Solar Powered ATMs to clean Drinking Water in Pakistan

Thirsty? Soon, you could be getting clean water from a solar powered ATM through the use of a smart card. The innovative solution is set to be launched in Punjab very soon.Physically, the machine is quite similar to an ATM. Occupying a space of two square feet, it can be used to claim a daily share of clean water through the use of a smart card.

It’s a prototype borne of the collaboration between Punjab Saaf Pani Company and the Innovations for Poverty Alleviation Lab (IPAL), a research center in Lahore. The water ATM is all set to be installed alongside water filtration plants in rural areas and the outskirts of major urban areas in Punjab.

Jawad Abbasi, program manager at IPAL, said:

The machine is designed to help the government cut water waste and ensure people have access to clean water. The innovative machines will help the government maintain a record of the exact quantity of clean drinking water being dispensed in a day in a specific locality, besides ensuring its quality. The quality and quantity of water being dispensed will be tracked in real time online through a central server.

The way the machine works is pretty simple. An audio message is played every time an ATM card is authenticated, you get two buttons for starting and stopping the flow of water and sensors keep a track of how much water has been dispensed and how much remains.

The first phase of the project will see Bahawalpur, Faisalabad and Rajanpur being fitted with water ATMs. These districts in Punjab are particularly known for water contamination issues. Per family, 30 liters of drinkable water will be available on a daily basis.

Jawad Abbasi said:

We are planning to install the machines at 20 filtration plants in the first phase that will benefit some 17,500 families. The organisation is seeking $23,500 in aid from the UK Department of International Development to put the prototype into production and install more of the dispensing machines at existing water filtration plants in Punjab.

The project was born out of a need for clean water for the masses. According to the Punjab Saaf Pani Company, in Punjab, which houses 98 million people:

• 13% people in rural areas have access to tap water
• 43% people in urban areas have access to tap water

Things don’t look better when you take the whole country into account. According to Pakistan’s national drinking water policy, 35% of the country’s population doesn’t have access to safe drinking water. Estimates for the diseases related to poor water sanitation and hygiene cost the economy over 112 billion every year.

35% of the Pakistan’s population doesn’t have access to safe drinking water

Keeping in mind the magnitude of the situation at hand, Punjab government has allocated 20 billion rupees to provide clean water to the people. The clean drinking water project aims to provide more than 35 million people with water in 2 years.

It’s one of the top priorities of the provincial government, to ensure provision of clean drinking water in each locality, as access to clean water is a fundamental human right. The clean water will be provided free of cost but beneficiary communities will pool money each month to pay for maintenance of the ATMs and filtration plants.

Water wastage is a huge issue and systems such as the water ATM, which is already being implemented in neighboring India, are critical to making sure we manage our resources properly.

According to Nazir Ahmed Wattoo, an environmental expert with the Punjab Organisation for Social Welfare, the real test will be whether the water dispensing centers are maintained and effectively monitored. He added that Pakistan needed to build new water reservoirs as well since the current water storage capacity is at 30 days, one fourth of what is needed.

via Tribune

Facebook Launches Instant Articles Here's Video

Facebook Launches Instant Articles by metrotopic

Online Shops Lie About Their Inventory and This is Killing E-commerce Industry in Pakistan!

How often have you come across a situation when you were told that the item you selected to purchase from an online store is actually out of stock? Or your order got notably late because of some procedural delays? Or that your order got cancelled altogether due to some system errors? If you’ve faced any of these situations, than you are not alone.A whole lot of consumers — who despite all the odds trust Pakistani online shops — undergo similar situations and their orders are either delayed or are never delivered. This can get uglier if you have paid in advance, such as through credit or debit cards because refund can take weeks, or even months.

Here is why it all happens:

Online shops lie. They lie about the items they display on their websites. They pose as if they are Walmart of Pakistan having thousands of items mentioned on their websites but in reality they don’t stock anything with them. I know a few stores that don’t stock a single item but their web-stores are filled with variety of products ranging from dresses to electronics to sports and medicine.

