Anant Shrivastava

Orkut has recently done a lot of changes to its UI  engine,

most prominent being

1)light version of orkut comming to thewild covered here 

2) Theming Engine (finally out in wild)

3) Photo tagging feature : one of the few features of facbook which should have long been imported to orkut.

So this post is to let everyone know that they can now decorate their orkut profile with legitimate themes and not those creepy greasemonkey based themes.

for this you have to go to profile -> themes tab. or click here

or just select change theme on the top right hand  side.

currently orkut has a limited set of themes they will be increasing them, but the actual fun will start as soon as they start letting user’s build their own themes. (just like blogger.)

NOTE : one thing i would like to remove from all themes is the big header, it realy takes up quite a lot of screen portion.

PHOTO TAGGING.

A very much awaited feature which was one of the reason’s why i liked facebook a lot.

This will help those who are looking for old picture’s or unable to find their group photographs to catalog their pics properly.

and this also removes the limitation of uploading pics again and again on each profile (in case of group pics) , you jsut tag the pics properly and it will let everyone know that tagging is done (i.e a pic is found with thier name in it.)

NOTE : if some one tagged you in his pics you get a notification on your mail id that  you have been tagged.

TAGGING IN ACTION

I hope orkut keeps improving on its standard’s

Tags: google, orkut

hello orkut freaks,

in a silent move today orkut has introduced a new feature in its User Interface.

Now users with low bandwidth has an option to switch to light edition and this is prominently placed by a banner display if the page loading time exceed certain limit.

also the feature can be accessed through  setting also.

This low bandwidth version or what we can call lite  edition of orkut has following features most prominently visible one’s

1) Pictures ae not shown except profile pic.

2)  birthday list turns into a calender with name’s listing only.

Also Apps are by default minimized now and on selecting particular app its data is fetched.

In short by removing these picture’s a lot of bandwidth can be saved

But a lot more could have been saved if embedded object’s could have been reduced to links.

Tags: orkut

big time for orkut fan’s

first time opensocial has yielded some results.

orkut has launched orkut apps with some minor enhancements in cosmetics of orkut layout also.

currently the apps database has only 18 apps

1. Music iLike
2. Emote
3. Photoattack
4. horoscopes
5. TypeRacers
6. Top friends by slide.com
7. SlideTV by Slide.com
8. My Hangman
9. iRead
10. Flixter Movies
11. ChakPak Movies
12. Reading Social
13. Bible Verses
14. INdia Dekha
15. Teen Patti
16. Hangout
17. BuboMe
18. Music And Movies

But if you look at the list closely you find many applications resembling close to each other
Like we have 3 movies apps and 2 books apps.

so that should be avoided.

and i tested 3 apps till now
1) iRead - working fine with all features
2) Flixter Movies - Going smooth.
3) Music iLike - interface not opening on FF3 beta, hope it works on other’s

Well lets see what this leads to, if they can work properly then apps can realy make orkut a rocking place.

BUT STILL SOME ISSUES LOOM LARGE

1) many of these apps are available on facebook, can the users import their data here,
2) what about generic site data. mean’s like for example some one has account at flixter can hi import data on orkut app.

for reference my orkut profile is
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=3169045171018903779

Tags: orkut

Google’s blogging platform has a new feature added on 29th Nov 2007,
Blogger now supports openid commenting.

This means that if you are a blogger / google account holder or if you have an openid you can use it for commenting on any blog in blogger/blogspot.

for author’s in order to enable this feature you ned to change your setting’s.

Currently it only supports users to comment on blogger blog’s

but google is taking feedback from users and is planning to let them use thier blogspot url or custom domain url as openid. in other words it will be providing openid based facility for all blogspot users.

you can have more information about this at the official blogger’s blog here.

Tags: google, openid

after the unofficial acceptance by google authorities earlier. Google has today launched its mobile application development platform ANDROID

This mobile platform has a lot of new things including but not limited to
1) Open Access through standard API calls even to the core mobile functionalities
2) On of the most intersting feature i liked is its non discriminative nature — even the dialer or home screen can be replaced.
3) As always google is now targeting mobile users and in order allowing desktop applcations to migrate to mobile level.
4) Complete SDK also includes device emulator and advanced debugging tools.

We have seen the growth a platform can get with the open developer’s involvement (simple example is Facebook), and hence came the google android chalange a $10M Challange for the best android apps.

As per android challange site

Cool apps that surprise and delight mobile users, built by developers like you, will be a huge part of the Android vision. To support you in your efforts, Google has launched the Android Developer Challenge, which will provide $10 million in awards — no strings attached — for great mobile apps built on the Android platform.
How It Works

The award money will be distributed equally between two Android Developer Challenges:

* Android Developer Challenge I: We will accept submissions from January 2 through March 3, 2008
* Android Developer Challenge II: This part will launch after the first handsets built on the platform become available in the second half of 2008

In the Android Developer Challenge I, the 50 most promising entries received by March 3 will each receive a $25,000 award to fund further development. Those selected will then be eligible for even greater recognition via ten $275,000 awards and ten $100,000 awards.

Read more about it at TECHCRUNCH and GIGAOM

Tags: google, googleos