Hear Her Roar!

Wow, what a powerful video! The fact that it was on Al Jazeera makes it even more powerful!

Stefan, over in the Islam Against Terrorism forum, informs everyone of a powerful video that was broadcasted on Al Jazeera.

Mjolner, Patricia, Mike, Agni and Christoph seem to have enjoyed the video presentation, although Zain seems to differ in opinion.

Roberta is nominating the woman for "Queen," although I disagree. A woman with that voice should head the entire United Nations.

Note: For those of you outside of Orkut, here is the video link.

Daily Profile (Madhuri Agrawal)

Update: Added Photo.


(Note: Yeah, I know work can get in the way of blogging, but I am going to try to at least pick an interesting profile every day)

Today's daily profile is Madhuri Agrawal from India! Madhuri speaks Hindi and English and her two passions in life are books and travel. She does however have a very...umm..."conflicting" personality, something her "about me" section reveals:

It is difficult to sum up in a few lines about so many years of alternating between living and existing.

All I can say perhaps is that I am a vociferous reader even though there are times when I could not bear the sight of books, I love to see new places yet find it so difficult to take off on a journey,

I love friends yet I desire no more than quiet solitude in my best moments, I love to write yet never finish more than 100 lines in a row, I want to make a very successful career even though I hate the corporate world..

Well Madhuri, I can understand how you feel, especially with the "corporate world" thing, although there are great companies out there such as Google, Google and Google (the last one may be slightly violent--beware).

Madhuri also seems to have good taste in movies such as The Matrix, although I have yet to see Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind starring Jim Carrey.

Madhuri seems like an interesting girl, and if you think so feel free to let her know.

What To Do With The Baby?

Dr. Fahad over in the India Womans Issues forum asks everyone if abortion should be up to the woman to decide.

Nida and Anish think so, with Anish also denouncing sex selection abortions which seem to be popular in India.

Ankur and Aviral disagree, with Aviral asking about the babies right to live.

The discussion gets more interesting on page two, and Noemaun wants to know about the "odd man left out" of the picture in this scenario.

Update: Corrected spelling of Anlcur (it shoudl be Ankur). Sorry.

Orkut Mafia Is Starting An Omerta?

For those of you who don't know (which included me five minuets ago) an Omerta is:

The omerta is a popular attitude, common in areas of Italy where the Mafia is strong, that implies never collaborating with the police. It can be intended also as a vow of silence among mafiosi. [...]

Among Mafia members, it means that they will not involve the police or the government in the affairs of the Mafia, and will deny its very existence.

The Orkut Mafia is compiling a list of rules in order to defend their own, although it seems that some are trying to start an election for leadership as the owner rarely posts.

Note: Since when do the Mafia elect their own members?

My Name Is...

A trend that is becoming "fairly popular" is people making Orkut Forums based around their first or last name. Some of these communities are useful, most are quite vain, but here are a list of some of the interesting ones.

• Nakano is my Last Name!: This communitie was created to connect people who has Nakano as a Last Name.
  
  It isn't necessary to have the last name to join, it is opened to everyone who wants.


• My name is Yumi: My name is Yumi... and I LOVE IT!!!
  All Yumis in the world, join this community :-)


• My name is beautiful!: If you think that your name is beautiful join here and all people can say the same!=)

I am not sure if the last forum is full of people with beautiful names as it only has one post thus far and seems eerily quiet (alas, another dead forum).

When I did a community search for my name, I was sadly disappointed.

Hotmail Got You Down?

So I think there might be a reason many of us (us being "orkuteers") are seeing this strange error.

Apparently this is happening whenever an invite is being offered to a hotmail address.

This is not a scientific analysis, as it is happening to only me and another user thus far (but more people are reporting weird things with hotmail).

I guess the only solution is to send them a gmail invite. Sigh.

So It All Comes Down To This...

I could be wrong but it seems that God has a sense of humor. ;)

As of yesterday (or rather the day before) I was able to schedule time for blogging in my calendar and was confident that I could focus on my passion and my career at the same time, sacrificing only sleep.

Unfortunately reality (through my supervisor) foretold that I would have less time to blog and more time to work. Sooo....with the sad/bad/good for the wallet news I was left with three options:

• Delete this blog and focus entirely on work.


• Stop blogging for the next month, give or take two weeks.


• Share the joy by adding extra contributors.

The last option seems to be more appealing, and I've already begun my hunt for interesting personalities who are familiar with Orkut as well as Blogger (click here for details).

If I have somehow missed you (oh no!) and you feel that you qualify, comment here and let me know. Otherwise I hope to receive feedback from some very interesting people inside Orkut. ;-)

Arabian Baby Names

In the We Love Babies forum, Laylia is looking for suggestions to name her upcoming baby girl.

