Orkut Under Construction Again?

Sigh...and I was just about to check my scrapbook too!

Perhaps that explains why I was receiving those mysterious donut errors today. ;-)

I guess I'll be blogging elsewhere for now (or perhaps at least on my personal journal).

With us barely in 2007, I think I am going to start some rumors (more like suggestions) on the next upcoming features on Orkut.

If I could have five features for Orkut, it would be:

• Orkut for my mobile phone.
• Scrapbook viewable to friends only.
• Integrate Picasa Web Albums with Orkut Albums.
• RSS feeds (aka site feeds) for communities.
• Personalize your profile page (without GreaseMonkey hacks)

These are my suggestions--does anybody have any others?

Note: Because the commenting system on Blogger is acting up, I am temporarily removing the word verification, although I'll be moderating comments to filter out spam (you gotta love them--they teach you patience).

Update: Comment system (as well as Orkut) are working again. Yeah!

Help! My Friends Don't See Me!

(Hat Tip: nAvEen)

Some users have been reporting that they are either unable to view their friends inside Orkut or that their friends are unable to view them.

Before you send off an email yelling at Google (note: from personal experience, I can say this doesn't help out your situation) you may want to check out the Orkut Help section to see if Google is already trying to solve this problem.

(via Orkut Help) Some users have reported problems with friends not appearing on their friends list. We're aware of this problem and we're working on a solution. Thanks for your continued patience [!]

Google is already working on several other problems such as correcting Orkut's math count (for friends, scraps, etc.) to making sure the current price for using Orkut remains the same. ;-)

From experience, Google has fixed most (if not all) of my problems, although you must be patient with them (after all, they are supporting 40 million plus users with probably less than 100 employees).

Another Hole Within Orkut...

(Hat Tip: Ha.ckers)

It looks like another hole inside Orkut has been discovered. Credit goes to Rajesh Sethumadhavan for discovering this.

1)Orkut Invite XSS:

The flaws are due to improper sanitization of inputs passed to
'continue' parameter in GET request
---------------------------------
http://www.orkut.com/Invite.aspx?continue=javascript:alert(document.cookie)
---------------------------------

Demonstration:
Note: Demonstration leads to your personal information disclosure

- Login to your orkut account
- Paste the above URL
- Click on BACK button
- Orkut Cookies will get displayed

I've forwarded the exploit to the Orkut team, as this can be potentially used by phishers and scammers (and may explain why so many forums were being stolen, something Google has corrected).

If anyone else discovers any other potentially harmful exploits, you can alert Google by clicking here.

Orkut Inbox Messages Not Private?

I noticed recently that Google has recently changed the Orkut email interface. Unfortunately their seems to be a minor problem, with the fact that your Orkut email may be visible to outsiders, that is if they know the exact link).

Vijay, over on Matrix Chronicle details this on his blog, and provides a link for users to test this out.

This does not make me happy, and Vijay communicates the same feeling over on his weblog.

When I clicked the link, it opened an orkut login box. I expected that I will be able to see the message only if I logged in with the userid of the person to which this message was meant for. But I was wrong, it showed the message even though I logged in with my user id! This means that every information pertaining to a message can be accessed using the URL to the specific message. This is not SO private because URL alone should not disclose the content of a message. It should be accessible only to the person which the message is meant for, after password authentication.

I am going to notify Google about this, but in the mean time, I would recommend users to have their email sent directly to them instead of their Orkut account.

For those of you either new to Orkut (or lack the geek powers like us Orkut freaks) these three simple steps should help you resolve the privacy issue, that is until Google can make time to resolve this issue.

1. Locate and click on the Settings link near the top of the page.
   
   



2. Uncheck all of the messages boxes and check all of the email boxes.
   
   


3. Scroll down and click on the update button, and then you are done.
   
   

This should resolve some of the privacy concerns, although if you send email from your Orkut account, it may be visible to users. As stated previously, I am going to notify Google about this error, and encourage users to do the same.

Orkut Word Verification Down?

Update: It's working again. Thanks Google!

Apparently Google's word verification for Orkut is not working today. If you are posting to a forum / scrapbook, you may see this screen:



The text says:

To protect our users' safety and privacy, we now require users to pass a word verification when posting content with a link.

enter the text as it is shown in the box below:

The picture keeps erroring out in Firefox and IE. Is anyone else receiving this as well?

Trouble Shooting Orkut

It looks like the Google Team is trouble shooting Orkut.

orkut.com will be under construction on March 2nd.
We plan to do a site maintenance on March 2nd due to which orkut.com will be unavailable for a few hours starting at 11:00 am PST.

Stay beautiful,
-orkut team

I tried logging in, but all I received was the infamous donut error. Alas...see you in a few hours! (if I don't have to work that is!)

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.