These huge looking online-shops buy products from open-markets only after an order is placed with them. This is how they avoid large-scale investments, which is wise, but this whole practice causes delays or cancellations and ultimately these shops earn disgruntled customers causing serious mistrust among the masses.

Majority of online-stores buy products from open-market only after an order is placed

One of my friend once ordered a  product from Daraz.pk, and paid with a credit card in advance. The order took more than 15 days instead of 4-9 days of advertised delivery time, which I believe is a deal breaker. Upon investigation we found out that Daraz actually had to order the product from Dubai and it took them over a week to have product with them to finally get it dispatched to the customer.

A similar situation arose just this week for Abdul Sattar Ansari who ordered one split AC (Air Conditioner) that was offered on promotion with 25% discount. Instead of getting the delivery of AC, he was instead told by Daraz that the order was cancelled due to a system error and his money (around Rs. 30,000) will be refunded.

After 15 days of initial payment, Mr. Ansari is still awaiting a refund and matter is reportedly yet not resolved. He is planning to sue to company for holding his payment for this long for no reason.

Daraz told me that delay in Mr. Ansari’s refund is due to banking procedures and it will be cleared as soon as it will be possible. But my real question that why a promotion was put online when Daraz didn’t have sufficient inventory went unanswered.

Daraz said that they are a marketplace and the vendor went out of stock when the promotion went viral. They had ultimately no stock and hence had to cancel orders.

Orders are cancelled or a different product is deliberately delivered when online stores can’t arrange ordered product from open market

Unfortunately, these incidents aren’t rare and aren’t specific to Daraz only. As I explained above, almost every online story tend to display products that they don’t have with them.

Since online stores have usually thousands of products listed with them on their websites, prices of several products go high and they find out about hiked prices only after getting the order when they go out to market to buy them. Instead of bearing the loss, online-shops tend of cancel the order altogether and whole exercise of fire-fight between store and customer is repeated.

Almost every online-store understands this and they know that their deeds have to be corrected but to win over competition they aren’t able to straighten their acts. In return, an already struggling industry is getting hurt and those select people who used to trust online shops are losing their faith too.

Lying about inventory to win-over the competition will one day kill the e-commerce industry altogether and these online shops won’t have any customers to tell a single lie.

Ufone to Charge WhatsApp Calls With Regular Data Tariffs

Ufone has decided to charge WhatsApp calls as per regular data tariffs, i.e. Rs. 20 for 1st MB and then 19 MBs free. Regular usage of WhatsApp will be charged from data bundles volumes as per routine. New pricing mechanism is effective immediately.WhatsApp calls, with all the amazing quality, have turned out to be a real threat for telcos, especially in developing markets where voice revenues are still notable and contribute a major share towards overall revenues of telecom operators.

Even worse for such telcos, WhatsApp calls work like a charm on 3G networks and this is exactly why Ufone has decided to charge WhatsApp calls as per regular data tariffs instead of bucket volume.

@ProPakistaniPK @Ufone is now charging #whatsapp voice calls as per standard 3g tariff #shameonufone pic.twitter.com/PuvnmiVDMz

— Muhammad Ashraf (@ashraf_dakhni) May 12, 2015

We anticipate that other operators, with exception of one or two, might follow Ufone.

Foodpanda launches Pakistan Food Festival 2015

Pakistan’s leading mobile and online food ordering platform foodpanda.pk has continued its digital food festival cycle by launching The Pakistan Food Festival this week.For the first time ever, the festival has been extended to seven days, commencing from 11th May to 17th May, 2015. More than fifty deals/discounts will be offered from an extensive range of 1,000+ restaurants across Pakistan.