Several give feedback, although I will have to go with Zainab's suggestion of Leena is the best choice thus far...even better than the name Zainab! ;)

But if she is looking for some Arabian baby names, Lebanese Doctors may have a few suggestions.

Taking Care Of Business...

Update: Added Community Photo.

Unfortunately I was out of town for the weekend (business reasons) so my daily enjoyment of snorkuting through the forums was cut short.

Speaking of business though, I came across this post in the International Business forum from Noor:

Whatever you need from china for your local market and for your industrial supplies. and for trade. We are the Group company we can supply you every thing.
main items are as follows.

1. fresh vegitables
2. fresh fruits.
3. all types of beans and cearels.
4. electronic Items including cell phones computers and home appliances.
5. industrial supplies (steel billets, almunium, copper, and all types of metals.)
6. screens for textile industry.
7. Textile fabrics and Clothes.( including undergarments, ladies wear, and mens wear.
8. Fresh and canned food.
9. Pan from Sirilanka Ceylone brand.
10. Dry fruits.

He has received one response thus far from Rizwan who is in need of cameras and medicine. It is fun watching business networking develop within Google's communities. I wonder if Google will consider taking advantage of the traffic and say, post Ad Sense within Orkut's pages?

Daily Profile (Ghazal Aslam)

Today's daily profile features Ghazal Aslam (how do you pronounce that?) who is a native of the US of A. Ghazal perked my interest mainly because of a quote on her front page she uses to describes herself as:

Resting in the serene depths of infinite transitions...

Ghazal comes off to me as a "fine arts" type of person, mainly from the activities that she enjoys such as badminton, table tennis (a fancy way of saying ping pong) and board games. I wonder if that includes tic tac toe? ;)

Ghazal doesn't enjoy most music genre's, and recommends a movie entitled Children of Heaven a movie I have never heard of until now (is it good?).

Ghazal is the mother of a very cute kid so why don't you scrap her and let her know.

Language Barriers

Unfortunately the community based off of the show 24 has been over run with silly debate over how to communicate.

(Anonymous) Stop postin n Spanish!!!: No Spanish n dis communitee!!! Dis communitee is for English.

Create ur own communitee and you Mexicans can speak in Spanish, ok?

_________________

(Anonymous) I AGREE!!!: im glad to know that someone other than me would also like to have topics discussed in english.Btw, how was Season 5 premiere???i cudnt watch it, so please DONT SPOIL THE SUSPENSE!!!

_________________

(gaBrieLLa) Shut uP stupid

and the posts are in portuguese
uglyyyy

_________________

(Srta. Isabela) Spanish huahauhuahauhauaa

_________________

(Anonymous) EM PORTUGUES, SEU ANIMAL!!!

_________________

I'd post more, but the debate continues in Portuguese and English, with some German as well. I can feel "the love" inside the room with insults flying back and forth on some pages.

Discussions like these usually help foster the mood of hate and generally prove to each fanatical side that the other is "a moron." I really see no problem with the other languages inside Orkut (as it's a ".com" not ".us" or ".uk") and if everybody just used the universal translator, discussions like these would evaporate.

Need Imports? (China)

Who says you can't network business on Google's Orkut? Apparently some users have in the Business in China forum (or at least are in the process of doing so).

(Peter) I am intested in importing Herbal Medication from China to UK - London and look for people based in China that would be interested in co-operation.

I need to find out various prices of herbal products in China. Please email me on [pfidelus (at) hotmail (dot) com] if you interested.

_______________

(Anderson) Hi man, I'm interested too, I want to bring chinese herbal medication to Brazil and develop a franchising. Nowaday's I'm living in Portugal but I got someome in China that can help us if you are relly interested.

Although the last post is less than 24 hours old, it would be interesting to see either business benefited from the contact. I'll try to do a follow up story later on about this (that makes two stories to write up on).

The Spammers Are Restless...Again

I am not talking about email spam or comment spam, but rather scrapbook spam, something that can be quite annoying.

From the Orkut Underground 2 forum (as the previous one was deleted).

([G]David) scrap books can b flooded usin a simple script.... u can use the script for floodin both ur SB n ur friends'.

post ur e-mail IDs here... if u wanna know the script.


PS: two things to note abt the script -
1. it uses a counter like the old-flooder from CMD... which uses a silver colored counter.
2. it may fail in two cases
a- bad bad server (u'll need 2 run the script again)
b- that person is not in ur friend list. in that case orkut will suspect u as a comp org n ask 4 a confirmation code 2 put in a txt box...(like the ones u get while signin up for e-mail IDs)

This is probably one of the many reasons the Orkut server(s) keep crashing. Don't these people realize that spam is annoying?

Pete, Your Fired!

