Free social media coming to an end?

Meta is rolling out globally paid subscription plans for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. From anonymous Story viewing and custom chat themes to next-generation AI "thinking modes," the social media giant is majorly shaking up its business model.

But don't panic just yet; the free versions aren't going anywhere, at least for now.

The video below gives a breakdown of what these new 'Plus' and 'Meta One' plans will mean for the users.

India and Denmark: A tale of two very different postal systems

I was at the General Post Office (GPO) in Bengaluru yesterday to send a few picture postcards. Why I was sending postcards is a story for another blog post! 

There were quite a lot of customers there waiting to get various postal tasks done. Even at my local neighbourhood post office, often there are so many customers that I have to wait for at least 15 to 30 minutes just to reach the counter!

This crowd is quite remarkable considering we live in an era where most people prefer email or messaging apps to the physical letter.

END OF A 400-YEAR-OLD PRACTICE

No more letterboxes in Denmark
 - The Guardian/Liselotte Sabroe/EPA

While standing in that queue at the GPO, I was reminded of Denmark’s state-owned operator, PostNord, abolishing its 400-year-old postal delivery system for letters on 30 December 2025. It is the first and, so far, the only country to do so.

The reason? Obvious. A staggering drop in mail volume made the traditional "snail mail" economically unviable.

THE DIGITAL MAILBOX

I was curious to know how a society functions without a physical letterbox! After all, it wasn’t that no physical letters were being sent. Still, many official documents are sent physically rather than electronically. So, I did some quick research.

Denmark has been planning this transition for a long time, meticulously building a sophisticated digital replacement. Today, every Danish resident has a mandatory "Digital Post" mailbox linked directly to their national digital ID (MitID).

This isn't like our common email systems that are usually cluttered with spam and marketing. It is a secure, legally binding government portal. 

When a hospital, a tax authority, or a local municipality sends a notice to this box, it is legally considered "delivered" the moment it lands in the receiver’s inbox. It places the responsibility on the citizen to check their digital mail, just as we would check our physical gate for a letter. 

There are exceptions; if someone is too old or not electronically savvy, the documents are still physically sent to them. 

Any readers of this blog post from Denmark, or those familiar with this electronic model, may please let us know, in the comment section below, how well the system is working.

THE INDIAN CONTRAST

The General Post Office, Bengaluru.
Wikimedia Commons

Back here in India, the scenario is not very different when it comes to mail volume. Whenever I go to a post office, I notice that most of the people who are in the queue aren’t there waiting to buy inland letters, envelopes, or stamps like me.

India Post has totally repurposed the system, and today it has become a sort of banking behemoth!

Millions here rely on the post office for the Public Provident Fund (PPF), various savings certificates, and senior citizen schemes; all of them offer very good interest rates on deposits.

Also, while "ordinary" mail has died, Speed Post has boomed. That’s the preferred choice now for sending important documents. The article in transit can be tracked online.

(On 1 September 2025, India Post even did away with the nearly 50-year-old system of Registered Post, as most people were using the more efficient Speed Post system.)

THE HANDWRITTEN WORD

This is quite a fascinating study in evolution! While Denmark viewed the physical postal service as unviable and digitised the letterbox, India viewed its network as a vital infrastructure asset and repurposed it for financial inclusion and modern logistics.

This makes me wonder about the future of the handwritten word.

When was the very last time you sat down, wrote a physical letter, went to a post office, stuck a few stamps, and dropped it into that red pillar box?

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Why 'The Washington Post' lay-offs matter

Today's edition of
The Washington Post

I learnt about what happened at The Washington Post through a notification on my mobile about Ishaan Tharoor's post on X.

(Ishaan Tharoor is an American journalist who worked for The Time and later for The Washington Post. He is also the son of Shashi Tharoor, a former Indian diplomat who served as the Under-Secretary-General at the UN, and is currently an Indian politician representing the Congress party in the Lower House of Parliament.)

I have been laid off today from the @washingtonpost, along with most of the International staff and so many other wonderful colleagues. I’m heartbroken for our newsroom and especially for the peerless journalists who served the Post internationally — editors and correspondents…

— Ishaan Tharoor (@ishaantharoor) February 4, 2026

Approximately one-third of the newspaper's workforce was laid off. More than 300 journalists in total. The standalone sports section and the Book World section are gone. 

Foreign bureaux across Asia (including the one in New Delhi) and the Middle East are shut. The metro desk, once 40 reporters strong, has been reduced to a dozen. 

The daily flagship news podcast, Post Reports, has been suspended, and deep cuts made to the photography and design departments.

Executive Editor Matt Murray described the move as a "strategic reset" to ensure long-term survival amid falling subscriber numbers and competition from AI-led news aggregation. Shortly after these cuts, on February 8, CEO Will Lewis resigned from the paper. 

Pranshu Verma's last story for The Washington Post 
from New Delhi in the February 3 edition.

JOURNALISTIC HIGHS

Think of The Washington Post, and it's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who come to mind. These two young reporters, in the 1970s, began investigating what looked like a minor burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex.

One lead led to another. They didn't give up. Ably backed by their editor Ben Bradlee and publisher Katharine Graham, the two uncovered a massive conspiracy -- which came to be known as the Watergate Scandal -- that went all the way to the White House. President Richard Nixon had to resign in 1974.