On the announcement of this festival, Talha Ansari, foodpanda.pk Co-Managing Director shares,

“We have revived upon the unique idea of digital food festivals this month by making it even bigger and better than the previous campaigns enjoyed by our customers. The idea is not limited to deals and discounts. We aim to deliver the promised value added service”

PFF2015 is the eighth link in a chain of seven other festivals organized by foodpanda, which include The Great Karachi Pizza Festival, The Nationwide Fast Food Festival, The Chinese Food Festival, The Nationwide Pizza Festival, The New Year Carnival BestOf2014 and Food Jazba – a festival that was inspired by the Cricket World Cup.

foodpanda.pk co-MD Ahsan Mateen further adds,

“Our focus this festival is aligned two ways: one is to maintain consistency in innovative offerings and other to deliver best value for customer’s money. This festival will be a testimony of our profound service standards.”

Some of the biggest restaurants from Karachi, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Lahore are taking part. Household names such as KFC, Domino’s Pizza, 14th Street Pizza, New York Pizza, Red Apple, Subway, Golden Dragon, Broadway Pizza and many others have already confirmed their participation with exciting offers.

Other restaurants participating in the festival can be accessed by downloading foodpanda mobile app for Android, iOS and Windows Phone.

Transparency International Questions Govt Over Purchase Price of 400,000 Tablets

Transparency International has raised its concerns over Pakistan’s decision for purchasing 400,000 tablets at the rate of Rs. 51,640 per tablet in second phase of Prime Minister’s laptop scheme that will span over four years.Rs. 21.33 billion out of tax-payers’ money is allocated for the project that will allow government to give away 100,000 tablets to students each year for four consecutive years.

Transparency International, in a letter written to Prime Minister of Pakistan, said that the price approved by ECC for a similar specs tablet is way higher than the usual market.

TIP said that the amount of tablets that are being ordered should only reduce the price further.

As reported by Express Tribune, the Transparency International has said that the specifications of the ECC requires Window tablet that is rack priced of $179 at Walmart can be imported in Pakistan at cost less than Rs. 10,000 from the manufacturer and in case the quantity is 500,000 it is certain that the tablet can be imported at less than Rs 7,000 each.

Transparency International Pakistan is also concerned about procuring 400,000 tablets in a single go while the delivery is likely to span over 4 years, i.e. 100,000 tablets for each year. TIP said:

We do not agree with the ECC decision to award the contract with variable specification for four years, without knowing the specifications for the second, third and fourth year.

This approach, according to the TIP, is a serious violation of Public Procurement Rules (PPR) 2004, which requires exact specification to be provided to bidder.

Procurement of 400,000 laptops is going to be managed by HEC and tenders are already with the the commission that will open next week.

Facebook will be news platform starting this month

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Facebook users might soon start seeing Facebook hosted news content from major publishers directly in the news feed. The social network is reportedly in talks with publishers including Buzzfeed, the New York Times, National Geographic and several others to host their content on a new Facebook feature called Instant Articles. Instant Articles will bring complete news, articles and videos to a user’s news feed.Many publishers generally post links on to the network which has become an important source of online traffic for them. Accessing that content is generally a slow process that Facebook wants to improve with this feature. Instant Articles will bring a new feature to the social network that will allow news articles to be hosted on Facebook’s platform. This should, in turn, allow decreased loading times and increased engagement for articles that users view using the social network’s mobile platform.

The new feature is said to begin start rolling out this month.

Facebook users are soon going to experience Facebook hosted news content from major publishers directly in the news feed

Content publishers are cautious about having their content hosted by Facebook directly, but Facebook has reportedly been trying to negotiate a positive response from them.

“It’s not just about the bottom line,” said an executive of one publisher that has had discussions with Facebook. “Publishers will still want to defend other aspects of the business”. The social network is promising some publishers, up to 100 percent of their ad revenue from the articles. The report adds that content publishers do not need to pay the social network for hosting their content and is offering the publishers to keep all the revenue earned from ad sales on the hosted pages.

Select publishers who are partnering with Facebook for the project are promised 100% ad revenue

Under the offered revenue scheme, publishers will keep all of the revenue they generate from their ads while the social network will hold on to about 30 percent of the revenue generated through ads from articles that Facebook sells. Facebook is ready to give up some of the revenue so that it can motivate users to spend more time on the social network. Though, this will indirectly increase Facebook’s revenues as it increases its user engagement numbers who would normally head to an external link.

