Rs 700 investment worths Rs 1.5 Lacs

I got one online tool Stimator some days back, which estimates the value of your website. In curiosity I checked Love Orkut value there. Then it showed me some value just above to $3000 (approximately 1.5 lacs in INR) [now it shows $411 - market crashed down :( ].

Well let me tell you about Love Orkut, I started it in the early 2008. Registered domain name for Rs 295 and opted for a free hosting at xtreemhost. Selected a free template for the design from Open Source Web Design and started coding (in PHP and MySQL) for the website. Collected scraps, testimonials from my old collection and searched some good photos from Flickr, Loving Hugs, Photo Bucket etc. to add the most popular section, Photo Scraps. I have not counted the time spent on it. If I could have a track of this, then I could tell you better, if I am in profit or in loss. I added many things to this, which does not cost anyone: love, passion, knowledge, experience etc. It took time for me to earn money from this site, but I got increase in it's visibility. The number of page loads, unique visitors, direct visitors and returning visitors increasing day by day (Still I can manage this in free hosting).

In last one year the money I able to make is just above INR 10,000. I spend another 400 rupees for renewing the domain name. In this way I invested Rs 700. Let me justify its value for INR 1.5 Lac. If you deposit INR 1.5 Lac in Post Office Monthly Income Scheme (8% interest rate per yer, calculated and credited each month and goes for 6 years, after maturity pays 15% bonus with the face deposit), you can earn INR 1000 each month. I am earning more than that (not for doing anything, what I do for this site is not for today, for future) each month! In this way it worth INR 1.5 lac.

Till when I can run and earn from it:

• When Orkut will be shut down or banned (in India, I got most of the visitors from India)
• When people stop using Orkut
• When people will be get bored with the old contents
• When I will not renew the domain name
• And some unknown reason

And then I will lost all of 1.5 lac or more, which never happens when you invest money in other places. So this is my 700 Bucks story. If you have any idea to execute (don't worry, if it's a small one), please execute and you will be happy and successful in future. Let me know, if you need any kind of help.

Gtalk Chat inside Orkut

Few days back I posted that you can change your online status (Orkut or Gtalk) from Orkut. I was incomplete. I did not notice that we can invoke chat as we do inside Gmail, just by clicking on the available icon of any friend, who are online.

Now Control Your Gtalk Status from Orkut

Update: Now you can chat in Gtalk inside Orkut as you do inside Gtalk

Orkut introduced a new feature to control your Gtalk status (available, busy, invisible and offline) and also Orkut online status if you are not logged on to Gtalk. If you are also logged on in Gtalk, the change you make at Orkut interface will immediately applied to your Gtalk. Only one exception is if you make your status as offline at Orkut interface, you will not be logged out from Gtalk and no changes will be there. If you are using Gtalk IM software for Gtalk, then the invisible will not work, as Gtalk (IM windows client) does not support invisible feature.

And if you are not logged into Gtalk, you can also change your status. If you have opened Orkut page and busy with other page, then after some interval, it will automatically goes idle.


You can change this status below your profile photo in your home page and at the header bar near your email address. However Gtalk Video and Voice symbol not works here.

Add Events in Orkut

Orkut added a new feature to it, called events. Now you can add any event to your Orkut account, and invite any friends too. Here are three privacy levels: open - anyone can see and join , public - anyone can see but only invited guests can join and private, only invited people can see and join. It seems to be nice sub application, and let's see it's popularity.

View Conversation in Orkut

Now you can see conversations you do using Orkut scrap book. A scrap will be considered as a part of conversation, if you reply using the reply link below the scrap message. It's good to see all conversations at one place. This conversion is updated from 21st Oct., so the scraps posted before this date will not be a part of a conversation. This is somewhat similar to wall to wall of Facebook. In wall to wall you can see all messages posted to wall, but here in Orkut, you can see a actual conversation.

New Safety Filter in Orkut

100th Post :)

Today I saw a new safety filter in Orkut. When I clicked on a link on my friend list (it was displaying no-photo image for that contact), Orkut showed me a Warning!

