Orkut - Part 2

Fully integrated chat in orkut = GTalk + Orkut

One of our favorite features in GMail is its integrated Chat box. Now I have got another reason to stay logged into my Orkut account, whenever I am not blogging!
But with this integration, I think that the scrap books will become much like a testimonial page or spam book! Because most of the people will use the sophisticated Chat box instead of sending scraps to eachother and keep waiting and refreshing to see the new scraps!

And people may argue that, in offices and schools, the administrators will block the Chat box, so people will still be sending the scraps(as chat messages). But we think, if the administrator thinks that Chatbox in Orkut isn’t safe, then he is also likely to think that Orkut itself isn’t safe to be allowed to access!

Anyway, with this new feature we can:-
* Chat with your orkut friends in real time from directly within orkut.
* Control which of your orkut friends can chat with you.
* Chat with your Google Talk and Gmail chat contacts.
* Visit different orkut pages while keeping your chatboxes open.

My favorite thing would be, chating with GMail and Google Talk buddies using my Orkut account. Thats cool, isn’t it?
orkut-gmail-chat

You get full control of who can see you online, who can chat with you etc, in Orkut “Settings” page.
If you don’t see this feature enabled in your account yet, just be patient, Google will rollout this feature to all its users in a couple of days.
orkut-chat-settings

Till this feature is enabled to you, have a look at:

What do you think about the new features in Orkut? Do you think it will reach a state of facebook soon?

Add colourful wordings, videos, smilies, links to your Orkut profile and scraps

I have been getting many emails from my readers (who read my about me section in Orkut) about how to write colorful letters in orkut profile and scarps?
We had thought that this is a small thing that almost everybody using orkut will be knowing. But to our surprise many people wanted to know about it, so here we go:-

Scraps to friends
Now, you can paste in photos, videos, audio, and flash widgets in scraps to your friends. Here’s how:
Add images

Copy and paste urls ending in .jpg, .gif, .png or .bmp and the image will appear in the scrap.
for example, http://example.com/example.jpg
Add videos from YouTube:
Copy and paste the url and the video will appear in the scrap.
for example, http://youtube.com/watch?v=videoid
Add podcast/audio:
Copy and paste the url of an audio file and an audio player will appear in the scrap.
for example, http://example.com/example.mp3
Add html-embeddable objects:
Create or upload your content at sites such as photobucket.com, imageshack.com, rockyou.com or slide.com. Copy and paste the html embed code to share it with your friends.

Scraps to everyone(See below image for the symbols)

To change the font color of your text, type the name of the color you wish to use in brackets.

Ex:- [ColorName]Your text that you want to see in red color[/ColorName]
[red]Text will appear in Red, in Orktu[/red]

To show an emoticon, type the key shown above for each emoticon in brackets.
To make text bold, italic, or underlined, use [b], [i] and [u] accordingly.
To make a word a link, use [link]…[/link]

I am [red]feeling[/red] [b][i]lucky[/i][/b] ! [:)] –> I am feeling lucky !
[link=http://www.orkut.com]orkut[/link] –> orkut [http://www.orkut.com]
[link]http://www.orkut.com[/link] –> http://www.orkut.com
Source:- Orkut

These are some of the basic things to make your scraps and about me section of Orkut colorful and attractive. And if you like any thing in someothers scarp book or about me section and you have no idea of how to do it, then you can just select the whole thing, drag and drop into your scrap book[Not recommended. Do something creative yourself]

Happy spammers-Orkut allows Export contacts in CSV format

Spammers job is to keep collecting email address of active internet users until they get a deal(spamming), so that they can mint some money from those spam mails.

I know a guy in India, who asked me 75$ and he could send my blog link to 5 lakh people in one day. And he was very good at convincing. He told that I would get back my money from the one day of campaign with him(spamming).
But guys, I don’t like spammers. And I hate when someone interferes in my privacy without my permission, so how could I interfere in someone else privacy!

One sad part is, these spammers are very intelligent. They know all sorts of things from where they can get the email ID’s of active internet users.

Now anyone can get large number of active email ID’s from Orkut!
Log in to orkut, then click ‘Friends’ along the top navigation. Next, click ‘Download your contacts’ on the bottom of the page to save your contacts as a CSV file.

In Orkut, its not so difficult to add 1000 friends(which is the limitation presently, but we hope Orkut will soon remove this limitation too) by creating a fake account(in the name of a girl and with a sexi pic in the profile). After creating some 10 accounts you can keep checking these accounts and just accept the friend request you get. There are applications which will help you to accept all the friend requests in one click. So by a month are so, you will be acquiring 1000 contacts in each of the profiles i.e., 10 x 1000 = 10000 / month. Now just goto ‘Friends’ link in the top navigation. Next, click ‘Download your contacts’ on the bottom of the page to save your contacts as a CSV file. SO you will have 10000 active email contacts per month.