Easily one of the best works in journalism ever. It is all well chronicled in the book All The President's Men, and also in the film by the same name. The book is available on Amazon and the film is available on YouTube.

In fact, the 1970s were the golden years for the Post. Only a few years earlier, it had published, defying government pressure, the Pentagon Papers — a top-secret U.S. Department of Defense report on the Vietnam War. (The New York Times also published them.)

OWNERSHIP CHANGES

Founded in 1877, The Washington Post struggled financially for decades. Then, financier Eugene Meyer purchased it in 1933. Under Meyer and his successors, particularly his daughter Katharine Graham, the Post became a sort of role model for journalists around the world.

For 80 years, the Post was run by the Meyer-Graham family. It prioritised its mission over short-term profits, took risks, and invested in expensive investigations.

Then came the internet and social media in the late 1990s and 2000s, impacting newspapers. They changed entirely the way people consumed news, but more importantly, how much they were willing to pay for it.

With print advertising collapsing and circulation dropping, even the Meyer-Graham family's wealth couldn't insulate the Post from being affected.

In 2013, the family made a momentous decision. They sold The Washington Post to to Nash Holdings, a holding company owned by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, for $250 million.

It was sad. But there was some hope. Because Bezos was one of the richest in the world and he understood technology in ways that traditional publishers didn't. Maybe he had the solution on how to make journalism financially viable in the digital age.

That hope wasn't misplaced. The paper invested heavily in digital infrastructure, and it saw an increase in subscriptions.

But that didn't last long. The Post simply couldn't find its way forward in this modern tech-driven media world. Revenes and circulation began to fall.

COST OF RUNNING A NEWSROOM

Quality journalism is very expensive. You need a big team of journalists. They need to be paid their salaries, as well as travel and boarding expenses if they have to go outstation. Maintaining a bureau abroad is even more expensive.

A newsroom needs a big team of copy editors to work on the reporters' copy, correct errors, and fact-check; lawyers to review possible defamatory claims; photographers and videographers; digital teams to work on video and audio, to build and maintain websites, apps, and social media streams.

It is all very cost-intensive.

Now, if there is a layoff, that means fewer journalists will have to handle a bigger volume of work. That means quality declines.

COLLAPSE OF MONOPOLY AND REVENUE MODEL

Those were the days when everyone turned to newspapers for everything — both readers as well as advertisers.

If you wanted to buy a car, sell a house, or find a job, you looked advertisements. If you wanted to know what was happening in your city or the world, you bought a newspaper. Publishers charged advertisers a hefty sum.

The internet completely destroyed this model. Advertisers don't need newspapers. They send their messages directly to their specific target audience for free, or maybe a fraction of the cost.

News too comes free. Why buy a newspaper when you can get news from several newspapers online virtually at no cost?

Social media has only made things worse. Very few people now look for, or read, or listen to news. They just discover it (mainly clickbait stories) on algorithm-powered platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, etc. And of course, there are "very credible" WhatsApp forwards from unknown people too!

While these tech companies make money, the actual sources of news (the media organisations) on these platforms get virtually nothing.

Now with artificial intelligence, you don't even click on news links to read a story. The AI reads a vast amount of articles on a particular subject for you and gives you a well-drafted summary! So, now, even the clicks are gone!

In short, the business model that sustained journalism for more than 100 years has simply collapsed.

WORLDWIDE PHENOMENON

The Washington Post isn't the only organisation going through this phase. The Los Angeles Times had multiple rounds of layoffs. NBC News, CBS News, etc., have all reduced their staff.

The Evening Standard in London, a newspaper with almost 200 years of history, in 2024 converted its newspaper from a daily format to a weekly format due to financial constraints, and in the process laid off 150 employees, including many journalists.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Radio Canada announced in 2023 that they would eliminate approximately 600 jobs and not fill 200 existing vacancies, because of financial constraints.

It's not just legacy print media. Even digital media organisations are cutting staff. In 2023, BuzzFeed shut down its news division, and Vice Media filed for bankruptcy.

In India too, almost all big media houses have seen layoffs over the past several years.

IT'S NOT ALWAYS ABOUT MONEY

Journalism is not marketing or sales. Work cannot be quantified. It's never about numbers.

This is probably the only industry where the product (the newspaper/magazine) is sold at a price far lower than the cost price.

Most media organisations have always struggled to make ends meet. They survive mostly by cross-subsidising (the profits from a successful product/service are used to offset the losses of another).

WHITHER JOURNALISM?

The reasoning behind the The Washington Post layoffs is that because of shrinking revenues, the Post wants to focus now on fewer areas (mainly Washington and the rest of the US) rather than cover everything around the world.

To be fair, Jeff Bezos has every right to run the paper the way he wants. If he wants to take the Post in a totally different direction, that's entirely his call.

But what is worrying is the broader impact on journalism.

Since anyone with an internet connection can now post any information in the public domain, the definition of news itself seems to have changed. In fact, unverified and sensational information has a higher likelihood of being passed around as news.

Very few people are interested in a balanced and well-rounded coverage of an issue. People want only information that aligns with their own line of thinking. They are lost in the comforts of the echo chamber. Contrarian views are usually rubbished and dismissed contemptuously.

