In today’s technology oriented environment a lot us depend on services and software which are free of cost. Inspite of the free cost we expect them to work flawlessly and we tend to complain pretty loudly when things don’t work. Is this acceptable?

One such software I rely heavily is mint.com; a personal finance software. For the past couple weeks it has been unusable and causing havoc. I have tried contacting their support via email and twitter but sadly I have not heard back from them. They are completely ignoring their customers as other users are having similar problems. I am to the point where I am thinking of closing my account. At the same time I wonder why should they pay attention…they are not charging me any money!

But they forget that in today’s environment the business model is different and the user’s perception matters big time even if the product is free. Just ask Google!

About a month ago, the United States of America was swept by the Tea Party movement. They became so prevalent that the Democrats lost big time in the mid-term election and the Republicans touted them as the “Voice of America”. All the major TV networks marveled at the perfect democracy of the Americans - you don’t like something, change it!

The Tea Party movement ran their campaign on 2 major points:

1. Reduce the deficit at all costs; curb further spending by the government.
2. Become a watchdog in Washington in order to give voice to the common man; even Republicans were not be spared from an uncontrollable behavior.

Fast forward to middle of december and we have a huge Tax bill about to be passed. The Democrats are making a huge compromise in order to extend the unemployment benefits to the common man. They made a deal with the Republicans since they can not do anything now without their support. In a nutshell this is what happened:

1. The Republicans supported the extension of unemployment benefits only if the Democrats will allow the Bush era tax cuts to continue for all Americans including the millionaires.
2. The Democrats wanted the extension of tax cuts for only those Americans who make less than $250K a year; the richest will have to pay more taxes under their proposal. How dare you ask the “richest” Americans to pay more taxes…I mean come on!

So, why would the Democrats not extend the tax cuts to some of the wealthiest Americans? The reason being that it will further increase our deficit which means that we have to spend more. Wait a minute! I thought both the Republicans and the Tea Party activists wanted exactly this - reduce deficit and curb spending yet they are supporting the exact thing they opposed couple months ago. We have not heard a peep from the Tea Party activists. Where are you guys? They seem to be suffering from a short term memory loss now that they have fooled the American people and secured the seats in the election.

How can the smartest species on planet earth be so naive? We too suffer from short-term memory loss because things like Black Friday sale and holiday shopping take precedence over our long-term future.

thepoetproject:

Humble The Poet - Baagi Music (Prod. Sikh Knowledge) (Dir. Digitology)

Thank You :-)

On his recent trip to India, President Obama was supposed to visit the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India. It is the holiest place for the Sikhs and they were insistent that he visits the place to show the world that he respects all religions. Due to some last minute security issues the secret service decided against the visit which caused a big uproar in the Sikh community in US as well as in India. The Sikhs demanded a formal explanation from President Obama and sent out mass emails to their diaspora in US to urge Obama to change this mind. There were also indication that he dissed the Sikh community by not paying his respects to the holy shrine. I mean how dare the President of United States make such a disrespectful decision!

I being a fellow Sikh has a big problem with the attitude of the Sikh community. Frankly I am very much disappointed and ashamed because we did exactly the opposite of what our religion stands for. Humanity comes first before anything! The entire religion is based on this foundation. What a shame that we have forgotten our basic principles and are promoting division based on religion and this is coming from some of most educated people. These so called educated people need to revisit the principles and change their attitude. Instead of being thankful for his visit to India and putting the country on the world’s map they voiced their displeasure with this decision. What a shame that humanity is being lost in front of our very eyes!