I am pleased to inform you about the IndicThreads.com Conference On Java Technology 2007 that will be held on 26th and 27th October 2007 at Pune, India.

The conference is an independent event with indepth vendor-neutral technical sessions about Web Services, Ajax, SOA, EJB, Mashups, Frameworks, JSF, Data Caching, Dependency Injection, Patterns and various other aspects of Java software development.

The event is a gathering of the best Java brains in the business and a place to learn from technology thought leaders about the latest and greatest in Java technology. It is also a great place to network and meet like-minded people from across companies and industry segments.

Registrations for the IndicThreads.com Conference On Java Technology 2007 are open. Register now to grab the very early bird discount that closes on the 31st of Aug 07.

The conference website is http://conference.indicthreads.com. Do check it out.

Being the editor of IndicThreads and a speaker at the event, I certainly will be around at the conference. Look forward to seeing you there.

For reasons only known to the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), the PMC has now changed the official website from http://www.egovpmc.com to http://www.punecorporation.org and killed egovpmc.com.

PuneCorporation.org is definitely a better name than egovpmc, but why kill the established egovpmc.com? They could have just redirected to the new site. PMC also hasn’t shown the sense to buy the domain name PuneCorporation.com. So please note that http://www.punecorporation.org is the official site while PuneCorporation.com is a fake.

However if you are hoping to get some work done on the corporation site, it doesn’t matter if egovpmc.com or punecorporation.org is the official site, because both sites are currently not working.

I think it’s time to use the Right To Information and check which politician’s family member is minting money by bagging these contracts for the PMC websites and delivering rubbish in return.

IndicThreads.com invites submissions for the IndicThreads.com Conference On Java Technology 2007 to be held on 26th and 27th October 2007 at the Symbiosis Infotech Campus, Hinjewadi IT Park, Pune, India. The conference is the premier independent conference on Java technology in Asia and is the place to be, to learn the latest in the Java world while meeting with like-minded individuals from across the industry. You can find details of last year’s conference at http://conference.indicthreads.com

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“IT walon ney sab mehanga kar diya hai” said the travel agent after charging me a hefty sum for a Volvo bus ticket. Apparently it was peak season and any bus destination that was remotely interesting to the IT walas in Pune was selling at many times the normal rate. The agent was of the chatty kind and after inquiring about things ranging from the origins of my family to the reason for the trip, he said that the common Puneite won’t pay any amount that he asked for, but the IT walas blow money like crazy and will pay thousands without any hesitation. So naturally everything has become expensive.

IT people sure have made life difficult for most others. Few other industries can match the pay packets or the glamour associated with IT today. Take any product or service that would interest an IT professional and you would see that the price has at least doubled every 2 to 3 years …(Continued in the scanned article image on the left)

IndicThreads.com is currently running a Java code contest in association with Devsquare. As part of the contest a new question is presented every week. The Java code solution you provide is evaluated on various factors like code correctness, compliance with standards, coding efficiency, and coding productivity - and rated. The best entries win a book every week, music players every month and an iPod for the series. The questions deal with core java / servlets / jsp.

To participate, your web browser is all you require. No additional machine setup is required.

Try it out. Entry is free of charge and is open to Java developers from across the globe.

>> Click here to be a part of the contest

An article about how and why city administration should use new age mediums like the internet to communicate with citizens and manage the city.

Also a quick look at the recent PMC scheme about including citizen suggested projects in the city budget for 2007-08.

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The PMC recently invited development project proposals from the public. These projects were to be considered for inclusion in the PMC budget for the year 07-08. I checked the PMC website egovpmc.com for the necessary form, but the site was a disappointment. I later attended a meet on the topic organized by the Grahak Panchayat. The team of enthusiastic oldies volunteering work for the Panchayat provided more information and the requisite form.

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“Article about freedom on the Internet published in my bi-weekly column for the Maharashtra Herald daily newspaper.”

Orkut.com has been getting the Internet a lot of bad publicity of late. Orkut is a site where you can find old friends and make new ones. It has 1000s of communities and millions of active members. But this popularity has also made Orkut the favourite punching bag for the media today. It may be an obscure Orkut community that defames a national icon or some anti-Indian post on an Orkut forum, but it all becomes sensational news very quickly.

The reasons why we keep seeing these news are -
1) It’s very easy to find improper things on Orkut. If you spend 15 min on Orkut you will find somebody somewhere talking nonsense about some great man or saying things that might be offensive to someone.
2) Orkut’s popularity ensures that any Orkut news gets a lot of attention.
3) Orkut will always provide a steady stream of controversial news, as moderating Orkut is close to impossible.
So if a 24 hr news channel is short of news it can always pick something from Orkut or an offensive video from YouTube and blow the story out of proportion.

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Just browsed through PmtPune.org, the new official website of the Pune Municipal Transport (PMT). The site is impressive. Kudos to everybody involved in creating the site.

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egovpmc.com has been updated and it now provides for voter search. It however links to another site called pmcelection.com for the search. PmcElection.com in turn links to a site zpsatara.gov.in if you try to get voter details.

So things are a bit messed up but at least it works. Congratulations to the PMC for e-enabling the voter list.

• EGovPmc.com PMC Election Page
  
• Search Voter List (English)
• Search Voter List (Marathi)

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Ever wondered why apart from a handful of open-source events, no learning-oriented technology conferences happen in India?

We are mostly stuck with conferences that are promotional events or marketing shows with free 5-star lunch, goodies and t-shirts in return for spending hours listening to why company X’s product Y is the best and how company X’s products are changing the world.

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