When Amit Mishra was jailed in connection with his wife's suicide, it was the worst thing that ever happened to him.

When he emerged a year later having proved his innocence, he had built a software solution jail authorities are now adopting across the entire network of prisons, starting with Haryana.

The problem he solved - helping people who had served their sentences to appeal for release.

In the earlier bureaucratic system that existed, prisoners languished far beyond the sentences they had to serve.

By putting the details of the sentence online, wardens and the authorities concerned could determine the terms of release without having to go through the layers of  existing procedures.

It's a rare story because requirements gathering usually happens in comfortable environments.

But Amit Mishra saw the deficiencies in the system and the havoc it was creating. And experiencing it first hand gave him a clear idea of how the problem could be solved.

The software, a prison management system is being used to frame guidelines for the future and implemented across all prisons in due course.

It's named Phoenix. About rising from the ashes.

A renewal of life and aspirations for others as well.

Do you sign with a flourish?

Do you keep it plain or follow what the star autographs do?

Arcing from the beginning to the end or taking one letter and dramatizing it.

If it has a 'G' or an 'E', it allowed for variations on a theme.

The 'G' could loop infinitely below and return to fly past the round head of the letter.

The signature used to come into play for opening bank accounts.

At that point, you did it self-consciously.

It had to be to be stylish but not so difficult to replicate that the bank would reject a cheque in future.

And this is where parental or star influence came to the fore. In most cases, it was modeled on the way a parent signed - mostly on report cards.

I admired the way my father looped the initial 'P' in his name and sloped the rest of of the letters before an underline that emphasized it.

That was definitely my inspiration.

These days, you almost never have to sign a cheque - just punch PINs.

But important documents still require a signature - everything from a driving license to a PAN card to passports.

Your last surviving trace of individuality in a digital world

Some YouTube stars are moving out

Imagine you have a great thing going on YouTube as a creator.

Millions of views, a growing subscriber base and money deposited into your account every month.

Life couldn't be better, right?

Now, it turns out that some prominent creators are building their own backup plan.

They don't want to be in a situation where YouTube dictates terms to them.

And they're a little tired of all the trolling and nastiness that seems to come along with universal free access  

So, they've built an alternative.

They didn't migrate to another video service but built one owned and operated only by creators.

It's called Floatplane and they know it will never be as big as YouTube.

But they can build and sustain their own communities here because only paying customers are allowed.

As YouTube stars know, the bigger their fan bases grow, the more dependent they become.

Cutting the connecting cord altogether will result in a complete loss of revenue.

So, they are hedging their bets. New episodes premier for their paid fans first on their own channel - and then the same episode goes up on YouTube a week later.

If this becomes an exodus, things could get interesting.

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