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).

Orkut Under Construction

Ironically after adding a few cosmetic touches to the weblog, Orkut goes down for surgery.



Perhaps they are redesigning Orkut. Perhaps they are adding user suggestions to the site. Perhaps we will just have to wait until it comes back up. ;)

More details tomorrow.

Orkut Bug Report

This forum could be quite useful, especially if you are receiving the infamous "donut error."

(Description) until orkut has its own official bugbase, report bugs you encounter here. this includes both bugs you have discovered yourself and bugs you see reported elsewhere. please test other reports out before reporting them.

The community has well over 800 members and seems to be pretty active. Unfortunately I can not view what they are saying as the system keeps erroring out during rush hour (which may be around 12am and 12pm).

How To Tell When Orkut Is Up

Some people have been experiencing the "donut errors," lately, although from what I am seeing this has affected several communities and in some places, only certain posts.

I am sure that the Orkut team is working on the problem, however, one way to check whether Orkut is experiencing problems is to check your Community and friends lists.

If you can see all your Orkut buddies as well as the the forums below then Orkut is running at "All Systems Go" mode (a phrase we used in IT when everything was working). If not, then you may see something like this:



In that case, either the entire community forums are down, or part of them are (and the team is working on it). After all, tens of millions (if not hundreds) probably use the service and instead of panicking, just simply give them time to resolve the problem. And stay beautiful!

What Should Orkut Do?

Well, Orkut is down for me right now, and the only thing I can access inside Orkut is my Orkut inbox (yes, you get one when you sign up, but I generally have it set to redirect all messages to Gmail.

I could close down for the night, but instead of complaining because the engineers are fixing/making Orkut's servers to the benefit of all, I am going to post ten ways (can I think of ten?) the Orkut Team could make Orkut even better.

And I think I will count backwards to make it more interesting.

10) Enable Communities to have RSS feeds: I know Orkut is constantly concerned with privacy so this could be done via Google Reader, which is connected to a users Google account anyways.

This would make it easier to know when the latest heckler person has posted a response towards your serious question.

__________________________

9) User Journals: By this I don't mean that Orkut start a journal within the forums, but rather integrate ones outside of Orkut via RSS.

__________________________

8) Google Ad Sense: Allow community owners to monetize their own communities using Google Ad Sense. Something similar could be used for user profiles as well, but only at a members discretion.

__________________________

7) Google Base: Hook up Google base and allow users to store up to a Gig of personal items (such as music) for others to see. You could have the similar rule as Gmail does regarding .exe files, etc. as well as place a limit on the space.

Monetizing this feature may compensate you for storing peoples collectibles.

__________________________

6) Profile Settings: Allow users to edit the appearance of their profile. Giving them this liberty would make it feel more of a home as some may prefer a "gothic attitude" and others something more serene and scenic.

__________________________

5) Photo Community: Enable comments on users images. Would make the album a little bit more interesting, don't you think. ;)

__________________________

4) Orkut Popularity Rank: Allow users to see who is the most popular person using Orkut, and assign a rank next to their profile. Post the top 100 list over on the Media site for all to see (and envy) and exclude Orkut Buyukkokten from the competition because he will win.

__________________________

3) Business Focus: According to the latest demographics, Business Networking is the second most popular reason people join Orkut.



Friendship is number one, but everyone probably has that as default (as you have to be friends with them in order to do the other three). By attracting more companies inside Orkut, you would make it a valuable tool for the corporate world (and may help some people land some jobs).

__________________________

2) Google Maps: Show a users location on planet Earth by using either Google Maps or Google Earth. Of course, for the paranoid, allow them to turn this option off, but it would be neat to see where they were located by on a picture.

You could go further by enabling the ability for someone to see their location on Google Earth by clicking a link on their address profile, but have this feature only usable for Google Earth Plus users. ;)

__________________________

1) Yeah, I'm finally done: The holiday gift thing was a great idea, but you could go further by having the home page dressed up.

Think about it. Instead of those faces on during the Christmas season, you could put Santa, Seinfeld (for Festivus), a Rabbi guy and Mr. Kwanza there (along with the Easter bunny for humor) to celebrate the holidays.

Yeah, so I could only come up with nine good reasons. So sue me. ;)

Donut Error Of Death!

Oh what shall I do! Well, it won't prevent me on welcoming our newest member to the Orkut family, Jakub from Poland!

In the meantime I guess I can always browse Orkut via the profile search (as I've barely touched it since being in here).

Super Size Me, Orkut Style

(Hat Tip: Personal And Technology News)

Apparently a coding problem is making Orkut citizens "a bit taller" (as in taller than Shaq). This author is noticeably less than six feet, although my Orkut profile says otherwise.


Although some may object to the height change, I see nothing wrong with it. Do you?