Traffic Tamasha.. (Odd/Even Rule ??)

That Bengaluru is a genuine Garden City is a known & well-accepted fact, with adequate number of parks set everywhere and the wisest decision taken ever - retaining all those good old trees along the roads! But how long this city is going to inspire its inhabitants is a million-dollar question. With congestion developing all over the city and every possible space knit with flyovers, congested roads turning into a candidate for the highly popular one-way philosophy & over 200 new vehicles hitting roads everyday adding up to the already fragile network of roads (one-ways I would rather call them!), I see this cosmopolitan city inching towards a deadend !

Gone are the days when motorists stuck to the roads & traffic signs, new axioms have now emerged - follow the road when the signal shows green, follow the footpath when the signal shows red! The inventor of this new style of driving deserves sheer appreciation. Dangling up & down between the pavement & the road when the signal toggles, these prank loving auto-geeks make it miserable for a typical 'sadhu' driver to move ahead peacefully.

Traffic jams have become inevitable part of the daily life - I have seen the worst ones materialize and worsen in Airport Road and Outer-Ring Road (to mention just a few), wherein vehicles stay lined up for hours together without batting an eyelid. The capacity of roads in Bangalore is in total disproportion to the exorbitantly high number of vehicles plying, thus flushing out traffic from a junction or a signal is not a cakewalk. Statistics reveal that every km road has about 714 vehicles, hence proving that traffic density in bangalore is greatest. Read this wonderful post on Bangalore Jams.

The City Traffic Police has come up with a novel (thoroughly debatable though!) idea of introducing the alternate day system to reduce the congestion on roads (Source: Times of Indian, Jan 13). This rule will allow vehicles ending with odd and even registration numbers, respectively, to ply on alternate days. This means a vehicle owner takes out his/her vehicle on alternate days. By doing so, 30% reduction in the traffic is targeted. Government & Public Transport would be however exempted from this rule. Besides crunching the traffic down massively (a 30-50% decrease == massive), it would reduce pollution and promote use of public transport. But, again these are days of nanos and so if this rule gets a permanent nod, car buyers could go for two nano's (with odd & even registration respectively) thereby, not falling prey to the govt ;) Its now left to the govt to decide within a month's time whether the rule is to be approved or not. Meanwhile its a sit-n-debate time for the audience.

The govt could also take some time off and take some sane decisions regarding widening roads (esp because most of the roads are reported to be surrounded by ditches and wastelands) and limiting the number of vehicles being registered perday/perperson or whatsoever.


Other links I hit upon:
Driving India is a site dedicated to provide Driving Education to people.

Apple releases MacBook Air !

Apple unleashed yet another revolutionary gizmo of its world on Tuesday - "MacBook Air". Delivering the keynote address at the Macworld Expo (I would recommend you to watch this out!), CEO Steve Jobs introduced this phenomenal laptop to the world as "the world's thinnest laptop", probably only comparable to Sony's TZ Ultraportable but ruling it out on "thickness" grounds !

I particularly was impressed by the way he pulled out his MacBook Air out of an envelope & held it at the audience, advocating - "you can get a feel of how thin it is !". Sporting a silvery finish, the MacBook Air features a 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display that has a 1280 x 800 pixel resolution. The backlighting saves power and provides "instant on" response from the moment you turn it on, according to Jobs. The MacBook Air also features a built-in iSight webcam and a full sized MacBook-style black keyboard. The keyboard is backlit, similar to MacBook Pros, and has an ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts brightness. The MacBook Air trackpad has something termed as "Multi-touch gestures", which are an extension of the conventional gestures built-in in some standard laptops and ofcourse the iFone !
For instance, one trackpad gesture could be 'moving your finger clockwise on the trackpad to rotate an image clockwise!!'