Democracy requires an informed citizenry. When newsrooms shrink, many important news events aren't covered. Even if they do get covered, it is not comprehensive work. The space for informed public debate also shrinks.

Journalism is not public relations. Journalism is about looking at all aspects of an issue. It's about debates covering diverse perspectives. It's about uncomfortable truths. It's the Fourth Estate (the others being the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary).

So where does journalism go from here?

There are no easy answers, because we're in a period of painful transition. One, the old business model is dead and the new model hasn't yet emerged. Two, public relations and sensationalism are increasingly mistaken for journalism.

Media houses are experimenting with different revenue models. One is the subscription model; either the whole website is behind a paywall, or a part of it is. Newspapers and magazines are increasing their cover prices.

Another is having non-profit ownership, wherein there is no pressure on the media house to generate returns for the investors or owners.

There is a lot that the news-reading public can do as well.

One, pay for good journalism. 

Two, never forward or put into the public domain information that is unverified or speculative.

Three, don't just read the headlines and short summary. Read the whole story.

Four, remember the value of journalism — it is too precious to be allowed to die.

Canon, Cannons, and AI

I am fascinated by museums. Whenever I visit a new place, I make it a point to find out if there are any museums and try to visit them. 

Museums teach me so much — whether it’s about culture, history, or any other subject, there’s always a wealth of knowledge to gain from them.

I’m planning a trip to Thane, a city in the Navi Mumbai region. So I looked into whether there are museums there. 

I consulted a few AI platforms. There are so many now: Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, and Meta AI, to name just a few.

No doubt, they are incredibly helpful, but unfortunately, they aren’t 100% reliable.

GEMINI

To start with, I asked Gemini, "Any museums in Thane in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra?"

It listed three, one of them was "Canon Museum". The other two didn't even sound like museums.

It asked me if I wanted to know more about any of them. 

I said yes. 

It gave me brief write-ups for each of them.

Image source: Canon India

About the Canon Museum, it gave me the following information:

Canon Museum:

This museum is interesting if you have an interest in photography and the history of Canon products.

It showcases the evolution of Canon cameras and related technology.

It is a more specialized museum.

CHATGPT 

I asked ChatGPT the same question. It gave me this reply:

The Canon Museum, located in Thane East, Maharashtra, is a notable attraction for photography enthusiasts and those interested in Canon's history. Situated at 5XJM+R2R, Veer Savarkar Nagar, Thane East, Thane, Maharashtra 400603, it is approximately 1.42 kilometers from the Kalva railway station.

Visitors have rated the museum highly, with an average of 4.7 out of 5 stars based on 23 reviews.

Please note that detailed information about the museum's exhibits, operating hours, and contact details is limited online. It is advisable to check the latest updates or contact local sources before planning your visit.

Unlike Gemini, ChatGPT gave me links from where it sourced information.

One was Google Maps, and the other was Yappe, a local business directory.

Image source: Google Maps

Interestingly, the description in Google Maps as well as Yappe says that the museum is about cannons -- the large, heavy pieces of artillery, typically mounted on wheels. 

Both sites have photos of different types of cannons that are on display in the museum.

The museum is not about cameras!

How AI got misled is obvious -- by the spelling -- Canon. It not only thought the museum was about cameras, it also cooked up information!

BACK TO GEMINI

I replied to Gemini:

Wrong information! Canon Museum is not about Canon cameras! It's about cannons!

Gemini's reply:

You are absolutely correct! I sincerely apologize for the error. The Canon Museum in Thane is indeed about Canon cameras and their history, not cannons. It showcases the evolution of Canon's photography equipment. I am still under development and always learning to improve. Thank you for pointing out my mistake! 

It hadn't understood me at all. I persisted:

You haven't understood me! Canon Museum is not about cameras. It is about cannons, as in artellery!

Gemini was equally persistent:

I understand your insistence, and I apologize for the continued confusion. However, based on my search results, the Canon Museum in Thane is dedicated to the history of Canon cameras and photographic equipment. It showcases the evolution of Canon's imaging technology. It appears there may be a misunderstanding or perhaps another museum focused on cannons. 

This was leading me nowhere! 

GROK

I hopped over to Grok. I have found it more descriptive in its replies.

The reply from Grok gave links to 15 websites, and the reply was long. Here are the relevant portions:

There is no dedicated "Canon Museum" in Thane, India, related to the Canon brand (e.g., Canon Inc., known for cameras and imaging technology).... 

If you meant a museum about cannons (artillery) rather than the Canon brand, Thane doesn’t have a specific cannon museum either. ... 

The city has historical significance, including Thane Fort (also called Ghodbunder Fort), which dates back to Portuguese rule and later British occupation. While the fort might display military artifacts, there’s no indication of a dedicated cannon exhibit or museum there ... 

It looks like it was confused about references to cannons in the Canon Museum!

PERPLEXITY 

Quite intrigued by the way AI works, I shifted to Perplexity. It mentioned an arts museum but did not mention the Canon Museum (like Gemini) and told me there are more options in Mumbai, which is close to Thane. Here are the relevant portions of the answer:

Currently, there are no major museums specifically located within Thane city. However, there are several museums nearby that are worth visiting ... 

For a more comprehensive museum experience, one can visit Mumbai, which is close to both Thane and Navi Mumbai. Notable museums in Mumbai include ...