The profile you wish to access may contain content that could be inappropriate for some users. Learn more »

If you would like to view the profile anyway, click proceed below.

To learn more, I found that, Orkut is trying to keep it healthy, so they have introduced safety filter, which will keep you at a distance from potentially offensive communities and profiles, their pictures and of course a warning message before displaying them.



This safety filter is already enabled by default in settings.

In the help page (click for more information), you will also find another notice:

Please keep in mind that no filter is 100% accurate, but the safety filter should eliminate most inappropriate content.

Search results for neri - Orkut Search Error

I searched for the term "neri" on Orkut. And I got some results which I can't believe myself and I am clueless about this error. It lists me as the first result, followed by my friends and our hair color and eye color display as neri. After my friends it is listing other members. Please have a look at the snapshot.



I tested this for other terms, but all are working fine. I researched this term again and again, still I did not get any change in the result.

One request to all visitors: Please search for this term and post your comments here.

MyHeritage Celebrity Look-alikes : Orkut Apps

Thanks to Madhuri, I found her added this application to her orkut profile. Do I need to say that the application is MyHeritage Celebrity Look-alikes?

Application info
With MyHeritage Celebrity Look-alikes you can discover your celeb twin amongst thousands of top celebrities using your Picasa photos or the photos on your disk. Post your celebrity match on your profile, see your friends’ celebrity look-alikes, and vote on the best matches of all time. MyHeritage.com makes it easier for people around the world to use the power of the Internet to strengthen their bonds with family and friends.

There is a flood of applications in orkut. After a long time I found this application useful and funny also. This application welcomes you with a page where you can vote some pair of matches (one person and a celebrity) with a meter numbered 1 to 10. There is a option to create your own matches. You can use photos already uploaded to your picasa album or upload from your system. Then it will scan your photos and detect your face. I like this part of the application. It does great. It also informs you honestly that it is unable to detect the face in some photos in case of low quality photos, face not towards the camera, eyes are not not open and sunglasses are on. You can't select the area on your photos. It's automatic face detection. Then it matches with celebrity photos as per your selected image. It shows you top 5 choices and the percentage of match it found. You have to choose one and this is open for other users to vote.

You can add as many as look alikes and delete this. And you can also vote for the look alikes created by you.

One problem I found with it is that some "look alikes" are coming most of the times to get a vote, whereas I have voted for them. This should come again and again. If I voted for some combination, then I should not able to vote it again.

Again... another Orkut Bug in Scrap Notification

Since many days, I stopped to post about bugs in orkut. But one bug is making me irritated since a week. So decided to post it here to recover from this irritation. Well the bug is related to new scrap notification. Previously I have noticed some other bugs in this module. But this bug is irritating and I wonder why this bug is still exist for a long time.

The bug is, when I open orkut, it notifies me the last scrap posted in a notice. When I will open my scrapbook, this notice should no longer to be displayed. But it keep displaying it several times for a long time. This is really irritating.

And now I noticed that, even after any new scrap being posted, while I am logged into orkut, the previous notice does not change and keeps irritating as always.

URL Dispatching of Orkut not working in Firefox 3

Recently orkut changes something related with url dispatching technology. Now the url of home page is http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Home.aspx, which was http://www.orkut.co.in/Home.aspx previously. I don't know what they have changed internally, but it not working perfectly in Mozilla Firefox. I have checked it in Firefox 3. Again I checked this in Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla Firefox 2.* and Opera 9. Every where it is working as previously. But in FF 3, whenever I click on any link, the url changes according to the link, but the contains not changes. When I reloads the page, then the actual content of that url shows.

Why should I leave Safari alone? I tested this in safari. Wow, it is showing the urls as FF 3, but here it works perfectly. Hope this will be fixed soon for FF 3 and I will enjoy orkutting in Mozilla Firefox soon.

Update
After posting this, I found it working in Mozill Firefox 3 as well.
After 2 days I found this new url dispatching is no more appearing in my browser.