Ha ha Pete, I am just joking! Don't delete this blog, as I love it very much.

Sorry for the delay, but blogger is experiencing some technical difficulties.

A small number of users are seeing a 553 Permission denied error when publishing to Blog*Spot. If this happens to you, logout of Blogger, clear your blogger.com cookies, and log back in. We are working to fix this problem.

Well, I appreciate the blog team for fixing all of the server problems. I don't have a clue on how they keep everything up, but hopefully they will work their "blogger magic" and make all of the problems go away.

Daily Profile (Bojan Tunguz)

After surfing though several forums, I noticed Bojan's profile which had a humorous description.

I am a benevolent rascal. I love lounging in bed on a Sunday morning. Rainy days make me melancholy, but in a good kind of way. I am an incorrigible chocoholic. I hate Mondays. People often misunderestimate me. I read like a donkey. Everywhere I go I look for things. Once I find them I take them out of context.

Bojan seems to enjoy watching The O'Reilly Factor, Simpsons, as well as some cool movies ranging from The Passion of the Christ to Borne Supremacy. He loves to devour Japanese food, which I also enjoy as long as its cooked (no sushi for me!).

Bojan also has an Amazon wish list so if your wealthy or generous, don't be shy to send him a gift (or three).

And The Winner Is...

It looks like Jamal Anwer has won the Orkut Face of the Month for February. I like his new profile image better, although the guitar photo does look pretty cool.

Jamal speaks several languages, including Urdu (does everybody speak this but me?) and enjoys music, car racing, cricket and counterstrike (the best game ever although not recommended if you have a job).

Congrats Jamal, and if anyone is reading this, fill up his scrapbook with praise and be sure to check out his cool shades!

An Orkut Hoax From The Founder?

I am starting to see this on some scrapbooks of users, and only came across this when someone scrapped me.

Dear user because of sudden rush of people signing upto orkut is come
to an attention that we are vastly running our of resources so with in a week
any one who does not receive this scrap will be deleted of our server . We know
that you are still using this account

We want to find out which users are actually using their orkut accounts so
if you are using your then please send this scrap to every orkut user that you
can if u do not pass this scrap to anyone then we will delete your account
From Orkut Buyukkokten

Admin dept.
Have a great time on orkut!
-the orkut team

I could be wrong, but I don't see the point in Orkut Buyukkokten deleting people who do not post this message as it would be the fastest way for Google to join the dark side of the force. Not to mention the fact that Google's grammar is usually semi decent, as "upto" isn't a word last I checked.

Although I find this hoax to be cute, I do not enjoy "socially engineered spam" populating throughout the Orkut universe. Hopefully the Orkut team (or Orkut himself) can clear this up as some people are taking this rumor seriously. Ghetto, isn't?

Advice From The Masters

I long time ago in a forum far, far away I posted in the Community Owners forum asking what their advice was on building a successful forum. Here are what the experts (at least to me) have to say:

(Tom (C-YtEK)) Popular, broard, [controversial] issues.

Don't limit your subject matter too much. the broarder the topic the more discussion you can have on it. [...]

Advertise but don't spam. Word of mouth will do a far better job of attracting members than by pissing them off in other communitys with spam.

Find a topic a group of people (your friends is easiest) is already interested in, tell them about your intention to start the community, a community started with one member tends to bomb out, but if you have a handful people see potential for discussion.

(Carolyn) Some of your decisions will piss people off, and some of them will have even people you like disagreeing with you. Own your decisions. That doesn't mean that you should be unwilling to reconsider if you've been wrong, but don't be afraid to say, "I made a decision, live with it."

(Dr. Awkward) I'm in favor of strong moderation. Some (but not all) of my communities are strictly English and I delete all Portuguese posts. [...] All off topic spam gets deleted too and so do troll posts full of hatred. I'm sure most members appreciate this and if not...tough luck.

One of the tones stressed is moderation of forums. Although I generally try avoid being the "censor police" (unless of coarse it is violent and threatening) I can see their point in why filtering out "the trash" helps promote discussion. Forums without rules are forums without purpose and only by checking out their communities do I see their advice producing fruitful forums.

Gabrielle also had some suggestions, which I consider the "icing on the cake" for those seeking to build successful forums. Here are some of her suggestions below:

• Have an descriptive profile for your community. Basically, what the prospective members can find, who should join, etc...


• Announce it to your friends, in Orkut and outside


• Inform members of related communities (i.e.: if you create a community called science, people hanging in other communities such as mathematics, biology, chemistry, engineering, etc... are likely to have some interest in your community too. Silly example but you get the gist of it.). In the threads not in messages, this pisses me off so I do not inflict it on others;


• Equally important, ask the owner for their permission and create reciprocical links


• Post. I see communities where the owner/moderator has created a community just go away without ever posting anything, what is the point? Also, you give the tone by posting...