Now the “Big G’s” “Orkut” is a hot place for spammers to get the email ID’s of the most active internet users. Because, people who are using social networking sites are mostly addicted to that social networking site and they check it almost every day like a daily ritual.

To prevent spammers from getting your email ID for some extent:
Don’t accept/send friend request of/to those who put fake sexi pics in their profiles(to attract others).
And observe their activities before sending/accepting request.

I have been getting lot of spams to one of my ID and the others had just 2 or 4 spams. So I wondered why only one ID is getting full of spam mails?
So we did a bit of research and found that, the same spam messages where present in many peoples orkut scrap books, and finally we could get to know the source of spam and discovered that the guy who spammed us, got our ID from Orkut.

And I am sure, Orkut is one of the main place where these spammers collected huge number of active email ID’s.
So be careful the next time you send/receive a friend request in Orkut or any other social networking sites.

Orkut adds a Family Friendly Feature – “Safety Filter”

Social networking site is a place where we can connect with people and have a good, healthy relationship with. If these sites become like porn sites, then where is the meaning for social networking ?

Its good that Google has come forward to implement this feature in its famous social networking site Orkut.

Google is changing things in Orkut so fast and its improving almost day by day. And We can say that Orkut would surly be a tough competitor for Top 1 place in social networking sites, in the coming days.

This “SAFETY FILTER” feature is automatically turned on in all profiles and you can turn it off anytime by going to “settings”. You turn it off or on, orkut’s tough policies against explicit content will still be in place.

The new “Safety Filter” automatically screens for content that may not violate Orkut Community Standards. With the “Safety Filter” on, whenever you come across a page with photos or text that you might be bothered by (such as sexually suggestive phrases or images) , you’ll receive a warning and the mature content will be replaced by special icons. No filter is 100% accurate, so if you see a page that you think should be blocked, just flag it as always and let the Orkut team know about it.

Orkut has been criticized and even sued in courts of India, not so much for sexually explicit content, but for political content, including communities on the site that criticize the country or some of its politicians.

The filter in Orkut is however oriented to filtering out sexual content and not political content. Filtering political content is far more difficult as there is always a gray area as to when the filter would come in the way of freedom of speech, – said Rahul Kulkarni, product manager at Google India, on Thursday.

Send and receive Orkut Scraps on your SMS enabled mobile phones[India&Brazil Only]

Orkut is a very famous Social networking site in Brazil and India. I have heard that, in Brazil, if 20 are in a cyber, 18 of them will be accessing Orkut. Hope this is not the case in India, but still Orkut is a popular site to get in touch with friends and family.

But its difficult to be in front of computer all the time to get in touch with friends and family. So Orkut had introduced a separate version of Orkut for mobile internet users. But as we all know, most of the service providers charge high rates for providing mobile internet.

So now Google’s popular social networking site Orkut has introduced yet another cool feature, by which we can use Orkut from our cell phones without internet connection. Yes, I am talking about the SMS feature. Orkut had introduced SMS feature in Brazil long back. If you are from Brazil, then click here to learn more.

So I was expecting Orkut to release the same kind of feature in India too. And the day came soon, and now we can use orkut’s new SMS feature, to scrap our friends, look up their contact information and receive scrap notifications.

I always had a thought that Google may merge its Orkut and dodgeball.com to give us a great social networking site. Now Orkut SMS service would look more similar to dodgeball.com( by Google ) service.

To get started click here. There you will see option to specify your mobile number to receive notifications. You will have to verify your mobile number first to start using this service.

When I first saw the list of service providers, I felt like, I am missing something. And suddenly I could realize that, Big players like Airtel and Vodafone where missing from the list! Hope they include them as soon as possible, orelse they will be loosing many customers, before acquiring them.

I use Spice SIM in my Nokia 6630(“3G enabled iPhone will be released on Aug 18th and Aug 22nd by Vodafone and Airtel respectively, in India”. And I will be purchaing iPhone with Airtel soon..).

Spice charges 2Rs for sending mobile verification SMS.

Though I used my Spice number to signup for this service and sent the verification code to the correct number, still this service is not yet activated to my number. I received no confirmation message from Orkut either.

And surprisingly I spotted another aspect….which I have not shown in the above video. When I click on the link “Having Problem?” It shows the following message

Currently orkut SMS works only in Brazil. If you are still not able to register your mobile number visit the SMS help page.

Here is the screen shot…

What should we call this…an error or is this SMS feature still in pre-launch mode in India or is it a pre-registration or whatelse ?

Is this Me alone or everyone else having the same problem with registering their mobile number?