Update (21st July, 2008)
Again I found this url dispatching in the address bar of my browser.

Some Unnoticeable Bugs in Orkut

I was checking my friends scrap book, so I clicked on the link to her scrap book. And I found this one time strange bug. Instead of showing me the scrap book, it was showing me the thumbnail of a photo from my friend's album. In the title it was showing "Scrapbook.aspx (JPEG Image, 160x120 pixels)". See the snap.




In the above image, you can see that the thumbnails for recent photos is not available. If you click on those, it will show the error message that, it is unable to understand your request.



And in this, you can find some language problem. Instead of "2,500 members", it is showing "srebmem 005,2". You can see this bellow the community image.

Bug Me Not for Orkut.co.in

What is BugMeNot?
BugMeNot.com is a web site, where you can get usernames and passwords to login to any web site which need to authenticate yourself to see its content. This ids and passwords are provided by some users itself.

I decided to check for the passwords for orkut.com . And I found that: Site Blocked - This site has been barred from the bugmenot system. I also checked for other websites such as facebook.com etc. I found the similar message.

But Orkut.co.in is not barred
When I checked for the Orkut.co.in in it. And found 5 ids with passwords, all with more than 50% success rate. I tried with all, but found only one as working. Anyway, if you want to use this till it got barred.

War between Facebook and Orkut

There are a lots of websites you can find for social networking, the figure is in thousands, may be some more digits. Blocking Yahoo Messenger in our college Internet lab and the rise of popularity of orkut in India at that time invited me to orkut and soon I got addicted. Around after 2 years, I signed up for facebook and less active than orkut on it. Thanks to Kimi, for whom I am some how active in facebook. There are some other popular social networking web sites with good rich also. But I can feel a war between orkut and facebook.

About orkut
Started some years back by a young boy, now occupied by Google. A good application powered by Microsoft .net technology. Orkut keeps on adding many features day by day. It has a good reach in Brazil (Near by 54% registered users of orkut), India (17%-), United States (15%+), also in Pakistan (1%+). United Kingdom, Japan, Portugal, Afghanistan, Germany and Canada has also some less than 1% reach. 61%+ users are from age group 18 - 25 and next 12%+ from 26 - 30. In last 4 years it is improving every moment.

About facebook
I don't know more about facebook's history. But it is a very popular networking web site. In most parts of this world, mainly in Europe people love facebook, where orkut is less popular. Facebook is powered by php, the technology in which I work. This is one of the reason, probably the best reason to start liking facebook.

Now let come to the point, which I mentioned in the title. Yes, I feel there is a war between facebook and orkut. Now most of the features are similar. Most of them was available in facebook and now orkut is adding these features. e.g. tagging your friends from the album photos, adding open social applications etc. Facebook has given a scope to develop open social applications 2 years back in 2006. Few months back orkut started providing platform for developers to develop open social applications for orkut. Orkut introduced theme support, which facebook don't have. I got bored with those themes and like the default one. Another similarity in these two application is comment one photo. This was not available in orkut before. Orkut scrap book is equivalent to facebook wall.

What makes orkut special
What makes orkut special? What you will answer? (I request, please answer to this question via comment).
The navigation make me feel orkut different. It is quite easy and understandable as compared to facebook. I can't say facebook navigation is bad. Actually I got habituated with orkut type navigation. So I feel different, when I navigate through the hi logic navigation of facebook.
The second most important point is: recent visitors. I don't similar facilities at facebook. However some times this does not work correctly in Orkut.
(Some more good features I will add later.)

What makes facebook special
Photos of album loads quickly. Yes, facebook is such a great applications it responds and delivers very quickly. The photo upload java applet is also great. I have noticed many bugs in orkut, but never found a single one in facebook.
(Some more good features I will add later.)

Who will win this war? As these two are social application, the winners will be because of popularity, not for great application. Let's see what happens next...

Spam Filter in Orkut

Now orkut will be spam free. Orkut introduced a new spam filter, which will filter all the spams and put it in spam box, as seen on email. Most probably they are using the spam filter as used in Gmail. Or they have made some modifications to customize it for orkut, as we can see spams in orkut.

