CompuWorld

By far the most famous social network around and the most talked about too, MySpace.com was once included in 50 coolest websites of 2006 list of Time itself. But since then things have changed a lot. Many times MySpace has been criticized over different blogs because of the huge spamming which started to take place over it. True that it has been used for America's presidential election campaigns, but that also failed to keep MySpace out of Time's 5 worst websites list.

Other 4 in the list are:

And let me add one to the list too. Orkut.com! Like MySpace it is also being madly used for spamming. Almost every community of orkut today is full of spam messages.

Related:
Future President In Your Friend List
Be A Orkut Watchdog. Read Everyone's Scraps Without Logging Into Orkut
After Birth Of Over 100 Million Blogs, Finally Orkut Has A Blog
SMS The Orkut Scrap

Every organization, every forum, every website these days seems to have a blog to keep in touch with there viewers. Even Google has over 70 official blogs for there various services. What was missing was a blog for orkut. And they finally have one. And that does not has the "blogspot" word in the URL. Its http://en.blog.orkut.com/.

It was launched on 25th June and I know I am late to cover it, but you know why? Because Google gave a alert to it on my orkut profile after so many days. Finally orkuttians could be happy that they have something to interact with if they want to talk about any changes in orkut.com.

Do read our article Be A Orkut Watchdog. Read Orkut Scraps As RSS.

A right-wing Hindu group has asked public Internet centers in India to partly block access to Orkut, and is making a software to monitor abusive communities on the popular social networking site operated by Google.

The student wing of the Shiv Sena party said many Indians use Orkut to bad-mouth religious groups and disturb communal harmony, and also spread misinformation about India.

The group is part of a growing band of cultural vigilantes opposed to what they see as increasing mimicry of the West. It often stops St. Valentine's Day celebrations, attacks clubs and pubs and prevents screening of sexually bold films.

"Orkut is used by many destructive elements to spread canards about India, Hindus, our gods and cultural heritage," said Abhijit Phanse, president of Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena, the student group.

"We are gently telling Internet cafe owners that it is their responsibility to see that surfers do not use their facility to carry out such hate campaigns," he said.

"Or else, we will have to do that job for them."

Last week, dozens of Shiv Sena workers vandalised some Internet centers, saying they were not stopping their customers from accessing Orkut groups involved in sending hate messages.

"We are not saying all of Orkut should be shut. We are just saying stop access to those groups that indulge in hate campaigns," Phanse said.

Internet cafe owners said they had received a letter from the group saying that if they did not spot and stop people surfing Orkut to spread hate messages, their businesses would be attacked.

"The letter was pasted on our wall. But what can we do? It is up to the Internet service providers to block a site," said a cyber cafe owner who was too scared to be named.

Phanse said his group was developing a special software that Internet service providers could install to block any message containing certain words and phrases such as "I hate" or "I despise".

"The software should be ready in 2-3 months," Phanse said, adding that they were hoping to involve Orkut authorities in the discussions.

Related:
Be A Orkut Watchdog. Read Scraps Without Visiting There Profiles
SMS The Orkut Scrap

Orkut is an Internet social network service run by Google and named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. It claims to be designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Similar to Friendster and MySpace, Orkut goes a step further by permitting the creation of easy-to-setup simple forums (called "communities") of users. Since October 2006 , Orkut permits users to create accounts without an invitation.

Scraps in orkut are messages which people send to one another. To read someones scraps one needs to first visits that persons profile. In this case the persons whose profile was visited comes to know about this.

This small trick helps you to read any ones scraps as RSS and that too without logging into orkut. So now you can read scraps of your friends and foes without letting them sense that you read there scraps. And you also do not need to log into orkut for this.

Now when you visit someones profile (might be yours) you will notice that the URL in the address bar contains a long number called uid. Replace {uid} in above URL with the uid of profile URL.

This URL will work in netvibes.com (as I haven't tested it on other platforms). If you are familiar with concept of RSS feed readers and netvibes then you just need to use the URL which contains profile uid as the feed URL in netvibes.

If you are not familiar with netvibes then read on.

Visit netvibes and register as you normally register in other websites. Once done click on "Add a feed" link in left column. Paste the URL which you created above into the address bar as shown in image below and click "Add".

Voila! That particular persons last 10 scraps are listed within seconds. Explore netvibes and the small window which contains the scraps. You can this way see as many profile URLs as much you want all in netvibes without actually logging into orkut.

This method could also be used to atleast read scraps in networks which have blocked orkut.

Did you like the trick. Do me a small favour. Copy the URL given below and paste it into "Add a feed" as you did for orkut link.

It is being blocked all over the universities, educational institutes and has been condemned many times for the generous openness which it shows. But that does not seem to stop Google to keep orkut updating with new features. And the orkut lovers enjoy the service too.

At its third birthday Google blog has made an announcement that orkut users will soon be able to scrap to there friends via there cell phones and receive the scraps in cell phones. One will be able to read the friends profile from his/her cell phone itself.

The service is being initially launched in Brazil, where orkut has gained the maximum number of users. Soon the service will be available to people around the globe. Time to eat, drink, sleep, bath, ride, walk, think....orkut with your cell phone!

Wonder when will Google combine the blogger with orkut?