Note: These observations are from India and some of these might not work elsewhere. Also, these views are based on current rates of Uber. Not sure if they will hold true when their rates fluctuate. But again, petrol rates also fluctuate a lot in India hence that can also affect the decision.

• Lifestyle change – The decision to switch to Uber permanently than driving your own car involves a lifestyle change. Your car is not there with you anymore; not there outside your office waiting for you. You start walking a bit more.  You start depending on public transport more. There is no baggage of ensuring that your car is safe somewhere. 
• Parking – You don’t  waste time finding parking in mall or office. You don’t worry whether you will get parking space and you can focus on getting the work done. 
• Time utilization – You don’t drive your car. Hence you utilize the time in the taxi to read a blog you always wanted, connect with your friends, send mails. By the time you reach office, you have already caught up with your day’s work. 
• Conversations – If you have someone with you in the taxi, you can easily talk or discuss with them. Even if you are alone, you get to make great conversations with drivers. I have found most of the drivers cheerful and happy till now. 
• I don’t have to worry if I am stuck in traffic now, because even though I am in traffic, I can utilize the time to read up something. It costs me only Re. 1 per minute (based on current wait charges) if I stuck  in traffic. But I utilize my time a lot more for Re. 1. Totally worth it! 
• More cheerful – Since you are not driving the car in traffic, you are more cheerful when you reach office or when you reach home. Your legs/hands/back don’t pain from driving a car. You are mentally and physically better.

When I bought my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 in December 2012, almost everyone went aghast at the 5.5″ screen size of the Android phone. iPhone fans obviously revolted at the phone and many thought it was insensible to walk with such a huge phone in your pocket. Before Note 2 I had Sony Xperia X10 Mini Pro – a 2.5″ phone. I was convinced that we could do a lot with Android or iOS Having used Sony for 2 years  and hence more screen space was required to get basic tasks done like typing, viewing videos and use the phone throughout the day (good battery life). Plus I didn’t want to carry a phone and tablet everywhere so I bought a phablet. After 2014, almost every phone is more than 4.8″. Even Apple launched iPhone 6 and 6 plus. Currently phablet has become a phone now.

Having been successful twice in the past in selecting devices, I write this blog to make my current selection and the prediction for next two years. I might be wrong, but I sincerely feel that these are the devices I would like to own for the next two years:

1. Laptop – I would definitely buy  a 13.3″ laptop now. 11″ Macbook is still very small and 15.6″ are too heavy. We are now used to getting lot of stuff done in tablets and phones and we need a laptop which can start quickly and get the job done. In past 5 years, there was lot of innovation happening in tablets and mobiles but now laptops are fast catching up. Intel has launched 5th Generation Core-i processors and also Core M processors for Chromebooks. Companies have figured out to reduce the weight of the laptop by using good alloys for the body. Lenovo is launching a laptop in May which will weigh only 800 gms! You don’t really need 500 GB space as most of the stuff today can be put on Google drive, Dropbox, S3 etc. Hence a  laptop that is 13.3″ screen, 128 GB SSD, 4-8 GB RAM, weight of less than 4 pounds is perfect to buy at a price of around USD 800 to 1000. I don’t care if its touch screen or the 2-in-1 types (laptop + tablet).

2. Mobile –  I would use a 4″ to 5″ mobile phone now instead of my current 5.5″ phone. I would only use it for calling, whatsapp and doing a quick search on Google. I don’t really play many games and I am not very active on social media now. Hence I think that 5 to 6″ phones are good for daily use and many companies are pushing boundaries to make it thinner and more usable in your hands. A phone with less than USD 500 (unlocked) will be good enough. I would also consider  Firefox OS or Blackberry, apart from Android/iOS/Windows.

3. Tablet – I don’t own a tablet yet and would not buy one. I think tablets are of little use today unless you are a kid under 10 or senior citizen above 60. Other age groups can use a good ultraportable laptop for reasons mentioned above. No one wants to carry a laptop, tablet and mobile with them everywhere. Lets face it, you can’t really type documents or make presentations or do programming on a tablet.  If you only want to access content – watch videos, read news, check mails, play games, learn something – tablet is perfect for you. But creating content isn’t easy on tablets. The hardware for tablet is ready but the software still isn’t. Hence the need for laptops. And since laptops are becoming fast and ultra portable, then you can access and create content on laptop  better than you would do on tablet. Plus most of the content can be accessed on a good 5″ mobile phone too – play games, watch videos, check mails, be connected etc.

I see less innovation happening in tablets in next two years. Apple launched iPad mini 3 with only one small feature upgrade. Or probably companies could come up with a new OS for tablets and not keep the same OS for mobiles and tablets.

Buy a 11-13.3″ laptop and a 5″ phone. Tablet if you have kids or elder people at home. I would also buy a Kindle e-reader to read books if you love reading.

So, in short – these are my predictions for next two years – return of the laptop, mobile phones getting thinner and better, and tablets being just tablets!

Man also has responsibility not to do wrong actions towards others. There are different type of people in the world and some people want to help others and some people want to hurt others. That is where religions came in. They provided a context so that each man tries his best to be good to others and to himself in the benefit of the group (described above). Every religion professes to do good towards others (humanity) so that You  (the individual) would also benefit with it.

But with the internet, the boundaries that define a group are fading away. Man is no longer grouped on the basis of his location, age, gender, race etc. For once he feels he has complete freedom to commit actions that he likes. The society or groups are not well prepared to enforce the rules. In this situation, what should the Man do? Should he indulge in activities which he likes but which he knows that are not according to the rules laid down? Shall he commit actions which are legal but which he knows goes against the context of humanity? Do you always need to be governed by the rules and laws or can you think for yourself whether your actions are right or wrong?   Internet teaches us to be more responsible about what we write, say, show to others till these groups don’t figure out a way to govern.

My first blog (this one) has been on Blogger since August 2004 (wow, thats old!). After that I have had many blogs on WordPress devoted to one topic each like Entrepreneurship, Databases etc. Then I also use WordPress extensively to build my websites. Apart from this, I have played around with Facebook Notes, Posterous and more recently Tumblr too.

So, when I thought of restarting blogging, my first impression was not to use Blogger at all. I was googling on how to migrate my Blogger posts to Tumblr. But I still chose Blogger because:

1. It is still not easy to import your posts into Tumblr. There are some scripts available online but I didn’t wan to use those.
2. I tried Facebook Notes, but Notes are available only to Facebook users. Surprisingly, photos are available to everyone, but notes aren’t.
3. I believe I still have some loyal readers for my existing blog who have subscribed this blog in their reader.
4. Blogger is the good old blogging platform. I can blog on blogger and import my feeds on facebook which solves my purpose.
5. Blogger is part of Google. I love Google. I love Android till now. Then we have Picasa albums integrated into Blogger. I just want to see how all of these fit together to give an easy blogging/micro-blogging experience.