• Try to spend time with your members. Get to know them. By doing so, you are most likely to know what makes them tick and then source the relevant information that is likely to interest them


• Use gimmicks to make them loyal to your community, wanting to come back. My ebook community allows me to post my list and offer to share my books with them. Painstaking time spent on this but worth it


• Keep the motivation up. It is easy to spend two hours a days for three weeks and then disappear for a few weeks, but this is a mistake. Even ask somebody to moderate for you while you are away or if your need a break.

Gabrielle last two suggestions are probably unheard of throughout the Orkut forums, but both of them are probably the reasons why many of her members visit her communities. It would be fun to collect everyone's tips and write them in a small book, but for now a weblog will have to do. ;)

Noah's Ark From Outerspace?

Aka'Diabolic (in the Archaeology and Religion forum) asked whether there was proof that Noah's ark was in Turkey. Several posts later, Andre makes an interesting statement.

Noah's ark was actually a spaceship put in orbit around the earth which contained DNA samples males and females from the majors species of animals.

The Bible/Torah says in Genesis 7:17:

'The ark was LIFTED ABOVE the earth'

Clearly says above the earth, not 'on' the water

The spacecraft had 3 sections:

'You shall build it in stages, the lower, the second, and the third' Genesis 6:16

I found his view to be amusing, although I did look up his references to see where he was coming from. Meanwhile Aka'Diabolic, Ziyad and Roberta (before her profile was hacked) give sarcastic replies expressing doubt.

The discussion gets a little interesting later on, (or boring, depending on your view of faith) with everyone trying to validate their holy text.

My Brain Hurts

Not literally, but from trying to solve some of these games in the Puzzles forum. Here are a few, but these are probably not recommended for thinking impaired or those with a time crunch.

(Shehzad-where is one rupee) 3 friends went out to buy a book, they purchased the book for 30 rupees(10 rupees to each friend), when they left the shop the seller realized that the book price was 25. so he sent his servant to return 5 rupees to the friends as he knew them, servant kept 2 rupees with him, and returned 1 rupee to each of the 3 friends.

now each friend spent 9 rupees and servant has 2 rupees, which counts 29 rupees so where is the rupee.

Does anybody get this answer? I thought I was doing pretty good at being "Mr. Genius" until I ran into some other puzzles which made me look really silly.

This "Who is Taller??" puzzle (by Vivek) has me stumped while this "tennis puzzle" (by Manan) is way beyond me.

If their are any geniuses in the house who can explain the solution to any of these, let me know.

Daily Profile (Linda Stephanie)

Today's daily profile features Linda from the Persian empire. Linda has a funny personality and enjoys a sport that I loathe, Tennis, mainly because I can never hit the ball between those white lines (I prefer ping pong). Here is a little about Linda:

I love having friends from all over the world so that’s why I’m here :c)

Also I love traveling I've been to many counties but still some are left undiscovered by me that I hope I can be able to see them all before God sends me an invitation to heaven or hell maybe! That of course would be the last undiscovered place to visit!!!! LOL

I'm cool and I have my own style of living something like still CRAZZZZZZZZZZZY!!!!!!! [...]

Something else:

Don't try to understand me, just like me ;c)

Linda also has played the Piano before, although she may be a bit "rusty now." This is probably far beyond anything I can do as I can only play "We are Siamese if you please."

I came across a great post by Linda over at the Valentine's day forum which I thought summed up the holiday very well.

"As food is needed for the body, them same way love is needed for the soul. Food strengthens the body while love strengths the soul. A person is incomplete without love."

Love the parable Linda! And if you loved her message as well, don't forget to mention it on her scrapbook. Cheers!

Orkut Prince And Princess Valentine Is...

The winners of the Orkut Valentines Prince and Princess are Faraz Ahmed and Loving Princess. Congratulations! The Loving Princess image is to the right and here is a little "something" I noticed on her profile.

• im Attractive


• im sweet


• im Cute


• im loving


• im Princess


• im Fantastic


• im Genious

She is also single but unless you want to travel to Pakistan you may not be able to win her heart.

Today's Prince is Faraz who has some really cool text art on his profile (everything from hearts to guitars to horses--you get the picture). He seems to be really popular as he posts:

WeLl It SeEmS LoTs Ov PeoPle CoPIed My ProFile, I gOt No PrObleM, EvEry1s InVitEd.

He also is in Pakistan (I wonder if they both will hook up?) and seems to lead an interesting life. Congrats to both of you! And to quote our founder, "Stay Beautiful."

The Legend Of Valentines Day

Visiting the Valentine's Day forum I came across two different legends on how Valentines Day came about posted on their front page (i.e. forum description). Here is the first.

