Another DP .. Another attempt to Kill the City's Lungs - The Hills of Pune..

If you have been reading the papers at all, you will know that another Draft DP is out & our Great City Planners have done an "awesome" job by planning roads over & under the hills. Not only that they have also planned an Amusement park near the Vetal Tekdi Quarry.

Its time to once again Show our elected representative what the People of Pune really want.. Please don't ignore this & please take this small step to help ourselves & our future generations. 

Quick overview for whats in store for our city. 

The draft Development Plan for Pune 2007-2027 had the following proposals in store for the Tekdi - 

• Three roads - two on the Law College hill, from Paud Phata to Senapati Bapat Rd and one from Panchavati/NCL up to the top near the Quarry
• An amusement part at the top, somewhere in or near the Quarry
• Two tunnels connecting Gokhalenagar to Kothrud and to Panchavati.

All these have been planned quite arbitrarily without any Environmental Impact Assessments, Detailed Project Reports or Traffic studies. If implemented it will mean the end of the tekdi as we know it.Developers and contractors have been hovering over this prime piece of land like vultures for years and this DP has given them a golden opportunity to sweep in.
It is up to those of us who cherish the peace and serenity of the tekdi to protect it from this rapacious 'development' which will inevitably bring with it vehicular traffic, noise, pollution, littering, encroachment by hawkers and safety issues. 
Citizens of Pune have the right to file suggestions or objections to the DP. The last date for submission of the letters is 26th April 2013

Note that the date has been extended by 60 Days now.. But to be safe, submit your objections before 15th June !

Act Now ! 

A. Collect & Submit Objections from your Locality (Physical /Offline) 

1. Download and print the letter. 
2. Collect as many signatures as you can on it (names and detailed addresses must be written clearly) 
3. Submit the signed letter(s) to any of the following collection points BEFORE 24th April. 

Collection Points / Key People

Swati Pednekar (9823098017) who will be waiting on the central benches in Kamala Nehru Park between 7 and 9 am on Sunday 21st April
Abhijit Athavale who will be in the Athale Pavilion, Deccan Gymkhana Club at the foll. times

1. M/W/F: after 7pm 
2. T/T/S: After 7:30pm

Anand Shoppe - Bhandarkar Rd opp the Skoda Showroom
Lokmanya Hospital - Karve Rd, behind Ranka Jewelers
Dr Sushma Date - 9822061155
Anil Kelkar 98908826454.

Paranjape Vison Care. Opp Venus Traders, FC Road. 

Direct Submission at PMC : Room 110, 1st Floor, PMC building before 26th April

B. Online Submission of Objections with Signature
In case its impossible for you to submit a physical objection, we have made an online form available where you can submit your objections. Note that we prefer an offline physical objection.

Steps to Submit your Objection Online

1. Go to : https://signnow.com/s/ZC435T

2. There it will as you to Register entering your email & a password

3. It will show you a form which you can sign online..  

Please forward this to your friends as well & help spread the word.We need serious numbers once again to help us succeed.  Every signature makes a difference!

Methi (Fenugreek) Corn Paneer Rice thanks to Subha Ajji !

Awesome Recipe thanks to Subha Ajji (granny). Executed by Himangi !

Ingredients

1 cup Methi ( Fresh green Fenugreen) washed and cut finely
1 cup boiled Corn
1/2 cup onion finely chopped
1 cup paneer cut into corn sized pieces
3 cups boiled rice pulao style
Paste of fresh green chili and garlic 1 tsp

Procedure

Heat Oil in Pan.
Add Jeera (cumin seeds).
Add onion and fry for 1-2 mins.
Add chili Garlic Paste and fry .
Add Methi and fry for a couple of mins.
Add boiled corn and fry for a min.
Add salt as per taste and mix well.
Add the rice and mix well.
Cover it with a lid and steam for 4-5 mins on a low flame.
Finally add 2 tsp desi ghee ( sajuk tup) or butter, mix and cover with a lid.
Serve Hot.

Technology@work

This has been a pending blog for months now ! Just discovered the draft on my phone so here goes :-)

On a client visit to Vashi a month or so back, we went out for lunch at a nearby food mall. What was awesome was that the guy doing the billing gave us a square blue device with the bill and asked us to be seated.

As soon as our order was ready, the device lighted up and started vibtating ! All we had to do now was go and pick up our order.

It was great to see tech@work !

The Ultimate SEO Challenge : SEO for Indian Languages - Hindi, Marathi in Devnagri and other scripts

Seo and indexing for Marathi, Hindi sites is one of the biggest challenges that both site owners as well as Search engines will have to figure out as more and more Native language sites make their entry on the Indian Internet landscape.

As India experiences its Internet and ecommerce boom, native language content is going to play a huge role in reaching to the grassroots.

And Search Engines like Google will be the obvious gateway for all this new content to reach users besides the impact that social media will have.

SEO for native languages in non latin scripts is definitely possible and major search engines are already indexing this content without any problem.

The unique problem is India is that though al.most everyone will read content in Indian languages, a dismally low percentage of users types in these languages while searching..

What users type while searching is either in plain english or the phonetic equivalent of their native language in a latin script like english.

We don't know yet if google knows this and takes care of it on their end. We haven't found anything concrete yet to suggest this. But it definitely would be awesome if they did...

While studying this unique problem, we have come up with several possible solutions that could do the trick.. but none are without their flaws.

This is a new ground and things are still in flux. We will need to evolve at a fast pace as everthing else does with seo and techlology in general.

The Possible Solutions

Transliterated Content summary
Provide phonetically transliterated content against actual native language content so that what search engines will index.

Or automatically provide a full transliterated version of the original content.

Hiding this from end users would be ideal but google is known to penalise such actions. So hiding would be a risk.. but showing to end users aslo wouldn't be a good idea.. so take your pick..

Providing Language tags

Using language tagging to let search engines know what language your site is using. This is a general muntilingual seo point though... not specifically significant in the Indian context.. but useful and required none the less..