Author: Sanjay Aggarwal
Company: Minglebox
[Since apps recently went live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and tell us about their apps here.]
The Minglebox team is excited to develop applications that are tailored for the Indian audience -- iPoke and Teen Patti are two apps we've made available on orkut.
With iPoke, you can interact with friends using Indian lingo. Get caught in cricket with college buddies. Bowl a maiden over, fox a friend with a googly, or get hit wicket. Resume the chalk-piece war from your old school days. Missed your friend on his birthday? Smash a birthday cake on his face!
App highlights: iPoke and Teen Patti
Thursday, May 01, 2008 10:41 AM
Reorder and organize your pictures in orkut albums
Wednesday, April 30, 2008 7:23 AM
Posted by Abhishek Surana, Software Engineer
Now that we have more capacity for you to upload your photos (if you haven't tested the limit lately, you can now upload up to 10,000 pictures), we've also upgraded our photo album features. For example, until now, you had to delete and re-upload photos to change the order of photos in your albums. To make this easier, we launched a 'reorder photos' functionality which lets you organize your pictures directly in orkut. If you want to mix things up in your albums, select the album you'd like to modify, click on "reorder photos," then simply drag and drop your photos until you have it just right.
Privacy Feature Update
Monday, April 28, 2008 11:19 AM
Posted by Vlad Patryshev, Software Engineer
Thanks for all the great feedback on privacy, and we're glad to hear that so many of you appreciate our continued work to make orkut a place that allows you to be as public or private with your information as you wish. This week we are adding additional flexibility for you to manage the privacy of your testimonials, videos, scrapbook and feeds. In addition to having your privacy settings to be just "friends" or "everyone," you can now select also "friend of friends." We feel that this is a good choice for those of you who may wish to share your information with an extended group of friends without making it public to everyone. We hope this additional flexibility helps you manage your experience on orkut better.
App highlight: myHangman
Friday, April 18, 2008 6:02 AM
Posted by Ekalavya Bhattacharya, Contests2win.com How to do I play?
[Since apps recently went live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and tell us about their apps here.]
myHangman lets you play the classic game of Hangman. You can choose a topic from the existing list or create your own based on your favorite movies, music, TV Shows, celebrities, or anything else that fascinates you.
Save your man from hanging by guessing the missing letters and filling in the blanks to determine the right answer. Don't worry, even if you lose one round, you can try to rescue your man again in the next game.
What else can I do on this application?
You can also create your own game and challenge your friends to play against you. C2W, the company that developed the myHangman app, even has plans to add prizes - another reason to try out myHangman!
Now available: orkut on your mobile phone, on the go
Thursday, April 17, 2008 11:02 AM
Posted by Hazel Mary, Software Engineer
Have you ever wanted to check if your buddy responded to your scrap about this evening's plans, but not been close to a computer? Do you wish you could pass the time on your long commute home by browsing through your friends' profiles?
Fret no more - if you have a web-enabled phone and a data plan, just point your mobile web browser to http://m.orkut.com, and stay connected to your friends anytime, anywhere.
We understand that oftentimes your phone's data network isn't as fast (or as cheap) as your computer's, so in designing orkut for mobile, we focused on offering the features that are most useful when you're on the move, instead of replicating all the desktop features. For example, we've made it easy to send, receive, and respond to scraps on our mobile interface so that you can step away from your computer and have conversations on the go. From your phone, simply click the new "Reply" link to respond directly to a scrap from your friend. You can also read recent updates from your friends, view upcoming birthdays, look up and add friends, and accept friend requests.
After you try out orkut for mobile, we'd love to hear what you think. From the http://m.orkut.com homepage, click on the "help" link at the bottom of the screen to send us your feedback.
Happy mobile orkuting!
Apps are live in India
Wednesday, April 16, 2008 6:03 AM
Posted by Manu Rekhi, Product Manager
Today we began rolling out applications (apps for short) on orkut to everyone in India and will roll out apps to all orkuteers, in local languages, over the next few weeks.
Apps are integrated directly into your orkut experience. When you log into your profile, you will be able to add up to 25 apps to your orkut profile. Your friends will see all the apps you've added, be able to interact with them, and can add any apps they like to their own profiles.
Apps can relate to anything, from games and music to travel and books. If you're interested in learning more, we've put together a short video that explains what apps are and how to start using them.
Watch out for the "add apps" link in your profile over the coming weeks. We'll give you an update when apps are available to everyone worldwide.
App highlight: Catalog your past and future reading with ReadingSocial
Tuesday, April 15, 2008 7:13 AM
Posted by Tim O'Shaughnessy, LivingSocial
[As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here.]
Have you ever needed an easy way to keep track of which books you've read, remember the books you want to read, and see book recommendations from your friends? ReadingSocial solves these problems by giving you a tool for organizing your books on a virtual bookshelf.
We created ReadingSocial because we recognized that reading books is an inherently social activity. We're always getting recommendations from our friends and family, and we knew there had to be an effective way to keep track of this information online. It's also interesting to browse the bookshelves of friends who have similar tastes as you, and you may get new ideas for what to read next. For example, if you love historical biographies, you can rest assured that there are others out there who can provide reviews of books you might consider reading.
Lastly, ReadingSocial on orkut is part of LivingSocial, which brings together people who are interested in a variety of different topics, such as books, movies, music, video games, restaurants, and beer. We'll be looking to bring more applications to orkut as soon as we can.
Happy reading!
App highlight: TypeRacer
Friday, April 04, 2008 5:31 AM
Posted by Alex Epshteyn, TypeRacer
[As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here.]
TypeRacer is a typing game that lets you race your orkut friends, in real-time, using your hard-earned keyboard skills.
You start with a little car on the left side of the screen, and you type the given text to make your car move all the way to the right as quickly as possible. Your score will be saved, and your orkut profile will show how you rank among all of your friends, so challenge your buddies to a race! Even if you're not a great typist, your speed will improve each time you play. My own speed went up by 20 words-per-minute while I was developing and testing TypeRacer.
You can even race directly against a friend if you both log in at the same time and are at the same skill level. In the future, TypeRacer will make it even easier for you to go head-to-head against your friends in private racing rooms.
Oh, one more thing - if you have friends who are not on orkut, you can still play them as guests at TypeRacer.com. Happy typing!
App highlight: Viibee
Tuesday, April 01, 2008 12:53 PM
Posted by Michael Marth, Viibee
[As we get ready for apps to go live on orkut, we're excited to invite orkut developers to guest blog and preview their apps here.]
Viibee is a dating app that lets you watch videos -- rather than read profiles -- from potential matches.
Creating your own videos is easy. If you have a webcam, you can record new video clips right in your browser window -- no software installation is required.
The continued search for better search in orkut
Monday, March 31, 2008 10:15 AM
Posted by Eduardo Thuler, Product Manager
orkut may be all about your social connections, but Google is a search company at heart -- so we're always looking for ways to improve our orkut search features. Here are some of the latest improvements:
- We are now making a greater effort to guess what you are looking for. In the past, you may have noticed that a more general search on orkut didn't always provide you the results you were hoping for. If you searched for a friend named Navneet, you may have found that the first results were for communities called "navneet." We've spent some time working on this and think you'll see better results more often now. So go ahead and try it here.
- Just as with Google search, we'll now suggest a correction if we think you've misspelled your search words. You can see an example here.
- We now take into account the country, state and city listed in your profile when searching on orkut, so you'll get the other Navneets from Maharashtra (if that's where you live), even if you have it listed as MH.
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