There are some storice around about the history of Valentine's Day. The first legend says that Vlentine was a religious man who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudus ll decided that single men were better soldiers than married ones, he announced that young men should not get married. Valentine believed that this decision was not fair, so he continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Vlentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered his soldiers [t]o kill him.

This one sounds better than many that I have heard, although the story never reveals whether or not he was killed. Hopefully he wasn't but if so, then I hope it was an interesting death like Braveheart or something similar.

This next story is a bit sadder although it reminds me of the thousands of love stories that you hear on the radio or see on TV.

According to another legend, Saint Valentine actually sent the first Valentine greeting himself. While he was in prison, Vlentine decided to marry a young girl who had visited him in prison. Before his death, he worte her a letter, which he signed From your Valentine, an expression that is still in use today.

No one really knows the history of Valentines day so either legend could be correct or totally off. But if you do, let me know by scrapping me!

Valentine Questions And Spammers

In the Valentine forum (not to be confused with the other two), Imran is asking if anyone knows the history of Valentines day. The Valentine's day forum (a different community) tries to answer this question on their front page.

Unfortunately a spammer named Inram (I wonder if they are related?) has posted a message telling everyone to visit his site. Although I do not mind free market advertising, (as Orkut is just as useful for business as it is for romance--potentially) unrelated linkage can be rather annoying.

Meanwhile a new "word game" variation has appeared asking if people would go out with the person above them. Unfortunately it seems to be filled with mostly guys, and the most common phrase that I'm hearing thus far is "no."

Happy Valentines Day!

Today is Valentines day and here is what Orkut citizens are posting about this holiday.

Over in the Valentine day forum (there are many here so you have to keep up) Ali has posted a beautiful "text image" of a rose, a talent I have yet to perfect on Orkut.

Meanwhile in the original Valentine forum, Xhery Xheikh makes a plea for everyone to vote for her in the Orkut's Best Profile Contest while Hassam does not seem to be thrilled about Valentines day and writes a poem expressing his thoughts.

In the Be My Valentine forum, Sara wishes everyone a happy valentines (although she wrote it in another language so Bobak had to translate).

Love is in the air (or at least on Orkut) and it will be interesting to see what many people gave to their lover/spouse/significant other/etc. on Valentines day. :)

Good News, Bad News

I have good news and (not so) bad news.

The good news is that I am able to invite people inside Orkut after receiving a slight error awhile ago (I have no clue what they did but much love and thanks to the Orkut Team).

That bad news is this site will be down for today (and perhaps tomorrow) as I am in the process of installing categories via Del.icio.us. (I finished inserting this on my other weblog which took awhile as Greasemonkey was a little tricky in the beginning).

I have under 100 posts to categorize so I'll post an update once I am finished.

Update: Finished categorizing weblog. I think I'll begin posting tomorrow morning as I've spent several hours coding this weblog (95% is behind the scenes). See you tomorrow!

Hey! A New Donut Error!

Well, not really, but many users (including me) are coming across this one.



I am trying to figure out the cause of this. I have four working theories as why this might be.

• Could it be that I have exceeded the maximum number of invites a person can give out?


• Could it be that Orkut has reached critical mass at approximately 7 billion users?


• Could it be that I have been violating Orkut's terms of use by inviting friendly strangers instead of strange friends?


• Could it be that the Orkut founder is punishing me for making fun of him earlier? (dude, I swear it was just a joke!)

Either way, none of these will stop me! (well, except for the last one that is). I am going to update my invite system temporarily until the issue is resolved. After all, an optimist has to do what an optimist has to do. (besides Orkut needs more Americans on it).

Google Working On Blogger

According to the Status Blog, Google will be working on Blogger. I've experienced problems on some of my weblogs, so no daily profile for today. :-(

New Changes Inside Orkut

Hmm...I did not come across these until today, but it looks like the Google team is giving Orkut a few cosmetic improvements. First off, they seemed to changed the profile tags near the top from the "bubbly look" to a more professional one.



The new look is a minor improvement as far as aesthetics goes, although this teaser feature may be of greater interest to users.

(Explanation) Once you've worked up the courage to tell someone you're interested, try sending them a teaser. Teasers send an email from you to that person's preferred email account. You can choose from a fun selection of pre-written teasers such as, "For someone so adorable, how can you be single?" or write your own message.

This should be good for forums such as Dating Point. I wonder if Lexy will right about this in her next post?

Daily Profile (Archana)

Today's daily profile features Archana from California!



Archana is a very talkative woman who speaks five languages ranging from English to Telegu to Gujarati (what's that?). She is also a beautiful young lady but she is already taken so if you had any thoughts, erase them. Otherwise her husband will beat you up. ;)

Archana blogs over at Archie the Great although she is running the sinister Yahoo ads. (boo!--just kidding).

