Orkut on Symbian 60 Phone Rocks !!

Orkut is the most popular social networking website in India and it has a really huge market share. But that hasn’t made them sit on their laurels and do nothing. Orkut has been improving each day and the newest improvement to Orkut comes for Symbian 60 users. Today, I happened to use Orkut on a Nokia N81 and it really rocks.

  

It’s been a few days that Google launched a new Orkut for the S60 users and I heard the news earlier, but today I really played with it. And I was blown by the simplicity and usability of the interface. Its simple, intuitive and fast. Even with the slow GPRS connections that we have in India, it was as fast as anything you would be using on a desktop. The photo upload obviously very slow, but having an upload interface on a mobile device is pretty cool. You can update your album with the photograph you just clicked and show off your fun-trips to your social network while you are having fun...

The following are some new features:

1.) Photo uploads (Upload photos as soon as you took them from your mobile)

2.) Picture galleries (Look at orkut albums in a more streamlined and cell-like resolution)

3.) Click-to-call (Call friends from Orkut page)

4.) Quick friend searches.

If you have a Symbian 60 phone, what are you waiting for?? Enjoy your social network by going to http://m.orkut.com

Dress Up Orkut With Themes

Orkut is one of the big social networks on the web. With other social networks evolving everyday, Orkut doesn't want to be left behind in the race. And with this in mind, Orkut has added a new feature of "Themes". Themes allow users to change the look-and-feel of the scrapbook, profile pages. Earlier users had to use 3rd-party JavaScript (with GreaseMonkey only on Firefox)  to use custom-themes, but now Google has added themes for everyone to enjoy.

Orkut currently shows only 4 themes:

Spring Theme:

Country Theme:

Beach Theme:

and the Classic Blue Theme...

You can also disable the themes if you wish... You will also be allowed to create your own themes and just like Orkut apps these will be downloadable and sharable with your friends. Themes have not been rolled out to all the users, but will take a few more weeks to be shown to all the users. Just like the success of Orkut Apps gave an opportunity to developers, Orkut Themes will give designers a chance to monetize their skills.

The Scrapkut Worm Running Loose on Orkut

I'm sure a lot of Orkut users have seen the image shown below in their scrapbooks or their friend's scrap book. If you have seen it, then hold your temptation. Do not click on it because although it may seem to you like a YouTube video, its actually link that downloads a worm. The worm now known as the W32.Scrapkut by Symantec has created that scrap and wants to spread itself through your friendly orkut network.

Symantec's website dug deeper into the worm and explains on how the worm intends to spread itself.

When a victim clicks on the link, they are redirected to an external site which prompts them to download the file “flashx_player_9.8.0.exe”. When executed, flashx_player_9.8.0.exe retrieves the files windosremote.exe, logservicess.exe and win32chekupdate.exe from http://[REMOVED].ifastnet.com. These files download additional files that perform a variety of malicious actions, but logservicess.exe is the main executable for further propagation. Logservicess.exe first copies itself as maindwxp.exe to four different locations on the system to ensure it is executed on startup.... [read more]

Hopefully you have not yet succumbed to the temptation and clicked the image. The problem is not just for you, but for all your friends on the orkut network. And if you have already experienced the worm, pass on the info to your friends so that they don't get infected. Social networks is going to be the next big target for hackers and worm writers. Tread with caution is the best advice at the moment!!

Show Latest Blog Updates On Your Orkut Profile

Like most online Indians, I am also an Orkut user and have my share of social networking world. About a month or two back, Orkut updated its design and brought RSS feeds to follow the scrapbook and profile updates of orkut friends. They also started showing updates that friends make to their profile on the homepage.

Hmmm... nice features to keep track of what's happening to friends/psuedo-friends. I was interested in showing my orkut friends, the updates that I make on my blog. I wrote an RSS reader and autoupdater software that would do that for me.

But the worst thing was later discovered. I found out that orkut's webpage textfield only allowed max 61 chars... What crap!! This is surely a bug that orkut's webpage textfield has... Im sure they need to increase the maxlength for that field. There are a lot of pages that are more than 61 chars in length. Infact, all the permalinks from my blog posts were more than 61 chars

I think orkut should increase the size of the textfield. And allow use to display the updates using some RSS reader, or even better integrate Google Reader with Orkut!! Yeah...some Web 2.0!! :((

MySpace Takes Features From Facebook

Recently I was reading BigAdda Vs Orkut, and I wondered how the other social networking websites are working! Went into MySpace and saw a newer changed look with a lot of the stuff which was there are Facebook. I regularly use Facebook and identified those features...

The new features on MySpace are:
1.) New Friends View (Facebook, Orkut already have this one - MySpace has Mutual friends now!)
2.) Forums (more like real forums now!!)
3.) New Music Player
4.) Spam Control (CAPTCHA to send you a friend request)
5.) Tagged photos (Like Flickr and Facebook... this should be a nice one)

Login to your myspace and enjoy the new features