News

Meet LiFi: The New Tech Delivering High-Speed Internet Using Light

The cutting-edge innovation offers low latency, stable streaming, and doesn’t force users to compromise with bandwidth.

Published

2 years ago

February 29, 2024

Nour Nasir

meet lifi the new technology delivering high-speed internet using light

pureLiFi

Looking for faster internet than Wi-Fi? Enter LiFi, a groundbreaking technology launched by pureLiFi, a UK-based company, at the Mobile World Congress (MWC 2024) in Barcelona. This innovative approach to wireless communication utilizes light, offering users low latency and congestion-free experiences for gaming, video conferencing, and media streaming.

Unlike traditional methods like Wi-Fi and 5G, LiFi transmits data wirelessly through light, circumventing common issues such as buffering and signal vulnerability. Ron Schaeffer, pureLiFi’s chief strategy officer, highlighted LiFi’s ease of use and lack of congestion compared to traditional Wi-Fi.

“Just like Wi-Fi access points people have, it is also a plug-and-play. People can plug into a network, and within a few seconds, you have LiFi,” explained Schaeffer.

purelifi lifi cube

“Importantly, it is not subject to congestion like Wi-Fi is. Everyone who would be connected to LiFi will have full bandwidth. For instance, if you are watching a video, someone is on a video call and another person is playing a VR game, you all are competing for Wi-Fi bandwidth. With LiFi, everyone has their own bandwidth. You can take off the Wi-Fi network and put it onto LiFi; the internet experience also improves because it is less congested. So, we say LiFi makes Wi-Fi better,” the Chief Strategy Officer added.

LiFi boasts impressive capabilities, transmitting and receiving 1GB of data per second in each direction, covering an area of up to 50 square meters. Its inherent security benefits, stemming from its inability to pass through walls, make it particularly interesting to security-conscious users.

Also Read: Getting Started With Google Gemini: A Beginner’s Guide

pureLiFi plans to collaborate with telecom providers to deploy its devices in homes and offices. Schaeffer emphasized the company’s potential to revolutionize internet connectivity, citing its vast spectrum availability compared to radio frequencies.

Alistair Banham, CEO of pureLiFi, expressed excitement about LiFi’s ability to address current and future connectivity challenges, including the release of light antennas for various devices: “LiFi is now ready to augment and extend other wireless technologies ushering in a new era of bandwidth, speed and reliable communications,” he said.

News

Instagram Redraws Its Wordmark And The Internet Reads “Instagzam”

Instagram’s first wordmark refresh in a decade arrives with new fonts, a restrained gradient — and a Reddit verdict of sidegrade.

Published

4 days ago

August 14, 2026

Nour Nasir

Instagram

Although Instagram’s famous camera icon hasn’t changed, the company has refreshed the handwritten wordmark at the top of its app. This is the first redesign we’ve seen in ten years, and one the internet promptly set about renaming.

“The wordmark at the top of the app hasn’t changed in 10 years, so it was time for a refresh,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri wrote in a post on August 13, describing the new version as “cleaner and more modern” while keeping references to the original design.

Instagram says its team explored hundreds of options — all-caps lettering, camera-inspired concepts, even literal handwriting — before returning to script. “Script reflects individuality, so referencing that felt right,” Instagram director of product design Jasmine Probst said in Meta’s announcement. “The new wordmark is bolder and simpler, with touches of unexpectedness. It cues individual expression, a personal voice, both of which have always been core to Instagram”.

The wordmark is part of a broader brand overhaul: an updated Instagram Sans typeface, two new fonts — the hand-drawn Instagram Pen and Instagram Mono — plus refreshed motion and layouts, and more restrained use of the signature gradient. The wordmark is rolling out globally now, with the rest arriving throughout 2026 and beyond.

Also Read: Spotify Will Now Tell You If Your Favorite Artist Isn’t Real

The design mixes cursive and print lettering, some characters connected and others floating free. That hybrid approach, combined with unusually shaped “s” and “r” characters, led some users to conclude the logo actually reads “Instagzam”. On the r/logodesign subreddit, one user said the wordmark looked “fan-made,” like something built in Canva; another called it “an unsettling mix of manuscript and cursive”; a third summarized it as a “sidegrade” — or, inevitably, a “zidegrade”.

Not everyone was hostile to the new look. Some found the half-cursive design stylish and surprisingly readable, while others called it an improvement on its predecessor, and one commenter argued Instagram was simply adopting minimalist branding later than everyone else. Either way, the platform now has a refreshed identity, three updated fonts, and an unofficial new pronunciation.