Hooray, no spam here!
This is the most popular spam box empty message as seen on gmail ;) . This is the message I got when I checked my spam box. Let's see when I may welcome those spams there. Then only I may post more information.

Community Recommendations in Orkut

Recently orkut has added a new feature to it. This is community recommendations. Here in home page, below your friends list and above your communities list, it is showing some community recommendations. Here it is showing 3 community recommendations. You can click on close, so that recommendation will not appear and one will be added to the list of 3. If you don't like this you can turn it off else if you like to view more, you can click on view all link.


This recommendations are considered according to the related communities in which you are a member or if most of your friends are in the community. In view all recommendation page, you can see Why was I recommended this?

Add Person Tag in Orkut and Make Your Friends Recognizable

Orkut recently added one feature to add person tags to album photos. You can select a portion of any photo and add your friends name to this portion. And this will tag your friend. You can do this in anyone's photo, if you can see the photo. When you will start typing your friend's name in the text input, using Ajax it will suggest your friend's name. If your friend has given any other name instead of its name, then it will not suggest the name. So you need to be sure that what your friend has given in her/his profile. If you are confused and not getting your friends name in suggestion, then open your friends list in a new window or tab and check.

Orkut County Side Theme Footer Needs More Width

Orkut county side theme footer needs more width. This footer wraps to second line due to its length which does not fit in the allocated space. My computer resolution is 1280 x 800. If it unable to fit in 1280 pixel, what can be done?


The red marked link should be placed at the yellow marked place as per my opinion.

SMS Me - Absolutely FREE SMS !!!

SMS Me - Absolutely FREE SMS !!! is an open social application in orkut. Using this you can send absolutely free sms to all your friends in your orkut. Your friend need to add this application to send sms to her/him. And you can send sms to anyone using this application. For this your mobile need to be verified. You need to know the mobile number of your friend if he/she has not added this application.

New Theme Support in Orkut

Finally I saw the link to change the theme in orkut. The link is available near your email id at the top right. You can also choose themes tab from the settings also. By selecting a theme, will decide the way your profile page and scrapbook page appears to you and all others. You can also choose not to view any profile skins by clicking on the checkbox provided. The themes are

• Orkut Blue - The one, the only… classic orkut
• Beach - Sun, sand and surf, but watch out for the crab!
• Country side - Rolling hills of green, blooming flowers, and leisurely grazing animals
• Snowman - A snowman waits and watches in his winter wonderland
• View from a moon - A looming planet and the starry vastness beyond
• Bus Stop - Waiting, waiting, waiting for the bus to come
• Winter - Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow
• Autumn - Winter's on it's way, no more time to play
  
• Spring time - The world is once again bright, shiny and new
  
• JR - the friendly giant - Everyone needs a friendly giant
  

There are two new themes coming soon also. These are, AJA Tiger and Tea House.

Currently I have applied the View from a moon theme. But I like the classic one. After having some experience most probably I am going to switch to the classic.

Update:
When I logged into orkut, I found that the theme is default one. When I checked change theme page, I found that Snowman, View from a moon and Bus Stop came to category Coming soon! If you are using any of these meanwhile it will be changed to default automatically.

Updated (9th June 2008)
Most of the people can find some scripts, which says that it will install the designed theme with celebrities photos as background of the theme. Please never run those scripts. Those scripts will not install any theme, but will send scrap to all your friends with the message to install themes. Like this way the message will spread, but no theme will install. It can be dangerous and your account can be hacked easily. To know more please read: SQL or Script Injections in Orkut

No Friends Map in .co.in version of Orkut

The friends map feature is not working in the .co.in version of orkut. It is showing one alert "The Google Maps API key used on this web site was registered for a different web site. You can generate a new key for this web site at http://code.google.com/apis/maps/." and when u press ok, you can only showing the text "loading ...". But nothing is loading there, it is just a message, which never changes after this error.