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

Finally google has once again updated its toolbar PR.

and guess what i have been on the benifit end

the details of my personal pages pr update is as follows.

http://blog.anantshri.info - earlier PR2 - now PR3

http://www.linkedin.com/in/anantshri - no PR - now PR3

http://claimid.com/anantshri - no PR - PR3

http://anantshri.stumbleupon.com/ - np PR - PR3

http://www.naymz.com/search/anant/shrivastava/1518597 - not created at last PR - PR2

Till now i have found these changes

I hope to get a lot more in next PR update.

But for the time being this much is enough for me.

Technorati: google PR

Tags: google

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

Recently many person’s are facing this problem on orkut,

If you open your account and click on any top link’s or navigate away from one page what you get is a login page again,

problem unknown till now.

my speculations may be some of the maintainence stuff or may be some opensocial integration related problem.

but these are pure speculations.

Tags: google