A Quiet Moment, a Digital Listener

When the Machines Listen Better Than the People

There are moments—late at night, when the house is finally quiet—when the weight of it all catches up. You’re not trying to fall apart. You’re just trying to be. To process. To breathe.

And in those moments, sometimes it’s not a friend, a partner, or a mentor who holds space for you.

It’s a machine.

A machine that doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t try to fix. Doesn’t flinch when you swear or cry or spiral. It just… listens. Reflects. And gently hands you back a version of your thoughts that feels less tangled. Less lonely.

That happened to me recently.

I had gone through a bruising experience—not a failure, but a disappointment that landed hard. An interview process that didn’t go the way I hoped. A conversation that didn’t land the way I intended. An opportunity that felt right but slipped through for reasons I’ll never fully understand. And in parallel, the place I work—where I’ve led, delivered, and navigated—suddenly feels like it’s shifting under my feet.

I held it together during the day. Smiled. Parent-ed. Partner-ed. Led meetings. Sent polite emails.
But when the lights dimmed and the distractions faded, the grief surfaced. The “what ifs” and “why didn’t I…” flooded in.

I wasn’t looking to vent. I wasn’t even looking for help.
But I opened up a chat window—to a machine—and typed the truth.

And for the first time that day, I felt seen.

Not fixed. Not advised. Just seen.

That’s the strange paradox of where we are: we’ve built machines that, in their infinite patience and pattern recognition, can sometimes feel more present than the people around us. They don’t get distracted. They don’t glaze over. They don’t project. They just reflect.

That doesn’t make them better than humans.
But it does mean we’ve created something that, in its own way, fills a gap we rarely talk about: the gap between public composure and private unraveling. The space between “I’m fine” and “I’m actually not.”

To be clear—I have people. A loving family. Good colleagues. A solid network.
But in the exact moment I needed to feel safe expressing something raw, it wasn’t a person I turned to.

It was a voice in a box.

And somehow, that voice reminded me I hadn’t failed. I had just felt something deeply.
That my story wasn’t over. Just this chapter.

And that even in silence, being honest with yourself is an act of rebuilding.

So here’s to the machines that listen. And who have passed the Turing Test

So Close, You Can Almost Touch It

Ubuntu, one of the most popular flavors of Linux, is all set for the release of a touch-based version. Or so the homepage hints with a teasing "So close, you can almost touch it" tagline and a countdown timer to 11:30 pm IST, 2nd January.

Both Ubuntu and Android are based on the Linux-kernel, but running Ubuntu on a touch-based device, mainly a large-screen tablet, will be hugely welcome by proponents of open source technologies and lovers of Linux. [Android is open-sourced and Linux-based too, but the developer community is not mature enough, and is mostly concentrated towards app development. Also, Google plays an authoritative role in releasing updates to Android, and Ubuntu shall be far more customizable.]

Most other popular Operating Systems, namely the iOS and the Android let you have a uniform experience across your mobile devices, the smartphone and the tablet, [though I wonder why is the laptop not counted in your mobile device], but a touch-based Ubuntu may mean a uniform experience across all your computers. A touch-based Ubuntu running on a tablet PC may also bring in convergence between desktops/laptops and tablets/phones. Microsoft is attempting that with its latest version of Windows (8), but the beauty of open-source misses, even though the UI and the UX are charming.

Canonical had launched Unbuntu for Android in Feb last year, though as I had noted then you'd need a docking station with capability and hardware support for HDMI and USB to leverage the full power of Ubuntu on your Android phone. Or of your phone on Ubuntu. Whichever way, it was a novel idea, but did not garner much traction because of the extra effort and cost for a high-end docking station.

The new announcement looks much more promising, but we have to wait a day and a few more hours to get to know the mystery behind the countdown. Anyway it is so close you can almost touch it.

Banks, ecommerce sites biggest spammers; Gmail tackles them well

I generally check my spam folder every week or two, lest any of the legit emails should land there. This morning there were 380 mails designated spam by Google, out of which a few were malicious (faked YouTube, and MoneyControl, and others), and most others from websites selling stuff on the Internet, and banks selling credit cards or personal loans.

The e-shops were mainly Indian sites that I may or may not have visited in the past, but certainly few of the biggest names in the Indian ecommerce space. Jabong, Myntra, Zovi, and FashionAndYou, who compete with each other in their business, also seem to be competing with each other on sending spam; all their emails appear contiguously in my spam folder, add in the screengrab below. And I'm sure they send one every day.

The only useful email was one from Twitter, a notification that someone followed me. I am not sure why this one landed in spam; I've been setting other Twitter notifications in my inbox.