Her favorite TV shows are Friends, Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond and one that I have not heard before entitled "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" She also enjoys Indian music, and may enjoy this one (and others) via Google Video.

In order to know her more, you "gotta be [her] friend," so why don't you stop by her scrapbook and say hello. ;)

Update: Silly me! Corrected article time from AM to PM.

Did The UAE Block Orkut?

Naamer, who publishes over at UAE community blog is asking that question.

Arvindsatya confirms this by saying:

Yep when I wrote to Etisalat when Orkut was first released, then went on about how it could potentially lead to dating like just about any other site with any sort of community.

If this is true, Samuraisam thinks it is a waste of time to try to convince the authorities that Orkut is a harmless site, although Crackingboy provides a technical reason why he thinks Orkut is blocked.

I am trying to verify this over at the UAE forum (as well as the other two) and will post an update here later on.

Orkut Merging With Friendster?

I came across this article about a rumor floating around that Google would purchase Friendster and merge it with Orkut.

(Silicon Beat) "We cannot comment on rumor or speculation," said Eileen Rodriguez, a [Google] spokeswoman.

We haven't done a definitive tally of how Google responds to these sorts of things, but note that this "no comment" is much more sparse than the outright denials Google has issued in the past when something isn't true, including its response to rumors last week about a possible acquisition of Napster.

"We have no plans to acquire Napster, nor do we have plans to develop a music store at this time," Google spokeswoman Sonya Boralv said in a statement.

Like the editors, I have serious doubts on whether this story has any "value" to it, although Google apparently did try to acquire Friendster before (they were rejected and created Orkut instead).

I do not see a need for a potential merger, although if there was one, what would Google do with Friendster's blogs?

The Angry Arzoo

You have all probably seen the reaction from Muslims over the depiction of Mohammed via cartoonish satire.

In response to the publications of the cartoon from a Denmark newspaper, Arzoo has formed a community called Down With Denmark. This forum seems to be gaining popularity as it has already swelled to over 1,900 members in the last five days!

Arzoo formed the community in response to being allegedly banned from the Denmark forum, although Morten denies the case and cites her frequent posts to the Denmark forum as evidence.

Arzoo seems to be getting a little too angry (scroll down) with threats of violence coming from her posts, although Medusa is not exactly helping out with her comments either (scroll down).

But alas, there at least appears to be a voice of reason, as Enigmatic Energy makes a plea for Muslims everywhere.

Frustration can make things worse only..instead of attacks on danish embassies..and other emotional debates..muslims should do something productive in unity..our frustrated behavior could only support the wrongful act of danish newspaper..

people are looking for the ways by which they can prove us uncivilized and stupid..this is such a matter on which a collective intellectual effort is needed..if we'll protest in such manner..no doubt other newspaper will try to harm our feelings through similar ways...

first of all we should look for unity..like passing some resolution in OIC..then in UNO..local protests cant help us..they could only make situation more worse by proving us as fanatic nation.. [...]

and believe me we cant harm through killing them or banning their products..they r getting more sympathy through such acts..and this was their master plan..Unity is the base for developing any future strategy..we should jsut calm ourselves..and think for some productive way..

Enigmatic Energy does have a point, although he may want to form a community promoting this idea, as some other muslims have created sites displaying that not all of them are fanatical as seen on TV.

Editor's Note: For those of you wondering, I do not see the point in "pushing buttons" of other people, unless one does it to enlighten others towards truth. So you probably know where I stand on the cartoon issue. ;)

Update: Links fixed.

Second Update: Apparently Arzoo was banned. Morton has the details (scroll down).

Daily Profile (Erin Wisner)

Well, I know I promised I would post over here today, and I had several outlined as well (Denmark, Death threats, "da cartoon," etc.) but unfortunately you will have to wait until tomorrow to see "the horror" that unfolds within. ;)

Anyways, I have not forgotten today's daily profile, which happens to be Erin Wisner. :)



Erin seems to love food, Frank, and booty shakin'. She also seems passionate about suicide skiing, a sport I haven't tried yet, although I may be tempted to experiment if there is a snow boarding version. ;)

Erin is off limits as she is committed and according to Frank (her boyfriend?) she makes excellent tacos. I wonder if hers actually fill you up?

Note: Do you get it?

Daily Profile (Hashim Khan)

Today's daily profile features Hashim Khan who wanted me to join the Indian Women Issues forum. I think I'll wait until the forum reaches it's 100th member, then post about it here on this site. ;)

Anyways, here is a description of Hashim, which I found to be very amusing.

