Apply online, get your voter ID in a month

Are you above 18 but not one among the voters? Do you want to avoid standing in long queues to apply for your voter ID? Here's an easy way.
Within two months, you can apply for your electoral photo identity card (EPIC) card online __ something as easy as booking an e-ticket. The move will cover 12 lakh voters in Bangalore who are above 18.

  "Karnataka will be the first state in the country to go online. With this, application for correction of name and age, and for addition and deletion of names from the list, can also be made online," Karnataka's joint chief electoral officer T Shamaiah told STOI.
Microsoft Corp and Tata Consultancy Services have provided technical support to the project.
Eligible voters can get EPIC within a month, as against nearly nine months now. "The move is to digitize the system and make it faster," said Shamaiah.
An applicant will get mobile updates on the status of her application.
Among Bangalore's voters, 70% have EPIC as against 94% in other districts. In Karnataka, 87% of the voters are EPIC holders.
HOW TO APPLY?
Log on to http://ceokarnataka.kar.nic.in, the official website of Karnataka's chief electoral officer, and click on the link for online Form 6 applications. Once name, email ID and mobile number are provided, a unique login number and password will be provided to a new user. The user will then have to log on with the provided login number and password, and fill Form 6 online. A scan of a passport-size photograph must be attached.
"Though the application can be filed online, hard copies of address proof and identity proof have to be sent to a nearby voters' facilitation centre. Booth-level officials will verify the documents and may conduct physical verification.... With this, the entire process of electoral identification can be done within a month. EPIC will be despatched to the applicant by post, or it can be collected from the booth-level office," Shamaiah said. Online submission of Form 6 will be enabled shortly.
ISSUES OF ADDRESS AND NAME
Names are a big issue in Bangalore, say election staff. "EPIC has to be in two languages. Mistakes occur when a name written in English is transcribed to Kannada, or vice-versa. Bangalore has migrants, and their names are tricky to be written in two languages. Besides, many Bangaloreans do not have address proof at all," Shamaiah said.
GET VOTER ID IN COLLEGE
To ensure that every citizen is armed with EPIC, Form 6 applications will be made available in all Bangalore colleges. "We are in talks with college principals to enrol their students,'' he said.

Read More

IIT-JEE 2012 online registration begins

Chennai: The online registration for the admission test (JEE) to the Indian Institutes of Technology began on Monday . IIT aspirants can log on to to the website to fill up the online application form .

This year there has been a change in the eligibility criteria for admission to the IITs.

Candidates must score at least 10% marks in each of the three subjects - physics chemistry and maths - and a minimum aggregate of 35% to figure on the common rank list. Till last year the minimum qualifying marks in JEE were worked out after calculating the average of the marks scored by all the candidates who wrote the exam.

Students can log on to the IIT website to fill up the form for JEE, which will be held on April 8 next year. Forms will be available over the counter only from November 11. The last date for registering online is December 10.

Read More

Motorola Droid Razr Review

The name conjures up a whole lot of emotions for many people, especially for those who owned or lusted after one in its lifetime. The Razr was a status symbol, a fashion icon and one of the most successful flip phones of all time, a title it holds till today. Of the many iterations that followed, none could recreate its success - but Motorola is trying yet again to change that, with the newest Razr, also called the Droid Razr or the XT910. 

The new Razr wears the name with pride. But why this comparison? After all, what could a phone launched in 2004 possibly have in common with an Android smartphone launched in 2011? For starters, like the original Razr, the Droid Razr is razor-thin. It also uses innovative materials (anodised aluminium then, Kevlar fibre and stainless steel now). And it was cutting-edge for its time (a really large and high-res screen, superlative performance and high durability).

Motorola has used a special water-resistant 'nano' coating - even the internals are protected. Motorola claims that the device should be able to take a little splash of water without any issues. And at 7.1 mm, it is impossibly slim. By comparison, Samsung's Galaxy S II is 8.5 mm, Apple's latest iPhone 4S is 9.3 mm while HTC's Sensation is 11.3 mm thick.