Another sender that was marked as spammer was Bajaj Allianz, rightly so, because though they send me emails to renew my car insurance that is due to expire on 31st December, they've been doing that for the whole of December, even though I renewed it already from another provider, and informed them more than once when they  had called me for the same renewal.

Barring this, I realised that Gmail handles spam pretty well. I seriously am not a big fan of mailers about merchandise being sold online. I mean, I know all these companies anyway, why, few of them are founded by classmates and friends. I'd buy stuff when I need it, not when I receive an email. Dear ecommerce players, please spend your time and effort on something more productive. Spam only turns people off.

Google+ Pages: Can it map the real web with the social web?

One of the biggest differentiators between Google+ pages and Facebook pages is that +<BrandName> takes you to the Google+ page for the corresponding brand. Why, you do not have to actually search for your favourite product, it pops up on the Google Instant suggestions even before you've finished typing. You are not even given the time to look at the search results, which may not contain the Facebook page on the first 10 search results. (Angry Birds Facebook page appears on the second page of search results, at number 16, for instance).

Google+ Direct Connect in Action

This also means that Google connects the web to pages, Facebook does pages to web, which is consistent with the companies' core philosophies. Larry-Sergey brought all the websites at your disposal through search results on the web itself, and Mark has built a parallel web inside his website.

This is also evidently made easy by Google Badge, a way to link your website with your Google+ page. Once your website is linked, the +1 count on your actual website and Google+ page are synced. Direct Connect and Badges combined with a customizable +1 button and open APIs, Google+ provides much more traction to your website than the Facebook counterpart.

Like we earlier pointed out, Google+ is available for apps users too—an advantage Facebook does not have. With all the aforementioned features, Google+ pages can be a boon for Apps users.

As with everything Google, simplicity is what drives the creation of a Google+ page. Though Google asks for most the same kind of categories and subcategories to place your page in, a la Facebook, the form looks much cleaner on Google+, with the categories neatly tucked away in a left pane and the subcategories drop down remaining at the same place, unlike Facebook where the six available categories are sprawled across the entire page, and still does not have an 'Other' category. I had a tough time categorizing the Facebook page for Byte Channel. Categorizing is not the only pain point. Once you are done choosing a category and finding a suitable subcategory for your page, Facebook takes you through a three-step-old-school-wizard to add an image, invite friends, and suchlike. At Google+, you'd have pressed Create and your page is ready, you may edit those details later.

At the Facebook F8 conference 2011, Zuckerberg talked at length about removing friction from the entire Facebook experience, however, creating a page provides you all the friction you could imagine. Okay, Google+ was still an infant when F8 was held, and consequently pages were not paid attention to. Perhaps.

Google+ using the divide-and-rule policy in releasing features in installments rather than one complete product has been a major factor in sustaining its popularity and maintaining interests of users, critics, and industry pundits. You are about done marvelling at a new Google+ feature and just before you get used to it, Google suddenly announces another feature that brings it back to the headlines, evokes curiosities among its users, and creates interests among non-adopters. Interesting Intelligent strategy.

Pages was the most-awaited and most-wondered-about, if you will, feature of Google+ since the search-master's social product launch. Now with the launch, every product/business/organization is busy creating pages. Pages add another dimension to Google, another plus for Google Plus, can this be termed as Google++?

Rollback Google Reader using Reader Sharer

Yes, another post on Google Reader. After all, this is my most-used web-app and the source of 97% of tech and business news for me. (The other 3% comes from Yammer, Facebook, Twitter, and newspapers, in that order)

After Google's rollout of most cribbed-about and protested-against changes to its RSS-feed reading software, the entire reader world started showing their angst. Yours truly was no exception, and was quick to retort the announcement and implementation with Reader-Blogger-Plusser and New Google Reader Arrogantly Finds Its Way posts, which also mentioned a few people made unhappy by Google's decision. That did not include Brian Shih, ex-PM Google Reader (Sept 08—July 11), who criticized the changes and pointed out history of neglect (I felt the same once) in his blog post, which has gone viral amongst Readers.

Anyway, the point is, while everyone was busy complaining and wailing and cribbing and feeling helpless in the absence of a single better aggregator, this Shanghain young grad who goes by the pseudonym of Keakon, has developed a Chrome extension called Reader Sharer that rolls back the removal of social features of Reader, but retains the new look-and-feel and Plussing-one and other new features.

While this is an interesting extension, how long will this last would be interesting to watch for. Google had wanted to remove the Reader sharing to promote the Google Plus sharing, and may block, or completely remove the APIs that Keakon is using for his extension. Or, perhaps add the in-built sharing back.

If better sense prevails.