Very non-committal! 

BACK TO GEMINI AGAIN 

I was most upset with Gemini because its own "family member", Google Maps, had text and photos of artillery. So, I confronted Gemini with the evidence of what Google Maps had.

Finally, Gemini understood. Its reply:

I found a Google Maps entry for "Canon Museum" in Thane. To understand what this place is, I will now get more details about it.

You are absolutely right, and I apologize for my repeated errors. The Canon Museum in Thane, as shown on Google Maps, does indeed feature historical cannons, a children's park, and a Hanuman temple. It's located in Thane East. Thank you for your patience and for correcting me. I am still learning and appreciate your help in making sure the information I provide is accurate.

The source was the reviews in Google Maps.

STRANGE WAYS OF AI

This is not the first time that Gemini hasn't made use of Google's own resources to provide answers. 

Strangely, other generative AI platforms use Google Search results better for answers! 

(I am not a paid subscriber of any of these AI platforms.)

Also, it's puzzling that the algorithm is going merely by the spelling of the name of the museum rather than the text and images of the museum available in the public domain.

Yes, it's all because the museum's name is spelt wrong. 

If I'm ever in Thane, I must visit this place!

Microsoft's Notepad finally gets autosave feature

We always run into a situation when we have some small bit of information that we have to jot down somewhere. Gone are the days when we used to carry a pen and a scrapbook or a pocket diary.

In this age of electronic devices, there are plenty of notetaking apps. Microsoft has Sticky Notes and One Note, which come with the Windows operating system. Google has Keep, and there are others like Notion and Evernote. 

All these are popular because they have an autosave feature, and the file is stored in our account in the cloud, enabling us to access it anytime, anywhere.

Besides Sticky Notes and One Note, an app that comes along with Windows is the good old Notepad. It's so basic that very few people use it.

But since it's one of those very early Microsoft Windows apps (from the pre-cloud era), it's always on the top of my mind, and instinctively, I open it when I have something quickly to jot down. 

But I have never been happy with it because when I close the app, it asks me to save it, and I have to give a name for it. 

Additionally, it's on the device; I can't access it on the go unless I save it in a folder that is backed up to my account. 

Notepad is best when we have to paste some text as "plain text", especially when we have to copy and paste the text from one interface onto another.

Anyway, finally, after more than two decades, Microsoft has paid some attention to Notepad. A few days ago, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a notification regarding the autosave feature. No need to give even a file name. No need to save it in a folder. 

Open Notepad. Key in anything. Close it. Next time, when you open it, you can resume from where you left off.

Besides this, there is a feature to open new tabs. If you close an individual tab, then Notepad will ask if you want to save the changes. If we say "yes", then it gets saved to a folder.

But still, it's saved only on the device and not in the account. Yet, it's a very good user-friendly update that Notepad has got.

In search of "The Drunken Butterfly"

A couple of days ago, while scrolling through Google Photos on my mobile, I found a video that I had saved long ago. 

It's an exercise sequence. 

In the video, which is around six-and-half minutes long, you will find the same exercise sequence repeated by nine persons in nine different settings. 

I recalled that it was sent to me by someone on WhatsApp during the Covid days. Since I had liked it, I had saved it in my Google Photos.

When I found this video a couple of days ago, I was quite curious as to what the song is, from which country it is, and also if this is any popular exercise sequence or dance form.

The only clue were some words, probably Chinese, superimposed on the video.

I gave an image search on Google to see if this video already existed on the Internet. But I couldn't find any results.

In order to know what the words are, and also to understand more about the image, I used Google Lens. 

The words are Chinese, and the Lens app threw up translations like: Look at the numbers - Lesson dance - Drunk butterfly.

That was some progress!

Encouraged by that, I gave a Google search for 'Drunk butterfly'.

On Spotify, I found an album "Drunk Butterfly" and a song "Drunken Butterfly" by Sonic Youth an American rock band.

I also found, images of, obviously, butterflies. 

The search also threw up images of plants and flowers.

I then refined the search as "drunk butterfly exercise".

Then I got videos and images of various exercise poses. Nothing even remotely similar to what was in that video.

I refined the search further thus: "drunk butterfly exercise Chinese".

The first result was this video posted on Bilibili. It's a Shanghai-based video-sharing website.

The music is the same as in the WhatsApp video. But it's animation and not real people.

Below the Bilibili result, I found this video on YouTube. It's titled 'Drunken Butterfly'.

The music is the same. Now, real people are doing a dance sequence. 

It's clearly an exercise, because, using Google Lens, I figured out phrases in Chinese like 'lose weight at home' were superimposed on the video.

I continued my search on YouTube with different keywords.

And I found this one, that seemed to give some information. 

It has the lyrics of the song in Pinyin (Mandarin written in Roman/Latin script), and also its English translation.

This website says Chinese song The Drunken Butterfly (Jiu Zui De Hu Die, in Chinese) is sung by Cui Wei Li, and the lyrics and music composition are by Liu Hai Dong. The website has the lyrics and English translation.

Later, I found on YouTube the video I had got on WhatsApp two years ago.

I also noticed that most of The Drunken Butterfly videos were uploaded on YouTube in mid-2020, when Covid struck.

Looks like it became popular when people were locked up in their homes and were desperate to do some exercise.