I have 2 passions, Guns and Surgery. Ironic, is it not? Guns kill people and Surgery heals them. But then again people have told me that I have a split personality. Sort of like Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

I can be a real wild bad boy when on a hunting trip and an absolute messiah in the Surgical OR. I love hunting but I love animals as well, infact I work for the WWF for the preservation of snow leopards in the north of Pakistan.

Hashim several languages ranging from German to Urdo and enjoys a game called Cricket, which I hear is fun but have no clue on how to play. Hashim wants to be a world class surgeon, and if any hospitals are looking for a future Pakistani doctor, you can contact Hashim by posting on his scrapbook.

Do You Love Stuff Crust Pizza?

Apparently Telefun does, and asks if anyone else does in the Pizza Hut Forum.

Ghazal has never tried it, but Rahul laments that it is no longer available in his area. Faith recommends that Rahul travel towards New Zealand to re-live the taste again.

But an anonymous individual (why do they hide their faces?) dares to voice dissent:

This is my personal experience to let all the pizza lovers know that the stuffed crust pizza really suckssss! its pathetic! trust me. they put kind of desi ghee in between the crust along wid the cheese [and] the topping above is of the tandoori pizza.

All they r doing is just trying to earn more money by introducing it in only the large size [and] they r not even offering it in the midnight deal. its also more expensive then the normal large pizzas

Well, I've never had a chance to try it myself, although I have found those bread sticks filled with cheese to be enjoyable.

I probably would have no opinion on the stuff crust, as I enjoy pizza in general--as long as there is pepperoni on it. ;)

Should Husbands Watch Porn?

Over in the Women of Pakistan forum, Amber has asked a great question.

I had a friend of mine tell me the other day that she came accross porn solicitations in her husbands email. She has just been married not too long ago and was really hurt by this. She also saw that her husband had subscribed to some porn sites as well.

And the real kicker is that he continues to get pictures of naked women from his buddies at work. Do you think that he is cheating on her with these pornographic divas?

Faizan thinks its okay while Fatima doesn't think married men should be engaging in such activities. Fish provides some decent advice towards the question.

...even though, in widespread opinion it wouldn't be considered cheating, i really think your friend should confront her husband about it.

i can understand why adolescent boys or girls might watch porn XD with the restrictions in our society for pre-marital sex or even any non-physical opposite sex relationships --- but once you're married, you're [not] allowed to venture into that zone. forgive me, but why watch it when you can do it?

My opinion (which I'll post later in the forum) follows the line of thought that "pornography is for losers" as I have seen it destroy the minds of men and woman within my lifetime. But that's my view, what's yours?

Where Are You From?

That is the question that Djalma is asking everyone in the Languages of the World forum. Although we all love Brazilians, I am going to list everyone who is NOT from Brazil since (as of this post) seven in ten people are from Brazil inside Orkut.

Here is what some of the users had to say:

• Sylvie: i am from France !


• Naor: I'm from Israel


• Christian: Germany


• Nazanin: I'm persian, from Iran.


• Santanu: kolkata,india


• Ashley: I'm from the USA!


• Sunshine: from PAKISTAN :)


• Esther: Columbia


• Anika: Cologne Germany


• Diaana: Estonia :)

Outside of the residents of Brazil, there were a few other honorable mentions, although to save my fingers in typing all of them I left them out. ;)

Sunny Responds

Previously I asked Sunny why she had so many forums. She posted on my scrapbook, and here is her response:

so many forums? well instead of lookin fer forums dat define a person i found it better ta make my own! dere aint anythin wrong in dat now is it? somethin different! most of em aint different but atleast i can say dey r mine (sic)

Sunny currently owns 28 forums, which is the largest amount that I have come across on Orkut (although some owners probably own more).

Sunny seems to be a "boy band fan," and I'll spare everyone the trauma of visiting these sites, although you can check out her other forums below.

• I Love Kids!


• Aestheticism


• Beauty With Brains


• EASE ME!

Superbowl Champions (Steelers)

Although I have to admit I was rooting for the Sea Hawks, they unfortunately lost to a better team.

Here are some victory shouts from the Pittsburgh Steelers forum.

• Pedro Arthur: superbowl championssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss


• Maria: YAY!


• Sourabh: Yesss the trophy is safely on the BUS to Pittsburgh


• Chinqis: the CHAMPIOOOOOOOOONSSSSSSSSSS


• Lucas: YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Pedro (not the one from above) gives a shout out to some friends or fans who helped make it happen.

thanks ben, bus, ward, randle el, porter, foote, polamalu, bill and the like for this great victory, we did it!!!!!!

Great game guys! Hopefully my team (The New England Patriots) can make it back to the top again.

Aside from the game, was it me or were most of the commercials lame this year?