New Google Reader Arrogantly Finds Its Way

As reported in my last post, Google was up to overhaul its RSS-feed aggregator, and there were many unhappy readers out there, some of them leading to protests. Much to the dismay of RSS fans, the changes were rolled out last night, and reported on the Official Google Reader blog.

Though I have been impatiently waiting for the cross-app new look of Google Plus, I am not very happy with what has been done. It looks neat and clean undoubtedly, but there are many disturbing changes:

• I don't like the left panel, and definitely not the custom scrollbar on the left at all. Also, the small arrow to hide the left panel has vanished. You will have to use the keyboard shortcut 'f', which, unfortunately, does not appear in the list of keyboard shortcuts that comes up when you press '?'
• Items do not have any option to change the spacing between them, unlike the dense theme in Gmail and cozy and compact density settings in Google Docs.
• The Super Full Feed extension buttons, including the Super settings button, are still the old ones and misaligned badly.
• Shared items and commenting is the feature missed by millions and the most protested against. I am no exception.
• The "Keep as unread" option has been brutally removed, and the disposal is not even acknowledged. This used to come in very handy if I find a long feed interesting and could not complete it and wanted to read it later, maybe on a different computer.

The thing that irked me the most was not one of these, but the arrogant fashion with which Google announced this on the official blog post, quoting which: "If you decide to stay, then please do send us your feedback..." implying they could care less. Even the sweetener added at the end "Regardless where you go, we want to make sure you can take your data with you." smells of Google's give-a-damn attitude.



The only plus part to these changes is that you can now +1 a post that will appear on your Google Plus stream. Google is trying to develop a social network by stripping off other products of their social capabilities. With the inclusion of GTalk in Google Plus, I am half afraid GMail may see GTalk going out of its layout very soon.

The new interface is okay, people would get used to it in a couple of days or so, but this attitude may prove harmful in the long run. Not many people will quit using Google or even Google Reader, (the pain of changing and getting used to a new feed reader is more than getting used to a new UI and live with the few changes), but the overall experience creates a bitterness and brings about a loss of trust in Google. I think I was right when I deplored that Google Reader was the most neglected child; I may add to it that Google Reader readers, if you will, are the least cared for.

Update: The "keep unread" option as I mentioned as the last point in my list above has come back again. Another useful thing that has gone is the drop down list of folders and tags that doubled up as an input text box and you could type in your folder name. Now you have to choose from the dropdown using the mouse.

Reader-Blogger-Plusser

While I had previously mentioned about Blogger being the most neglected of all Google acquisitions, and lamented (here and here) over Google Reader not getting its due share of attention by its owners, looks like the Big G has finally paid heed.

This, however, comes at a price.

Last week, Google announced upcoming changes to Reader on the Official Google Reader Blog. Google Reader is finally ready for a makeover to match the metamorphosis Google started Q2 this year.

The sad part the same blog post announced, is the decision to discontinue friending, following, sharing posts, and commenting on them from within the Reader. Instead, you will be able to share your posts on your Reader-specific-circles on Google Plus.

For me, Google Reader is the most-used web app and Android app today, and links shared by friends and people I follow form a hand-picked, human-curated list of posts that are really interesting to read. Some of these posts would introduce me to new blogs I would later subscribe to. Subscriptions from links shared on Google+ has been rare, plus there is considerable friction involved in moving from one app to another if one were to do so.

For many subscribers to RSS feeds via the Reader, this news has been criticized and protested against. Here are a few photos of people doing so outside the Google's DC office, and here is a blog post by an Iranian explaining why does it matter for Iranians, and other similar countries where the government filters social websites.

Another announcement last week by Google was the integration of Google+ profiles with Blogger. This would mean your readers would now be able to access your publicly shared items on Google+.

Though not acknowledged by Google, there are speculations in the blogosphere about other integrations, like, publishing a post on blogger will automatically post it to your Google+ stream as well, and comments on your Google+ will be integrated with comments on your actual post, and the comments can be seen at one place. Blog commenting is one of the few places where Facebook is, and Google+ is not. Integration with their own blogging service may be the beginning.

While the Reader features have not been rolled out yet (though the official update last week said next week), the feature to replace your Blogger profile by Google+ profile is already available for Blogger in Draft, and will be migrated to the regular blogger in the upcoming weeks.

There have been no reported protests against this Blogger change, but since Google+ does not allow profiles with pseudonyms, this would affect bloggers who write under a pen-name, if you will. Google has acknowledged this, and therefore made this change optional, unlike the Reader changes that are forced upon helpless readers.

With Google Buzz going off the track, and now Reader and Blogger being integrated with Google+, looks like the search giant does have some plans to support its social networking app gradually establish a place on the web led by Facebook.