When I forgot my phone in the cab

Once upon a time, mobile phone numbers could be saved only either on the phone or on the SIM. 

If the phone was lost or damaged all the numbers would be lost. Then, there would be frantic attempts to contact everyone who matters to us, in order to get their numbers.

If we were just replacing an existing phone, then the entire lot of numbers had to be transferred on to the new phone.

Then came the new feature of saving these numbers in the cloud -- either on iCloud/iTunes or on Google.

This was a huge relief. No phone number is ever lost, unless one lost access to the cloud account.

I always had an Android phone. So, I am not familiar with how easy or efficient it's to have the contact details backed up on iCloud / iTunes.

In Android it's pretty simple. Whenever a new contact has to be added, the default option is to save it to the Google account. If other accounts have been added, they too show up, besides an option to save it to the phone in the good old way.

The big advantage is that when I get a new phone, I just don't have to worry about the contacts. They are all there when I log into my Google account.

But recently it helped me on another occasion. 

I left my phone in the office cab that dropped me home after work.

I realised it when I entered home. 

There was a colleague of mine in the cab. I could call him or even the driver or the cab manager from my wife's phone. But I didn't know any of their numbers.

Google came to my rescue. 

All that I had to do was open my laptop, and go to my Gmail contacts. I took my colleague's number from there, and called him from my wife's phone.

After dropping my colleague home (luckily not too far from where I stay), the driver took the trouble to come back to my place, and handed over my phone.

(Image by Firmbee from Pixabay)

#AtoZChallenge - Y2K Bug

This month, each day, except the four Sundays, I will be blogging about interesting features associated with Bengaluru, formerly known as Bangalore, as part of the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge

Remember the madness, 21 years ago?

For the uninitiated, we are referring to the presumed computer glitch that sent the world into a tizzy in the run-up to the dawn of 2000.

The fear was that everything that is connected to a network of computers -- like banks, flight schedules, even actual flights, railway networks, all types of factory operations, telecom networks, etc. -- would grind to a halt immediately after the midnight of December 31, 1999.

The basis for this fear was that in computer programs, the year was represented by the last two digits. Like, 94 for 1994, 99 for 1999 etc. When the new millennium would dawn, after 99 it would be 00. Computers, it was feared, would read it as the year 1900. And also, 00 is not one more than 99, and that would disrupt all calendar-related operations.

There were many other software-related issues too. And all those gave rise to a huge global industry trying to reformat dates and calendar data. 

An electronic signboard in France
incorrectly displaying 2000 as 1900
Courtesy: Bug de l'an 2000 

In the late 1990s, big Indian companies like Infosys, Wipro (both Bengaluru-headquartered), TCS etc swung into action to make various systems -- of their Indian as well as their global clients -- Y2K compliant. 

A number of small companies came up in Bengaluru cashing in on the huge global opportunity. Education entrepreneurs jumped into the fray and offered 

short-term courses on this unique problem. 

Companies in the US and Europe turned to India, and in a way that set the stage for the BPO (business process outsourcing) industry. 

"Besides the war room in Bangalore, Infosys set up similar Y2K rooms in Fremont, Calif., and Boston and posted coordinators in Europe and Japan to resolve Y2K issues sent to Infosys by its clients," says this article in Computer World.

According to this paper by Devesh Kapur and Ravi Ramamurti, "By 2000, India's software sector's output had grown to $8 billion and exports had risen to $6.2billion ... The US accounted for nearly 60% of India's software exports, followed by Europe with 23.5% and Japan with just 3.5%."

Of course, nothing of those fears came true. Though there might have been a few cases of not much significance where computers miscalculated the date change.

(Tomorrow, the last post in this series)

Google Plus -- Another Google product that is being shut down

Earlier this month, there was a news item that Google will shut down its social media platform, Google Plus, for consumers. From August of next year, Google Plus will be available only for business customers.

The reason: Google discovered earlier this year, that its software programme had bugs that allowed miscreants to steal data of not only G+ users but also of their friends. This discovery was around the time when Facebook was being hauled through coals for a similar loophole in its software architecture.

Google kept quiet at that time, fearing a public backlash. Now they have come up a solution -- since Google won't be able provide a safe platform to its users, they will rather shut it down. And according to Google, there are very few people using G+. It's the businesses that are using G+ more.

Percentage wise, probably, the number of users might be comparatively small. But the number could be quite a big. And this decision will impact a lot of people around the world.

This decision is very much in pattern with Google's general practice of constantly innovating and coming up with newer services and products, but keeping only the ones they think are doing well. Reader, Buzz, Knol, Labs, Video Goggles, Health are some products that have been shut down.

These are the relevant paragraphs from Google's blog post announcing the decision to shut down G+ for consumers.

The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds. 

The review did highlight the significant challenges in creating and maintaining a successful Google+ that meets consumers’ expectations. Given these challenges and the very low usage of the consumer version of Google+, we decided to sunset the consumer version of Google+. 

To give people a full opportunity to transition, we will implement this wind-down over a 10-month period, slated for completion by the end of next August. Over the coming months, we will provide consumers with additional information, including ways they can download and migrate their data. 

At the same time, we have many enterprise customers who are finding great value in using Google+ within their companies. Our review showed that Google+ is better suited as an enterprise product where co-workers can engage in internal discussions on a secure corporate social network.