MotoRazr 2011

The super amoled screen is one of the most dazzling screens on any smartphone.

Thanks to the qualities of amoled, blacks are truly black and not a shade of grey The camera is super-quick, both while starting up and with shot-to-shot times. It can geo-tag photos, touch to focus, detect faces, stabilise shaky photos and shoot full HD video.

The 8 MP camera unit, 3.5 mm (headphone), micro HDMI and micro USB ports are on the top inside the 'hump' - a design highlight that dates back to the first Razr

It may be Kevlar, but it's not bullet proof. Kevlar enhances the 'premium-ness' of the device - plus it's surprisingly resistant to scratches, even from a knife Fitting all this impressive hardware into a shell that is mostly 7.1 mm thick is nothing short of an engineering marvel.

Even the non-user replaceable battery is wafer-thin. First phone to use Kevlar extensively

The thinnest smartphone at just 7.1 mm (original Razr was 13.9 mm)

Extensive use of glue to hold it together Water resistant internals (splash proof only) & stainless steel backbone

Specs

Quad band GSM, 3G, 4.3-inch super amoled touchscreen, 1.2 Ghz dual core processor, 1GB RAM, 8MP front, 1.3 MP front cameras, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi, GPS, 127 grams

Price: Rs 33,990

Ringing out competition

The new Droid Razr certainly has all the right ingredients, but it remains to be seen whether it will be able to recreate some of the success that the original Razr enjoyed. Motorola has some tough competition from HTC, LG and Samsung - all of whom already offer large-screened, dual-core Android superphones.

MotoRazr 2004

The 176 x 220 pixel, 2.2-inch internal screen was huge at the time. It was great for photographs and web browsing, thanks to the high resolution (for the time) The keyboard was etched from a single wafer of metal, with a cool blue electroluminescent backlight. It was figuratively and literally a cutting-edge design The all-aluminium outer panels meant that the Razr was always cool to the touch - it was one of the defining features of the phone

The outer screen was smaller and lower resolution, but it still showed a lot of information (including network name, signal strength, time and caller name)

At 13.9 mm, the Razr was the slimmest clamshell phone of its time. Save for the large hump at the bottom, the phone was an even thickness when flipped open

Specs

Quad band GSM with GPRS, VGA camera, Dual colour screens, 5.5MB total memory, Bluetooth, Mini USB, 95 gm

Price: Rs 8,000-15,000

 

Read More

iPhone 3GS price cut to Rs 19,990 in India

NEW DELHI: Yes, you read that right. According to cellphone dealers, Apple is "re-launching" its two-year-old iPhone at a price of Rs 19,990 in India. The move is likely to counter cheap Android smartphones that have flooded the market recently. This particular version of iPhone will come with 8GB internal storage.

 Manish Khatri, a mobile dealer in Mumbai, tweeted on Friday evening that shops had already received stock and the phone will be available from Saturday at the said price with one year official warranty. In Delhi too, several dealers said they had received stock of iPhone 3GS (8GB) on Thursday evening.
iPhone 3GS was originally released in June 2009. It has a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen (320 x 480 pixels) and is powered by a 600Mhz processor. However, as it happens in the case of Apple products, the hardware specifications can be misleading when it comes to performance and usability.
Apple's latest iOS version 4.3 supports iPhone 3GS and that makes the phone a worthy opponent to similarly-priced Android devices that have better hardware. Apple has also said that iOS 5 will work on iPhone 3GS though it is likely that not all features will be supported.
At the price of Rs 19,990, iPhone 3GS will directly compete with Samsung Nexus S, a phone that saw its price fall by over Rs 6,000 to touch Rs 19,999 a few weeks ago. Nexus S, which runs on Android 2.3 aka Gingerbread, has a 4-inch capacitive screen. It is powered by a 1Ghz processor, packs 512MB RAM and comes with 16GB internal storage.

Read More