Orkut Buyukkokten Visits Brazil?

Post Updated! Scroll down for the goodies!

This is not too surprising since over half of Orkut's 50 million users are from Brazil, with the US and India coming in second and third place respectively.

Marcelo Sant'Iago gives us the details:

(Multilingual Search) Orkut Buyukkokten, the engineer behind Google’s social network website, is visiting Brazil for the first time.

He is in Rio de Janeiro this week, and will visit Sao Paulo (including a breakfast at GooglePlex with a select group of clients) next week and after that Belo Horizonte, where Google has a research&development facility.

I am not exactly sure if this really is Orkut's first time in Brazil (didn't he visit Brazil before with Eric Schmidt?) although I could be wrong. Anyways, Marcelo has a photo of the founder on his personal blog, (English translation over here).

I wonder what "wild and crazy" things Orkut will do in a land where his "pet project" outshines the mighty Google?

Update (4/1): It appears that Orkut surprised a bunch of tech students while traveling to a Brazilian University. (Hat Tip: Ersan)

(Planeta COPPE [English Version]) The Manager of Product of the Google, Orkut Buyukkokten, author of the site that takes its name, was in the COPPE, day 28/03, pronouncing lecture for about 200 students of engineering of computation in the audience of the institution. Programmed to attend the lecture of an engineer of the Google, the students had been surprised at the presence of Orkut, creator of what today the biggest site of relationships in the world is considered, that confirmed its popularity in the end of the event, distributing autographs and posando for photos to the side of the students.

Here is an image of the founder with the Academic Director of the COPPE, Fernando Rochinha. (Image Credit: Planeta COPPE)



One thing about the founder, is that he sure knows how to dress! I wonder where he got his shirt from?

Google Launches Polls In Orkut

(Hat Tip: Danny Piccirillo)

The boys and girls at Orkut have done it again! Orkut users now have the ability to create polls within their forums, allowing users to rate everything from whose the cutest couple, where is the best place to travel to even politics (which will probably get very ugly in the next couple of weeks).

Here is more from the Googleplex:

(Official Google Blog) Now all you orkut users can create and post polls in any community that you are a member of. Just click a button in your favorite community, type in your question, and add pictures (if you like), and voila!—community members can
vote and leave comments on your question of choice. [...]

Login to orkut and see what your orkut friends think! You might not see this right away in your favorite communities, but the feature will be rolling out to everyone soon.

Although unexpected, I am not too surprised that Google has launched this feature, as it may help to resolve the "vote by scrap" option, which will definitely help out forums such as Mr. And Mrs. Orkut.

Google seems to be releasing this in smaller forums first, probably in order to keep the donut errors from reappearing (which I thankfully have not seen in a long, long time).

To add a poll to your forum simply click on the "create polls" link near the top of your forum...



...verify that you are human...



...type in a polling question...



...insert an image (optional but recommend)...



...select your language (very important!)...



...Add in the choices (with images if you desire)...



...decide how many options are available (I recommend multiple) as well as who can vote (whether community members or everyone on Orkut).



Last but not least, select how long a poll should last (I would recommend an end date, although you can leave it open until the end of time).



After your done, simple hit the create button (near the bottom) and your brand new spanking poll should appear.



To view the polls in a forum, simply click on the "view polls button on the side (as seen in this image below).



You can check out the poll I created by clicking here. I can see this feature becoming quite useful, (especially for future Must Have Orkut Hacks) although I'll have to wait about a week before this migrates to the rest of my forums.

Software: Agent Orkut Anyone?

Update: Hat tip to Ashwani for letting me know about this. Also, Naveen is the creator of this program (thanks Ashwani for the correction!)

Despite the fact that there are many of scrap programs out there, users may find this software to be one of the easiest and most fun ones to use while scraping your friends.

Simply called Agent Orkut, this program was designed by Naveen and is designed to make sending messages to your friends (or foes) as care free as possible.

Although this program is very similar to Scrapboy (which I covered previously) what sets this program apart is the ability to not only scrap all of your friends at once, but also random strangers through Orkut's profile search.