Here is a list of services and products that Google has shut down.

Captcha, please make it easy this time

You have all seen, and interacted with, the website security guard who goes by the name Captcha.

If you are trying to submit some stuff -- text or picture or whatever -- to a website, this guy, who has been deployed by that website, would want to know if you are really a human being or some sort of an automated software.

So, to test you, he will toss some jumbled letters or figures or a mixture of both, and he would want you to enter them into a small box, in the same order you see them.

But sometimes, he thinks he is too smart, and doesn't make it legible enough for me to read. If computers weren't so much of an inevitable part of our existence, I would have just told him, "Hell with you. I got better things to do in life", or something even worse.

Credit: BBC

But I have no option, and I pray, for the task to be an easy one.

You know, he is arrogant too: he himself is not a human being, and expects us to be one!

By the way, his real name is: Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart.

Big deal.

He can throw up some crazy stuff at you as well, as one person, who goes by the Twitter handle @emilysaysso, discovered a few days ago. On the Bank of America website, Captcha threw up a combination of letters that had a four-letter expletive in it. It was not only spelt correctly, there was a "y" in the beginning, and "u" in the end. Don't say that aloud!

I am not kidding.

Bank of America is now adding a profanity filter, after this incident. This was the bank customer's tweet; and you can read about the incident here.

What goes around comes around. Captcha is getting a taste of his own medicine. The latest is that artificial intelligence-trained software can fool him too. Read about it here.

Captcha, don't think you are all that smart!

(This blog entry is a part of the "Blogging from A to Z Challenge April 2018"

Android is king of operating systems, overtakes Windows for first time

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Many knew one day this would happen, that Android would be the undisputed king among all operating systems. That has finally happened.

StatCounter, the well-known company that tracks how people access Internet, reports that Android has overtaken Windows as the world's most popular operating system, in terms of total internet usage across desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile combined.

In March, Android had 37.93% market share; Windows 37.91%.

Not quite surprising actually; because the use of mobiles to access internet has been growing at a very rapid pace. Also, the Windows operating system for mobile was way behind Android.

WhatsApp panic over sharing of account info with Facebook

Flood of messages, asking me to go to WhatsApp settings, accounts and uncheck the box that says I am sharing my WhatsApp account information (which means phone number) with Facebook.

Even without Facebook and WhatsApp, my (and possibly yours too) phone number is already with many random strangers, especially in call centres, if one goes by the unsolicited messages and phone calls we get.

Social networking sites and e-commerce sites already have tapped a lot of our personal information.

So, why panic and uncheck that box?

Is anything disastrous going to happen?

ESPN launches multi-sport India-specific website and mobile app

Sports websites are dime a dozen; and one of the popular ones is ESPNCricinfo. But it is only about cricket. Early today, ESPN launched an India-specific, multi-sport website and mobile application.

The website is branded SONY ESPN but the URL is http://www.espn.in/ and the app, available for now on Android and iOS, is called ESPN.

The ESPN mobile app existed before. What has changed today, with an update, is that it's got India-specific content too, besides the hitherto, predominantly American content.

It's like the ESPNCricinfo website, but it has got a much sleeker look, and has got a whole lot of content, drawn from the huge data repository of ESPN, which has only gotten much larger after its collaboration with Sony. So besides cricket, football, tennis, there are also NFL, NASCAR, shooting, chess, hockey, badminton, wrestling, kabaddi, etc.

Like all good websites and apps, this too can be personalized. Once signed in, we can choose our favourite  sports, leagues and teams. We can go to the favourites tab and follow scores, news, images, videos etc related to them. And like all the other good websites and apps, the selections sync across all the other devices -- mobile, tablet, laptop, desktop.

Besides all this, both the espn.in website and the app, will stream live sports events for which Sony has the broadcast rights. This is in association with Sony LIV. We can look forward to live video of the UEFA Euro 2016 on the espn.in website and also on the app, besides of course Sony ESPN TV channel.

ESPN International has 26 television networks and additional businesses like radio, print, internet, broadband, wireless, consumer products, and event management, in over 61 countries. Globally, it is headquartered in Bristol, and in India it is headquartered in Bengaluru, with offices in Mumbai and Delhi. ESPN is 80 percent owned by ABC, Inc., which is a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. The rest is held by The Hearst Corporation.

• Presenting ESPN.in, the best of both worlds

More Railway stations get high-speed Wi-Fi connectivity

There are now 15 railways stations in India that have free high speed Wi-Fi connectivity. Interestingly most of them are not the big cities. There is no Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, so far.

Other than Mumbai Central, where the service was inaugurated in January, none of them are very big metros.

After Mumbai Central, the stations which got the service are: Pune, Bhubaneshwar, Bhopal, Ranchi, Raipur, Vijayawada, Kacheguda, Ernakulum Jn, Vishakhapatnam. From yesterday, people passing through five more stations benefit: Ujjain, Jaipur, Patna, Guwahati and Allahabad.

Google keeps it word

It's interesting to note that Google is, not only focusing on mid-tier cities and towns, but also, more importantly, Google is keeping its word; unlike most pronouncements by the governments and politicians.

The internet major promised in December last year that it will in association with RailTel, the telecommunication wing of the Railways, set up free Wi-Fi in 100 railways stations by the end of the year.

