New Feature: Add Picasa Album, Blogger To Orkut

(Hat Tip: Rupush and Inside Orkut Brasil)

The boys and girls at Google have created a new feature that allows users to insert their photo albums or weblogs inside their Orkut profiles.

All you need is a site feed and Orkut will display your album/blog for your friends and family to see.

(Orkut Edit Feeds) Want to share your photos from Fotolog, Picasa Web Albums or Flickr? Have a blog on Blogger, WordPress or LiveJournal?

Now, you can add your blog, photos, events, bookmarks and more to your orkut profile. Add the website or RSS/Atom feed address below and orkut will automatically import it and fetch new items.

If you already use Picasa Web Albums or Blogger, Orkut will automatically discover them for you and ask if you want to add these sites to your profile.

To add a site to your Orkut profile simply find out your the site's RSS feed (simply look for the "orange square" in your browser or on the page).



Then right click on the link.



Next, visit your profile page and click on the Edit Feeds button (or click here)...



...and paste the link you copied earlier into the space next to the funky orange square.



Next, click on the add button to the side...



...and type in the correct "word" to pass Google's "are you an evil robot or happy human" test.



Finally, click the "add button" in the lower right hand corner, and if you have proved yourself to be one of the lucky creatures known as human, you and your friends will see your blog/album on your profile page.



If you click on it (say a blog) you will see your posts wrapped in blue.

Great job Google! Now if only we could get RSS feeds for forums inside Orkut, then you would attract more visitors from the US of A (hint, hint!)

Hack: RSS For Your Orkut Communities

(Hat Tip: Orkut Plus)

This has probably got to be one of the best hacks that I've seen on Orkut in a long time! (and one that I have been requesting Google to create ever since logging onto Orkut).

Called Orkut Feed, this site allows any user to discover updates to discover updates to their favorite forums via site feed and add them to their favorite reader.

I am guessing the author is Brazilian as here is a brief explanation via Google Translator.

orkutFeed is a service that disponibiliza Feeds RSS for the communities of orkut. It is not necessary to make I register in cadastre! You only need to inform link of community, and to catch link of the Feed.

In order to add your favorite community, simply find the link of the forum in Orkut...



...and copy and paste the link into the space provided below (note: you have to love the "humongous font").



Next, click the "OK" button...



...which will bring you to a new screen. If your site feed is already listed via button form (which is to the right of the "big orange square" or the universal symbol for site feeds) then simply click on your preferred button (in this case I'm going to click on Google Reader) and subscribe.



Thus far, the site feed only shows title links, and not any of the content of the forum (as shown below).



This is probably a good thing (as it prevents other users from stealing one's content) although the anonymous coder may expand it later on to include full posts.

The great thing about this site is that both Firefox, IE and Opera users can enjoy the full benefits without having to switch over to a different browser.

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

Google Protecting Orkut Profiles?

I ironically came across this awhile ago while trying to capture an image of a user (to use in a post) but, believing this to be an error on my part, I simply went on surfing Orkut like any other casual user.

It was not until Devi Mahapatra informed me about this (as well as explaining the reason behind this) that I understood this a move by Google to protect our profile images.

(Ivilla) As you know it was very unsafe to upload your original photos to orkut as they were not right click protected , any one your enemy or else could save these images to there hard drive and misuse by publishing these photos to any where or creating a fake account[.] [...]

Now when the evil will try " right click then save image as " he/she find a image file has been stored in his hard drive named as " b " and yes it is a blank file .So she/he can't misuse your photos.

This is great news for girls (some of which are harassed by immature guys) as well as those who are often hassled by internet bullies.

Devi notes in his blog post that Google has not yet provided the same protection towards Orkut albums (which may be a good idea) so users may want to with hold uploading their personal photos for the world to see.

Googler Jeffrey Veen Working On Orkut

It looks like Jeffrey Veen, a Googler who has done an awesome job redesigning Google Analytics (which I'm dying to check out for myself) is now leading a team of 30 people working on improving a host of Google features, including Orkut.

(Jeffrey Veen's blog) On a personal note, I've got a much different job now that the design work on Analytics has wrapped up. I now lead a team of over 30 designers and researchers responsible for the user experience of Google's web applications. We're working on Gmail, Calendar, the Office-like tools, Blogger, Orkut, Picasa, Talk and a bunch more. And that means I get to dig into some of what I consider the Web's most interesting challenges and work with some of the smartest people in the industry.

Although I know Jeff's attention will probably be focused on Google's more prestigious tools (such as Blogger, Picasa and Calendar) I hope he takes the time to consider adding some useful features to Orkut, (such as Google Talk, RSS feeds or even Picasa Web Albums).

Note: Jeff seems to have deleted his profile on Orkut. Perhaps I am posting this to deaf ears.

More Evidence Of Picasa Orkut Integration?

(Hat Tip: Luis Guilherme)

Luis over at Inside Orkut Brasil has published some screen shots highlighting of what could be the beginning of Picasa Web Albums integrating with (or hopefully replacing) Orkut Albums.



Notice how similar these arrows look like when compared to the ones used in Picasa Web Albums.



I'm not seeing anything yet, although if this rumor is true hopefully it will be something more than a cosmetic change as Picasa Albums has a lot more function (and space) than Orkut Albums.

Note: Is anybody else seeing this?

Update (5/16): I see this in my Album right now, and Luis has informed me that Google is rolling this out to more profiles.

(Orkut Help Group) You asked for it, so we're adding a better way to flip through
somebody's photo album on orkut.

Instead of having to click on a photo, then click "back to album" to
get to the next pic, you can now just click on the arrows above the
pic to see the next or last one!

We're rolling this out a few profiles at a time, so just hold tight if
you don't see it yet.

Happy scrolling!
orkut Guide

By the looks of this, it seems as if this is nothing more than a cosmetic change. Alas, and I was looking forward to Picasa becoming one with Orkut Albums soooo much.

New Feature: Orkut Topic Searcher

Okay, for those of you active on Orkut, this is probably old news for you, (especially if you do heavy searching on the forums) but for those of you who did not know, Google has recently added a new feature to Orkut, enabling users to search the "orkutsphere" for key phrases and words.

To access this feature from your homepage, click on the Search link above...



...which should bring you to the Universal Search page. After that, click on the Topics menu...



...then select your topic (in this case I choose banana).



After that, click the Search button, and Orkut will list every forum within its query (aka results of the search).



True to being a Google search, the cool thing about this is the ability to type in quotations around two words if you are looking for an exact phrase (like "banana rama").

Good job Google! Now if only we could have something similar for our scrapbooks...