Daily Profile (The Dude)

If you ever go surfing through Orkut on a daily basis, you will run into some interesting people. Some are freaks, and some are cool, but most generally are somewhere in the middle.

Here is an interesting guy who simply goes by The Dude!



The Dude has a following of well over 300 people and like this author is a "trekky." He also enjoys reading anything by Isaac Asimov and some of his favorite movies are Fight Club (never saw it) and The Fifth Element (over watched it).

He also thinks Halo 2 is a sport, but until all of us gamers can convince the medical society that gaming can improve your health, it may be simply listed as an obsessive fad. :(

If you dare, visit his scrapbook, or better yet his other scrapbook. Heh.

Why Sunny Why?

Why do you own so many forums? I think I will post my question on her scrapbook.

Indecision Got You Down?

Over in the Personal Growth And Development forum, BrAzEn lists ten ways to over come procrastination. Three, five and nine look pretty good, although I think if we all did the last one procrastination would not be a problem.

10. Just get started.

No excuses. Don't wait until you're in the mood. The mood never comes! It is a clever camouflage and a delaying tactic

I probably could apply this to blogging, as I spend way more time over at my sister site than here. Although I recently downloaded a weblog calendar, so that should help organize my schedule some. :)

Don't Worry...Be Happy

Ironically, visiting this forum put that silly little song in my head from Bob Marley. Here is a brief description about the Don't Worry Be Happy forum:

For those of us who know that being happy is the solution to being happy.

Please keep games in other communities. This community is for the dead serious discussion of being happy ;)

Unfortunately that rule is not being enforced as it is being over run by several random games that have invested Orkut.

Perhaps this is why Orkut keeps crashing. ;)

Science Is Not For Normal People?

Linda, over in the Science Fiction forum is shocked by what she read.

Tathaqat disagrees and I second the motion.

One only has to look at Google and what they are doing with NASA to figure out that geeks get to taste the best of life.

But then again, is Google really normal?

Orkut Around The Blogosphere

I was curious as to what others are saying around the blogosphere about Orkut so after a quick search here is what I found:

• Free Smiles: I started my blog with free gmail/orkut invitations. I still get a few requests for them, so I thought I would republish this...



• Kool Solutions: Looking at the huge feedback to this post from my friend fullo [102 commentis and counting ], I've decided to go public and advertize my membership to the Orkut network too. :-P



• Full(o)BloG: oggi mi sono iscritto ad orkut un esperimento di social network che pare interessante.. vedremo..
  
  ciauz
  
  ________________
  
  Translation via Google: today they are enrolled to me to orkut a experiment of social network that it seems interesting. we will see. ciauz



• MikeDawg's Blog: You know, I'm not one to beg for anything normally, and when it comes to computer related stuff, I'm usually in the loop to get things and such.
  
  But there is one thing that I don't have, and have been looking to get, that is an Orkut account, to at least check it out. So here it is, here is my shot at begging, if anyone has a spare Orkut invitation, can I please have it...
  
  Editor's Note: Invite sent.
  



• Solo Technology: A friend sent me an invite to join orkut this week. I glanced at the page, it looked "social'ish" and all so I figured I would give it a shot. After jacking around for 10 minutes or so and getting tired of "Bad server, no donut" type messages, I moved on...
  
  Well, he's persistent, and I got another invite tonight. I'm stubborn too, so stuck with it for 20 minutes or so and finally got myself added and even managed to get him added as a friend.

Most of these bloggers have found a ticket inside Orkut and with the exception of the last one, they all seem to enjoy the service aside from the infamous Donut errors.

But out of all the posts this one by Musings of a Wandering Mind was perhaps my favorite.

A little while after its release most of us were bit by the orkut bug!"how interesting can it ever be when compared with having a real time conversation with a far away friend using a messenger?" i thought...but once bitten.. there is no escape. When you are quite bored and bugged,Orkut can help you with the 'temporary whiling away' of time. [...]

The race is on for the increase in the number of scraps.. i hit my first 4 digit number a few days ago..MAN! am i jobless or wat!For those of u who have no idea what i'm talking about.. jus wait and watch.. it isn't too long before your bitten by the bug!

I wonder if Lakshana is a member of this forum?

Relaunch Of Inside Orkut!

Yeah, I know I'm obsessive, but I finally have a professional looking weblog!

I deleted the dinky cartoon icons, and substituted a linked photo collage instead (I'll have to thank Picasa for helping me with that).

I hope Google doesn't mind that I dropped the "unofficial" from the title, although I did mention it on the sidebar in the "minor details" section near the top.

In order to celebrate, here is a video I found on Google Video that I thought was funny. Check it out!

I thought it was pretty funny (and hopefully the Orkut team thinks so as well) although a translator would be nice. Peace!