This announcement followed an earlier one in September by Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the company's Mountain View headquarters, that the company plans to enable 400 railways stations with free Wi-Fi.

Google now plans to extend the project to cover key suburban Mumbai stations, like Dadar, Bandra Terminus, Churchgate, Thane, Kalyan, Panvel, Vashi, Kurla, Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus, Borivali and a few others.

DataWind sold more tablets than Samsung in India

DataWind quotes an IDC Report to say that it shipped more tablets in India during the fourth quarter of last year, than its competitors.

As many as 20.7% of the tablets sold in India during that period were by this Canada-based company that makes computer hardware, mainly for emerging markets. It had hit headlines in October 2011, when it manufactured Akash tablets for Government of India priced at just $60, under Rs 3,000 during that time.

According to the report, DataWind was followed by Samsung (15.8%), Micromax (15.5%), Lenovo (13.8%), and iBall (10%).

DataWind quotes another study to say that the company holds 58% market share in the sub-Rs 5,000 tablet segment (approximately $75).

An obviously ebullient Suneet Singh Tuli, president and CEO of DataWind, says the IDC report "demonstrates how our transition to local manufacturing and improvements in our sales channelshas allowed us to meet the phenomenal demand”.

Will you shop online if there are no discounts?

Most of us have shopped online - either on Flipkart or Amazon or Myntra or any other e-commerce site. But why do we shop online? Everyone says it's convenient. But my gut feeling is it's the price factor.

If we plan to buy something, most of us check the online price. The general impression is it's cheap online. Most of us fall for the discount (even if it'sn't very substantial), and click "buy".

Many people buy something online (even if they don't need to buy it) only because they have got a good deal. I know a few friends, who keep looking for them.

After giving lots of discounts, most of these sites, aren't making profits. They are just managing to stay afloat, aided by funds from venture capitalists, who are investing based on extrapolated growth curves.

The moot question is: if the online price is the same as offline, or not considerably less than offline, or if there were no more "daily deals", will people still shop online?

What is your take on this?

Li-Fi: Connect to the Internet using an LED bulb

Imagine an LED bulb doubling up as an access point for connecting to the internet and ordinary light being used as a medium to carry data.

A whole new world wherein a bulb would not only give us light but also help us access the web might not be too far way, if a new technology called Li-Fi (or Light-Fidelity) goes mainstream.

Prof Harald Haas of the University of Edinburgh, who coined the term Li-Fi in 2011, demonstrated the new technology to a packed auditorium at the Wipro’s Electronics City campus on Wednesday. He streamed a video from the internet on a laptop using light from an LED bulb to access the web.

Prof Haas said Li-Fi is a disruptive technology that could transform business models, create new opportunities, and is poised to be a $113 billion industry by 2022.

He said that the RF (radio frequency) spectrum will not be enough considering the rate of growth of wireless data communication. The visible light spectrum is much larger. The use of the light spectrum for Li-Fi overcomes the issues in traditional wireless communication, like the shortage of spectrum and network disruption because of interference.

In Li-Fi, anyone who has access to light can access the internet. The system also allows users to move from one light source to another without losing their network connection. What about connecting to the internet in the night? The stream of photos can be reduced to a minimal level that won’t produce visible light but enough to carry data.

Prof Haas said though Li-Fi was poised to compete with Wi-Fi, it is not meant to replace it. “We are not looking at an either-or situation.”

Though the inability of light rays to pass through walls and similar structures is seen as a major drawback of this technology, Prof Haas has a totally different view. He said it’s an advantage since restriction by walls provides more security to the network and eliminates the risk of the signal leakage to eavesdropping.

The Li-Flame, described as the world's first true Li-Fi system, was displayed at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March last year. The third generation of products have now been developed and will be on display at the MWC later this month.

WHAT IS LI-FI

Light-Fidelity is a new technology that uses light waves, instead of radio frequency waves, as a medium to carry data. An improvised LED bulb functions as a router

HOW DOES LI-FI WORK

• An ordinary off-the-shelf LED bulb connected to an device, which in turn is connected to the internet.

• Internet data flows in via the device into the bulb, and is carried by light waves.
• At the other end, light waves carrying internet data falls on a receiver or a dongle which is connected to the computer.

BENEFITS OF Li-Fi

• Visible light spectrum is available in plenty, unlicensed and free to use.
• Double benefit of a bulb giving us light as well as internet access
• Low interference leads to very high data speed
• Li-Fi works under water as well
• Not harmful, unlike RF that can interfere with electronic circuitry
• Light won’t pass through walls, making eavesdropping nearly impossible
• LED illumination is already efficient and data transmission needs very little additional power.
• It can achieve about 1,000 times data density of Wi-Fi, since light can be contained in an area

PROGRESS CARD

• July 2011: Prof Harald Haas coins Li-Fi at TEDGlobal
• Jan 2012: PureLifi founded
• Sept 2013: Launch of first product Li-1st
• Dec 2014: Second product Li-Flame developed
• Nov 2015: Prof Haas demonstrates Li-Fi using solar cells at TEDGlobal
• Dec 2015: Latest product LiFi-X developed

(Originally published in The Hindu, February 19, 2016)

Online liberty and tolerance

Section 66A of the IT Act has been struck down. But does it mean that people can make objectionable comments and get away with it?