The list of launch partners is yet to be finalised but if deals do not materialise, Instant Articles could see its release date pushed back by a few weeks. The details regarding publisher’s control over their own content and the format of ads that will be employed in Instant Articles is still under question. The report mentions that the information comes from people close to the matter and that “they (Facebook) want to retain control over the user experience, as well as access to data on their readers”.

Source: WSJ, Demanjo

Again Pakistan: 6 Year Old Pakistani Boy Becomes The Youngest Microsoft Office Professional

Arfa Karim, the computer prodigy from Faisalabad, who at the age of 9, became the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional. Unfortunately, Arfa is no more with us, but there are more computer prodigies out there who are making their country proud.

Muhammad Humza Shahzad is one such young boy, who just bagged the title of being the youngest Microsoft Office Professional, at the age of 6. Humza currently lives in London with his parents, Asim Shahzad and Seemab Asim. Humza moved to England in 2011 when his father, Asim, got a job as a Senior Development Manager at a Multinational IT Company in London.

Microsoft Certification requires a candidate to score 700 points to clear the exam. Humza scored 757 points at the exam which he took at the Microsoft Institute in London.

Humza will be considered the youngest Microsoft Office Professional and second youngest Microsoft Certified Professional. The youngest Microsoft Certified Professional is also a Pakistani, Ayan Qureshi, who cleared the exam last year at the age of 5.

See also: Microsoft Tool Predicts Your Age & Gender From Your Photograph

The Microsoft Certified Professional Certification covers a broad range of Microsoft Technologies such as Windows installation, configuration, network management, etc. But what distinguishes Humza from other MCPs is his specialization in Microsoft Office Suite.

According to Microsoft, the candidate of this exam must be accustomed with the proper application of the primary features of MS Office Suite and demonstrate the same in the exam. The candidate must be able to use MS Office for various purposes such as editing 500-1000 words document, creating reports, making tables and multi-column newsletters to name a few.

Humza is a student of class one at a local school where his teachers are very proud of his achievement and still cannot believe that their pupil has cleared this exam. His father explained that previously MCP exams used to be very simple and MCQs based, but the format of exams have changed dramatically. Instead of MCQs, the candidates are asked to create a complete Word Project by applying various tools and techniques. The new exam format makes it difficult to pass the exam without having a complete grip on the product itself.

The champ’s parents told that it took more than 6 months to prepare their son for the exam and for them, the true inspiration was Arfa Karim. Humza started taking interest in technology when he was only 2 years old and got his first computer 6 months later. He has always been very observant in daily life from the start. He started solving complex puzzles at an early age. Not only that but he also has a remarkable academic record as well. His teachers also said that Humza was always the star child in his class.

Humza’s parents are overly joyed about their son’s achievement and they are glad that their son has achieved something that has a place in history at a very young age.

The prodigy not only made his parents, but the entire country proud. With so much bad press now a days, this is something that highlights the positive side of Pakistan.

iPhone 7 Parody Ad Sheds Light On Smartphone Addiction [Video]

If you take a ride on any subway, sit in a Starbucks coffee shop or just, simply, roam around most places, you’ll be sure to see folk completely transfixed to their smartphones, tablets, notebooks, and gadgetry in general. The Digital Age has a firm grip on most of us, and if you’re reading this article, there’s a good chance that it’s caught you too, but while most of us are – admittedly or in denial – smartphone-addicted, one iPhone 7 parody ad imagines a world in which we’re literally controlled by our devices.

The protagonist of the clip below is a lady whose iPhone has malfunctioned, but its glitches are represented by her flailing arm movements and involuntary bodily jerking. It’s almost as if she has been completely taken over by her device, and now that it’s not working properly, neither is she.