Another cool feature is that upon clicking on a friend's profile, users will be able to choose which area of the "orkuter" to explore, making it easier to navigate throughout a friends profile (i.e. album, video's, etc.).



This scrap chat program also includes an online status indicator, and alerts you whenever your friends come online or send you a scrap.

Although very minor, one feature that I love is that Agent Orkut allows users to edit the names of their friends within the friends list...




...which can be quite useful if people enjoy spelling their name with random characters.

To download Agent Orkut, simply visit the homepage and you will receive further instructions from there.

You can visit the official Agent Orkut forum over here, although you can check out the Agent Orkut Blog for future updates.

And if you have time, don't forget to scrap Naveen regarding this software, as I'm sure he would really love feedback on how to improve Agent Orkut.

Note: Will add this to the sidebar underneath Orkut User Tools.

Hack: Adding Google Talk Inside Orkut

Some of you may have remembered hearing the news about the search engine king integrating Google Talk within Orkut.

Unfortunately it was a bit limited, (at least to me) and I was wondering whether or not Google would consider adding a full blown version inside Orkut.

Well, it seems that a user who goes by the name of ErickXavier has used a GreaseMonkey hack (Firefox only) in order to turn this wish into a reality.

(Tech Buzz) Recently Google introduced a new Google Talk Gadget which could be embedded onto any blog or webpage. Making use of this gadget, ErickXavier has coded a Greasemonkey script which adds a nifty Google Talk gadget within Orkut Sidebar, which allows you to stay intouch with your buddies without installing Google Talk. [...]

Click here to install the script from our mirror (Alternatively, you can get it from Userscripts)

In my honest opinion Gtalk seems to have a nicer fit inside Orkut than within Gmail. Although it is nice to talk to your friends while checking messages, I often found myself bombarded with random requests (especially when reading important messages) resulting in the death of that handy chat feature.

While surfing Orkut however I do not mind these requests (and often preferred them above scraps) although until now the only way to access this feature was through Orkut Cute.

This hack will definitely be added to the sidebar underneath Orkut User Tools (in the GreaseMonkey section).

Exit Question: For those of you who have tested this out, do you think Google should add this feature within Orkut (along with file sharing and group chats) or instead avoid Gtalk like the black plague?

Personalized Forum Link Addresses On Orkut?

Some of you may have noticed this, but then again some of you may have not.

Over at the Google Blog, I noticed that the Orkut team had enabled one forum (out of hundreds of thousands on their server) to have a personalized link address instead of the usual eight digit number that is dealt to all community owners.

Here is the original paragraph:

(Official Google Blog) Cricket discussions that started in the elevator can spill over to the Orkut network. Especially this season, in association with us, cricket expert and former Indian cricket captain Krish Srikkanth has created his own community on Orkut to interact with cricket lovers, debate the latest happenings and just share cricket views.

It seems as if Google is playing favorites by creating a personalized link to Krish Srikkanth's forum (http://www.orkut.com/worldcupwithkrish) which not only redirects to the forum within Orkut (which can be viewed over here) but also is viewable to the public without the need of logging into Orkut.

It is baffling to me that a forum this small (660 members and counting) was able to receive this privilege when other communities much larger are locked into the "eight digit code" identifying the order of when they were created.

Hopefully Google opens this up to other communities on Orkut (whether for free or for a fee) as it would give a more personal touch to the forums, not to mention help separate it from its competitors (i.e. Facebook).

Exit question: If Orkut offered this to users for a small fee, would you be willing to pay for something like this? Or should Google simply offer this for free?

John Edwards Campains Via Orkut

It looks like John Edwards is using Google's Orkut in order to reach out to potential voters which you can see from the screen shot below.



For those of you who do not know, John Edwards is one of the (too) many political candidates running for President in 2008. Their are a host of others on both sides, although he is the first that I've seen using Orkut as a way to reach out to potential voters.

The profile is currently being maintained by the One America Committee (whatever that means) whose site redirects back to John Edwards homepage.

I can honesty say I am not exactly a fan of John boy (or any candidate for that matter) but its good to see a politician using Orkut to their advantage.

