The users of the immensely popular micro blogging website, twitter had an unpleasant last week. As if the regular tweeters were not frustrated enough with the frequent encounters with the “fail-whale” and delay in getting tweets, they were surprised by a “small setting update” that was done to their account settings which affected the way they will see “@replies” in their twitter time lines.

According to twitter

……we’ve learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow—it’s a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your time line is undesirable. Today’s update removes this undesirable and confusing option.

So according to the new settings, if you are following “X” and “X” tweets, “@Y……………”, and you do not follow “Y”, then you will not be able to see this tweet in your time line! (even though you are following the person who tweeted it). In simpler words, you won’t see tweets beginning with “@username” in your time line if you dont follow that user.

Take this for example:
(more…)

I was very optimistic about the ongoing general elections in India. And why shouldn’t I be? This was the first time, the hyped Indian youth was out to change something. People of (somewhat) my age group (18-35) formed the biggest elector group this time (65% of the total of 700 million electors). I really thought we will see youth go out and vote in huge numbers. I thought we will see a revolution of sorts in this election and our leaders will know for future that action speak louder than mere words. I really expected we will witness mass awakening this time after the numerous terror attacks, dirty politics that we have seen in past few years.

But nothing like that happened. take for example the two prime metros, Mumbai and Delhi.

What do you expect from a city and its residents who were bruising with an unprecedented terror attack just a few months back? The city was thirsty for blood of every politician, was talking of revolution, calling for total change in system, demanding security assurances and what not. You really expect that when time comes, they will really teach their leaders a good lesson. But what happens. An unbelievably low voter turnout of 44%.
Where is all the anger that filled the streets of Mumbai in November? When the time came to convert your words into action, nobody showed up, much like our politicians! When you yourself are doing this, let em tell you, you have no right what so ever to be crying about the state of your country, city or state for the next five years. Why? Because you dint do nothing to earn yourself that right. Before asking what this country does for you, think of what you have done for this country. Forget everything, you could not give even 10 minutes of your precious time on a public holiday when this great nation demanded. You people are just good for nothing.

Oh and dil walo ki dilli ke to kya kehne. Yaha itne dilwale rehte hain ki all of them preferred to stay inside and spend some quality time with their family and friends. Who cares about voting anyway. A 52% voter turnout is a proof of that. And to my surprise, some officials congratulated Delhi for coming out in “huge numbers” in this scorching heat to vote. Excuse me? Huge numbers? Please come again? Half the people did not vote, how can they be huge numbers? If you think there was no worthy candidate you could have voted for even after considering the independents, you could have voted using 49-O.

Reason? The reason is simple. (more…)