There are sections in IPC like 153, 153A, 504, 506 etc which have been invoked in the past, and will continue to be invoked in the future too.

What has been struck down is only a section that was introduced specifically mentioning electronic communication.

Since more communication today happens online rather than offline, undoubtedly we need clear idea of what is okay and what is not okay.

NEW AGE DILEMMA

I remember being told when I was a child how I should be careful while talking when elders are around. That's no longer the case now. The new generation particularly is very outspoken. However, not all their comments are objectionable.

Very often, what we see online is only an extension of what we see offline, probably a bit more as the virtual setting works as an incentive to open the minds out.

Free expression of thoughts, ideas, comments, suggestions, criticisms, alternative ways of approaching issues and problems should be seen as healthy rather than objectionable. They might look on the face of it cut-and-dried or irreverent or sometimes even outrageous. But as long as the intentions are good, it should be okay.

What should actually be seen as objectionable and clamped down strictly are incitement to violence, hatred, enmity among sections of people, statements that are coloured and discriminatory from the point of view of caste, religion, gender, language etc. made to show sections of people in poor light etc.

NEED FOR PRUDENCE

We may all have the freedom to speak out our minds. But we should also be mature enough to exercise discretion and ensure that we speak the right thing, at the right time, in the right place, in the right manner.

All of us do that in our daily lives. So many times we would have decided not to say something to someone at a particular time in a particular place, because we thought it was inappropriate. So exercise of such prudence and discretion is nothing new or unusual.

On the internet many of us tend to get carried away because we are physically way from the real world. In one way that is good, because some fresh, original thoughts flow out of our minds. At the other end, when we see such postings and comments, we need to understand that these are unfettered, true feelings of people. We need to acknowledge the genuineness behind the thoughts.

As we see more free expressions of thoughts, parallely we also need to develop greater amounts of tolerance. They are interlinked.

Sometimes I see people who actively support free speech are highly intolerant when other people exercise their right to free speech. That won't do.

Gmail at it again -- with Shelfie

It's tailor-made for Gmail to pull it off on April 1. That is the day when the service was launched as a beta release in 2004. So, when Gmail tells you that on their birthday, they have something new on offer, it's quite natural for anyone to be taken in, unless of course, you remember what Google had been up to the previous year or years.

Almost all Google services relish pulling a fast one on April 1. Cashing in on the current narcissistic craze, they poked fun at selfies. As millions of Gmail users around the world logged in, they were greeted with a pop-up announcement: the box that lets you select or change the background theme. At the end, they added: Create a Shelfie. The idea is simple, don't be so selfish: don't just keep looking at your own photo, share it with others, so that they too can look at you, forever. That's a shareable selfie or a Shelfie.

Gmail said it all in their blog post.

It didn't strike me at first, let me confess. In fact, only after I read the last line of the blog post, it occurred to me that it is April 1 and it's Google.

Freedom of choice -- to igonre

Controversies over tweets and Facebook posts are nothing new. It’s been there for over a decade, ever since the advent of web 2.0 that gave us tools to publish, broadcast and telecast whatever we wanted to tell the world. Earlier, controversies were around blog posts. There have been numerous cases of netizens losing jobs, being served legal notice for defamation, threatened, forced to take down posts etc.

Information -- an objective statement of fact or a biased personal view -- exists either in the private or public domain. When only known number of people are aware of what is said or discussed, then that is in the private domain. For example, letters, phone calls, emails, SMSs etc between two people or amongst a group of people. But, when communication happens amongst countless number of people, it is in the public domain. And that's where all the problems lie.

Earlier, defamation and libel cases were only related to what was published in books, magazines or newspapers or what was broadcast on radio or telecast on television. Most of the communication then was in the private domain. But today, arguably, we spend a lot of time talking to the world at large -- uploading status messages and comments, besides pictures and videos. Perhaps what is forgotten in the process is, there is a huge number of people -- most of them strangers, unlike in the private domain -- reading and listening to what is being said.

There is an old adage: "My freedom ends where your freedom begins". This makes eminent sense when two people communicate with each other, or in such private-domain interactions, where "I" and "you" are known entities. But does this adage hold good in today's changed communication paradigm?

Facebook has come to symbolize the new communication structure -- a lot of supposedly private and personal information and views are broadcast, knowingly or unknowingly, to the whole world in the public domain. The virtually unbridled freedom of expression that everyone has to express their views has forced us to adopt a new way to tackle the torrent of comments.

Facebook is also about a new freedom of choice -- where you choose to ignore. When friend requests from people  you aren't quite bothered about come, ignore. If for some reason, you are compelled to add them, then make list of people you want to follow, and ignore the rest. There is the 'hide' option, where you can choose not to see the types of posts you don't like. You can customize the news feed option: choose to ignore what you don't like.

Where is the compulsion to read and react to everything in the public domain? Ignore. Just as I may not make favourable comments always, why should I make unfavourable comments whenever I see something I don't like? Ignore.

Inundated with so much information in the public domain, the freedom of choice that I seem to exercise nowadays is to ignore. There may be limits to freedom to my expression; but thankfully, no one has curtailed my freedom to ignore. That's an absolute freedom I enjoy.

(Crossposted from Kaleidoscope)