Note: And it looks as if he even has a twin on Orkut. His political group may want to have that profile removed as he has already suffered enough controversy online.

If You Were An Orkut Engineer For A Day...

(Warning: Another very long post, but there is a cool video at the end which every human, geek and Googler should enjoy)

Thanks to Death Eater I was able to partake of an Orkut survey (not to be confused with the user feedback survey) asking users to rate Orkut overall, suggest new features, rate Orkut against competitors (MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) and talk about what you enjoyed most about using Orkut.

Although I listed a bunch of features where Google could improve on (as well as highlighting some of their major strengths) I was wondering what three major features would I add to Orkut (aside from RSS feeds and Picasa Albums) if I was a Google engineer for a day?

_____________________________________________

Google Calendar: After my palm died (which is another story for another time) I suddenly found my life to be slightly chaotic without a way to quickly organize those ever important details (like meetings, reminders, etc.).

Although my cell phone has been keeping me on time (and on task) I've been slowly transferring my schedule onto Google Calendar which allows my friends, family and manager see how open (or cluttered) my time is throughout the week.

I think adding Google Calendar would be very helpful, especially for businesses using Orkut to network each other, not to mention aiding employees and employers scheduling job interviews.

Note: With Google Calendar allowing users to embed this into web pages via html or RSS, this should not be too difficult.

_____________________________________________

Adding Personal Blog: Although having a scrapbook is nice, I think it would be really cool if Orkut enabled users to add their personal blog to their homepage.

Now I am not talking about the type of blog that a user might find in Orkut's cousin Joga, but rather allowing users to add a blog outside of Orkut via site feed and have the top five posts show up on their profile.

Of course if users do not have a blog site Orkut could give them the Joga default, although with such cool blogging tools like Wordpress, Vox and Blogger (of course!), users may prefer to use a blog tool on the outside rather than in house.

_____________________________________________

Allow non-Google Videos: One thing I like about the new video playlist is that it enables me to add my favorite videos from Google Video (which I could not do before) and YouTube (which required a separate login account, which I found to be annoying).

Although this saved me much grief in finally collecting all of my favorite videos in one spot, I ran into a major problem: not all of my favorite videos were located on any of Google's video sites.

A perfect example of this is this video which I highlighted on my personal blog as a "must have" computer (which I bet every Googler would love to run at their desk).





I think if Google enabled users to add videos from a host of different sites on Orkut (starting with those that we can already embed with our Google Reader).

_____________________________________________

Well, those are my three top features I would add to Orkut. I was wondering, what three features would you add or wish Google included to make your Orkut life easier?

Raging Against The Power Companies?

Although I have my sympathies for the people affected, I am not too sure on what they can do to resolve this unfortunate situation.

This made headlines awhile back, but I thought it was interesting enough to post here.

(Hindustan Times) What does a 21-year-old software student do when he is forced to live without electricity for four hours everyday? He waits for power to return, logs on to the Internet and gives a cyber call to everybody else in equal despair.

Now Girish Chhabria hopes that those joining his 'Anti Power Cut-Off' community on the popular networking website, Orkut, will be able to mobilise public opinion against load-shedding across the state.

Usually when something like this happens in America, the power company receives a lot of angry phone calls since our telephone lines are powered separately from our electricity (not to mention that everyone has a cell phone nowadays).

After a brief search on Orkut, I was unable to locate the forum exactly to verify whether or not it existed, although that may be due to it being taken down or that the community is not in English.

Either way, it is interesting to see how people are using Orkut to protest against the powers that be (pun not intended). Something like this in America would be unheard of, (strange as it may sound) as people generally use social networks to communicate, and aside from politics you really don't see us using the internet to protest against things like these.

Another Confirmation Of Orkut SMS

For those wondering when Orkut SMS will hit their accounts, Bernardo has provided a visual as to what this looks like upon logging in.



Sigh. I guess I'll have to wait until this feature hits the states. It must be great being Brazilian! :-)

Note: For those wondering what this looks like on your scrapbook, Micael has provided a visual for us all.