports data, voice and video transfer at a speed of around 64 kbps in rural areas. Swan will enable the state IT department to implement various e-governance initiatives like computerisation of important data, Geographical Information System (GIS) and web-based communication.

This will help the elected representatives in gram panchayats and block level to send their requirements and daily reports to higher authorities much faster than usual. All 16 departments of the state government including panchayat & rural development, finance, labour, transport, land and land reforms, tourism, forest, youth services, municipal affairs, higher education, environment, housing etc. will share the same network. Henceforth, there is expected to be a smooth flow of information between the department officials and officials in the rural areas.

The state IT department has already connected 227 gram panchayats and all the blocks of Burdwan district. The department is now planning to connect all 341 blocks in the state by October 2009.

A senior official of the state IT department said that about Rs 53,000 crore has been invested in the project. Although work on the project started a couple years back, it is presumed to take more than the stipulated time as the process is complex.

The West Bengal government is forming an autonomous society to develop systems and software in Bangla and other regional languages.

"The Society for Natural Language Technology Research (SNLTR) is a part of government's initiative to popularise Bengali language and literature with the help of modern information technology," IT Minister Debesh Das said.

The IT department has already sanctioned Rs 1 crore for one year to the society, which is currently located at Salt Lake. The society has one government representative in its managing body.

For a start, SNLTR in collaboration with IIT Kharagpur and a private software development company will soon release "Baishakhi", a standardised Bangla Linux distribution software in public domain.

Called Granthagar, the electronic database occupying 10,000 sq ft will be housed on the seventh floor of Varnaparichay.

With a click of the mouse, readers will be able to access a staggering collection of books, journals, manuscripts and vital government records on history, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, Indology and sports. Around five million pages are being digitised.

“We will set up several computer terminals at Varnaparichay for people to access the e-library,” said Samar Nag, the managing director of Bengal Shelter Housing Development, which has commissioned the Rs 12 crore-plus project along with the South Asia Research Foundation (SARF).

The SARF committee, formed specially for the Varnaparichay e-library, has some of the top names from the academic world — Gowher Rizvi, former head of Ford Foundation’s South Asia operations, Gillian Evison, librarian of the Indian Institute Library at Oxford University, and Ashis Nandy of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, among others.

A team of policemen has also been handpicked to work in the tech hub. Special inspector general (presidency range) Somen Mitra said the officers are "young and smart". They have been specially trained to interact with techies, following "allegations of rough behaviour by policemen".

Moreover, a "high-speed" vehicle is being used for a month and a half to maintain vigil in the area, which is home to 200 IT and BPO offices.

After Delhi Public School, the South Point Education Society has said that by October it would launch an SMS-based communication system through which the parents will be updated about school activities and emergency holidays.

"The school will integrate an SMS software with its server, through which notifications will be sent to parents," confirmed Krishna Damani, spokesperson, South Point School.

Parents will be alerted not only about events like parent-teacher meetings but also about the emergency holidays in the school. The management will also introduce an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) facility on the school telecom system for those who do not have a mobile phone.

The Moon's eclipse would begin from 3 am and enter totality from 4.14 am with the `greatest eclipse' being at around 4.50 am, Director (Research and Academics) of M P Birla Planetarium here D. P. Duari said today.

The total eclipse would end by 5.27 am and the Moon would emerge around 7.53 am.

Sassen is the Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago and the centennial visiting professor at the London School of Economics. She has tried to explore the various facets of globalisation and has also coined the very concept of,global city.

The professor also expressed concern about the predicaments of globalisation,Globalisation has its ironic affects too. The positives of this process, however, is encouraging as it re-energises the entire society thus it gives a sense of economic dynamism. But there are two sides to this process of globalisation and the negative side cannot be ignored either.

Kolkata's public loos will never be the same after a designer toilet with its facade emulating the Sydney Opera comes up at Southern Avenue, opposite Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in Golpark. This is the Kolkata Municipal Corporation's New Year gift to the city.

The spherical-sectioned shells of Sydney Opera House remind some tourists of the flotilla of sailboats that dot Sydney Harbour, while some liken the gleaming white domes to the petals of a lotus. In fact, Sydney Opera's unique design has inspired the architecture of the famous Bahai temple in New Delhi, also called the Lotus Temple.

KOLKATA: Kolkata is all set to get a state-of-the-art knowledge hub on the lines of Silicon Valley. The project, pegged at Rs 1,000 crore, aims to match international standards for advanced scientific research.

San Tech Communication Inc - a firm owned by US-based NRI Santosh Mukherjee - will set up the hub known as San Tech Knowledge Valley.

"It's a fairly long 45 acre land located 15 km from the airport. We are in the process of acquiring the land. I have already discussed the plan with the state IT minister and he has shown great interest in the project. I have also sent a written proposal to the CM,"Mukherjee said.

Mukherjee will also call on President APJ Abdul Kalam in August this year to discuss the project. "I will meet the President to seek his expertise in technology. Once set up, the valley will generate employment opportunities for 10,000 people,"he said.

This club comprises fans who have managed to post their cyber presence in Sachin's inbox. The count -- now seven -- is kept by the man himself. And with more than 23,000 international runs under his belt, he sure knows how to count.

"...u r only the seventh fan in my whole career to mail me. But, must tell u that u r the first to mail me so rapidly. It's a great feeling when I realise I have fans like u...," Sachin wrote to the South Point cricket captain on February 16.

Early in February, 18-year-old Amartya stumbled upon the vital link -- the coveted email ID -- in the web world.