Air has relied on an 1.8-inch hard disk drive with 80GB of storage capacity standard, with a optional 64GB solid-state disk (SSD) drive, which Apple indisputably relies upon having shipped tens of millions of such miniscule harddisks for its iPod devices. 'But the real magic is in the electronics' - remarks Jobs. Its a complete Mac (all the electronic circuitry) on a board that's just as long as a pencil. It uses Intel Core 2 Duo processor @ 1.6GHz (and optional 1.8GHz).

Turning to the networking dimensions, the Air has its most advanced 802.11n-based wireless networking support and Bluetooth + EDR. Jobs claims that with wireless networking turned on, one can get about 5 hours of battery life.

Jobs is pricing the Air at $1799, its shipping set to commence in two weeks.

For more details and a visual experience of the Air take the Guided Tour !

Other stuff worth heeding to:
Xavier Lanier's 'how-the-laptop-looks-like-in-the-real-world' video
What Sony thinks of MacBook Air

Misty Monday Morning !

This morning was undoubtedly the best ones I have seen in Bangalore, with weather striking perfection. The 17 degrees Celsius Bangalore was clad in cent percent concentrated fog that hovered over every possible corner. As I stepped into the big busy Sony World Signal @ Koramangala, I was only astounded to realize that this junction that saw scores of cabs pass by every morning was literally invisible. Now, this is what I call Zero-Visibility! Company Cabs crawled through the whiteness, headlights on while people standing around waiting for their's marvelled at the meteorological spectacle.

Desperate to ensnare the bewitching weather, I shot a few glimpses of this delightful ambience enroute to my office, resonating between the window seats of my bus. I wondered how my driver managed to creep through, with absolutely nothing to see ahead. Such was the terrific fog that the huge Ecospace building (that housed Accenture) and the entirety of Intel Campus went completely untraceable from the Outer Ring Road. And if the reader wishes to get a hands on experience of this, I would suggest him to buzz by the 500 mt stretch of Sarjapura Road at Agra, wherein the entire space behind the Lemon Grass Restaurant remains disguised in fog, most of the days.

For those who missed out, here's the experience :

(P.S. Special thanks to my friends for their mobile cam's)

(NOTE:: Technical error caused this post to be dated SUNDAY Jan 13, though it has been posted today ie. MONDAY, Jan 14)

LakhTakia gets a rapturous welcome !

Keeping up his promise made 4 yrs ago to deliver a "people's car", Ratan Tata unveiled this Rs 1 Lakh car christened Nano, that's being nick-named "LakhTakia" because of its "One Lakh Price Tag".

Nano comes with a Rear mounted all aluminium 2-cylinder 623cc petrol engine, promising a mileage of 20 km/litre and surprisingly meets all emission/safety standards. Though it is 8% smaller than the revolutionary Maruti-800, it is claimed to be 21% more spacious from inside. Initially, the car will have 3 variants, a Standard Model costing 1 Lakh & 2 luxury(deluxe) ones that would be slightly costlier than its standard counterpart. More variants would be gradually introduced, including one with a Diesel engine.

Technologically speaking, Nano has staged a milestone for not just Indian automobile industry but even the Global auto sector by providing the cheapest conveyance for just $2500, whereas in US the cheapest car comes in a price range of $10,000 - $15,000.

Key Features of TATA Nano:
* Smaller than Maruti 800 in length, more spacious inside.




* Dealer price of Nano - Rs 1 lakh,VAT and transporation cost extra.

* Nano meets emission norms : Bharat III and Euro 4. In safety norms, Nano is equipped with crumple zones, intrusion resistant doors, seat belts, strong seat anchorages & has passed the full frontal crash test.

* Minimal instruments (speedometer, fuel guage & oil light), single windshield wiper.
* Front luggage compartment that holds a battery, windshield washer container and enough space for a SINGLE SUITCASE.
* No radio, air conditioning, power steering or power windows available in the Standard Model.

However, there's leading concern among the Environmentalists that on gaining victory, Nano might clog the Indian roads & add up to the already soaring pollution levels.

Whether Nano makes its mark in the auto-industry & wins the hearts of the Indian population or goes down as another sober design model remains to see !!

Why product testing is so important !