We won’t completely spoil what happens in the video below, since it’s well worth the watch, and while it may induce a chuckle or two, we’re laughing semi-seriously. The clip throws up a predicament that, could, one day in the distant future, actually become the norm, although let’s just hope that it doesn’t happen as quickly as with the iPhone 7.

Apple, like the rest of the mobile field, strives to improve its products with each and every new release, but while it’ll be interesting to see what kind of improvements will arrive later this year, we surely (read: hopefully) doubt that the parody concept video below is on the right track.

Created by Noka Films, the main aim is to make us realize the strong effect that digital products are having on our interactions, personalities, and general behavior – to the point that we’re essentially under control. As I mentioned earlier, most of us are now head-down, eyes glued to the display wherever we may go, and it’s rather ironic that on the one-year anniversary of the Look Up videogoing viral, we should once again be reminded that the smartphone is something we obsess over far too much.

Take a look at the video below, and let us know what you think by dropping us a comment via the usual mediums.

Download Microsoft Office 2016 Public Preview For Windows

Microsoft has released its next-gen Office 2016 suite as a public preview. Office 2016 is promising a bunch of new changes and is on the road to bring new features to a wider audience so that the software giant can polish their software even further before pushing the button for the final consumer release.

While Microsoft continues to make changes and adjustments to the new Office apps, the company had released some of them on the Windows 10 Technical Preview as well and made them available as the IT Pro and Developer Preview. Microsoft has admitted that while the company makes some serious across-the-board changes to its approach to the software business, Office itself remains central to the company’s strategy.

“Today we’re expanding the Office 2016 Preview, making it available to Office users everywhere in preparation for general availability in Fall 2015,” said Jared Spataro, General Manager for the Office marketing team. Given Spataro’s comments, users should be expecting the productive suit of apps to be hitting their PCs some time in Q4 of 2015 this year. However, the biggest question that remains, is what makes this new Office different from the ones preceding it.

We’ve known for a while about the more publicized and talked about features of Office 2016 which happens to be cloud access for creating documents but extended to editing and creation on the cloud server as well. For now, consumers are able to simply save their Office documents to OneDrive. Microsoft is also pitching in with some Google styled real-time co-authoring as well which is the one feature that will really help Office 2016 gain more traction in a market that is budding with near-similar free apps.

Other new additions to the suite are a bunch of smart features that tend to adapt to users’ patterns over time. A new ‘Tell Me’ feature for example, let’s you simply type in what you want to do and it will be done. It will be interesting to see just how much this feature can accomplish given its relatively open-ended command acceptance. ‘Clutter’ smartly studies your emailing patterns and will keep your mailbox organized and free of, well, clutter. ‘Insights’ is a Bing powered contextual search feature that will allow users to search and add information to their document without having to leave it.

You can download the Office 2016 Preview from here.

Vote for Pakistani Team in NASA’s Space Apps 2015 Challenge!

NASA’s Incubator Innovator Program is held annually, inviting individuals from all over the world to participate and design world-class apps for the space age. The event was attended by people from 133 countries, with as many as 949 projects to be showcased. A Pakistani team also participated. And that is not all.

This program is held in many locations all over the world. In Pakistan, it was held at the Institute of Space Technology, Islamabad. It is here that two projects from Pakistan were selected, from the grand total of 949 projects globally. The projects name? M-GLOVE and RRC.

RRC was developed by a software duo from Lahore. They work at Coeus Solutions GmbH. Naveed Ahsan is one half of the duo, doing his Masters in IT from Punjab University College of Information and Technology. Zaki Shaheen is the other half, a Computer Science graduate from FAST NU, Islamabad. Together they developed ReMoReboCon, which is an app that controls the simulation a robotic arm for astronauts in space.

Their project will go on to be used in NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory, if they win enough votes in the People’s Choice award.

The news of a Pakistani team’s project making the top 10 in this prestigious competition is a great achievement in itself. Amidst the doom and gloom in our country, such an example shows that we have the brains and talent to compete with the best.

To vote for their project, simply visit here to cast your vote here. What do you think of this achievement? Sound off below.