The Fake Death of Poonam Pandey - Did they go too far.

 What a shame! Another young life taken away by cancer. This was what went through my mind when I saw the news about the death of Poonam Pandey on Daily Mirror. In fact, I was a bit confused, because the Daily Mirror had said Poonam was an actor in the headline itself. But the article had a picture of what seemed like a female. “Well, these are modern times, where one cannot say if a person is a he, a she, or an it” was my response, and shrugged off any future thoughts about this situation away.

But then my Twitter feed began to fill with various posts about how all this was a scam. An online campaign done by a digital agency to create awareness of “Cervical Cancer”.

Wow! That was my first response.

It was not a wow of admiration though.

Faking a person's death is generally associated with Insurance Fraud or Major Criminals and Gangsters who want to disappear from the face of the earth.

But now it is used for communication purposes.

Suddenly a quote from the book Shanthram came to mind. “Sometimes it is necessary to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. The important thing is to be sure that our reasons are right, and that we admit the wrong — that we do not lie to ourselves, and convince ourselves that what we do is right.”

Yes, most definitely people have now heard about cervical cancer which can be easily cured.

But this truth has been based on a lie.

We have played with people’s emotions. We have also diluted the trust people place on sources they gather information from online.

There is a thin line between a good campaign and an absolute disaster. To me sadly this is a disaster.

Suck You Evernote

Relationships are extremely important to me. I consider them the building blocks of success, and take pride in the relationships have built over the years.

Sadly this is something that those who own Bending Spoons a European app manufacturer with Ryan Reynolds as an investor, have no idea about.

This all started when they (Bending Spoons) bought an app called Evernote.

Now I have been an Evernote user since 2016.

It has served me well.

At certain times in my life, I have been a paid user for a couple of years.

Then all of a sudden these guys increased their annual plan by nearly double to 140 dollars a year.

This made me reconsider my options.

I realized the main reason why I was paying for Evernote was because it gave me the privilege of using it on three different devices instead of two.

I also realized that I do not use it very much on the third device. It was mainly on my laptop and my phone.

So I downgraded from the paid plan to the free tier.

And that was when the trouble started.

Suddenly I realised that I was facing a stranglehold on what I could do on the app. And as time went by the stranglehold became tighter and tighter.

Right now you cannot open more than one notebook per month and have more than fifty notes.

This price increase reminds me of Martin Shkreli who raised the price of a tablet of a vital Aids medicine from 13 Dollars to 750. After purchasing the license to manufacture it.

Bending Spoons, also known as BS — I cannot help but notice that BS is more popularly known as the acronym for Bull Shit — was trying to profit maximize on one side.

While loading EN with features that might have increased the operating cost as well as made the app more clunky. This also meant that the software had to be upgraded constantly. Virtually every other day. Trust me, that’s extremely frustrating.

I still believe they could have offered a more economical model for people such as me who use Evernote for just note-taking, restricting some of the bells and whistles.

Anyway by this time I was extremely frustrated. And decided to switch.

So right now I am typing this on Apple Notes. Which is excellent and comes FOC with my devices.

Additionally, apple just launched a journaling app that is highly intuitive which I am testing out at the moment. Not sure I might use it long-term. And of course, there is One Note which gives me the freedom of handwriting as well as typing.

Yes, I have 8 years' worth of notes in Evernote which I shall migrate slowly but surely.

But I wish this relationship could have ended better.

“But its price and very limited free version make it hard to recommend to anyone who isn’t already using it. As such, Evernote is no longer an Editors’ Choice winner. Most people should look to OneNote instead because it works just as well and is considerably more affordable.” — PC Mag November 29th, 2023