Imagine this: You have just stepped off a plane, and the first ring from your cellphone (after it is switched on that is), is not from your wife or girlfriend (or husband or significant other to be PC), but from your phone itself. What am I talking about here? Well, it’s this new technology in your handset that tells you that the air quality at your destination is very bad for your asthma or allergy. It essentially gives you the cue to take your meds. Now this technology is in very early stages yet. Gentag, its inventor, has just been issued a patent in the US for its "Method and Apparatus for Wide Area Surveillance of a Terrorist or Personal Threat."

According to Gentag, handset makers who employ the new technology can programme their devices to detect virtually any kind of chemicals in the environment, from pollen and carbon monoxide to the noxious gases dispersed by criminals or terrorists."Gentag’s broad patent covers the uses of personal wireless devices such as cell phones, PDAs, pagers, or watches as low-cost customisable wireless-sensor readers to detect external environmental threats for consumer, industrial, and government applications," it says.

A particular focus of this particular technology is to allow individuals with multiple chemical sensitivities to customise and train their cell phones to recognise specific chemicals that cause person-specific allergies in order to help reduce asthma attacks or chemically induced allergies worldwide.

Femtocells on upsurge

While, by 2011, shipments of dual-mode (cellular/voice over Wi-Fi) wireless handsets will be well in excess of 300 million worldwide, the arrival of femtocell access points may prove disruptive for the market. Femtocells provide extremely limited cellular coverage. They are like picocells, but smaller. Handsets based on the 802.11n protocol will outnumber those of other protocols in those 300 million shipments. Why? "Cellular handset vendors have made sure that their voices have been heard in the 802.11n standards process, so they are getting all the optional features that they want," says ABI Research. Wi-Fi enabled handsets, however, may have to compete with the upcoming opportunity of femtocells, the new, small cellular base stations.

"As frequency reuse issues are resolved, femtocells will provide some counterbalance to the trend towards dual-mode handsets," the research firm says. "Some operators now believe that they don’t need to subsidise more expensive Wi-Fi-enabled handsets; they can use the handsets they have, and put femtocells in the home."

That would certainly slow down the VoWi-Fi market’s momentum,

but UMA is moving forward nonetheless, it concludes.

WITH newly merged nagarpalikas in AMC, one would expect the civic body to rake in more moolah from the commercial and posh residential structures, and also scores of shopping malls in the areas but that doesn’t seem to be the case. For these commercial complexes are paying what they used to pay to the nagarpalikas— a paltry property tax. And they are likely to get away with it. In fact many of them have paid tax in advance to avoid higher tax liability later, confirm sources in the AMC.

Officials agree that ideally they should be made to pay the property tax as per the new valuation formula with effect from the date of merger of the nagarpalika areas.

However, all depends on the issuance of a notification from the State Government about the date of implementation of new rates and new valuation. As of now, there is nothing of the sort in sight, they say. Municipal Commissioner I P Gautam said on Wednesday that this and other issues pending resolution between AMC and AUDA would be sorted out shortly in a joint meeting of officials of AMC and urban development department.

He said that in the absence of a clearance from the government and pending finalisation of valuation of properties in these areas, mall owners and others were allowed to pay up the tax as per the rates fixed by the then nagarpalikas. He said the AMC was looking to house a new zonal office, in the western city area, to run administration of the merged areas of the west.

Source: Expressindia.com