You may find a lot of goody-good stories coming in about how users met with their long lost high school friends and childhood friends via Orkut – I did too. But now after about 2 years+ use of Orkut, I am unfortunately disappointed. While orkut warns people regularly not to click on links and malicious scripts, I find a large number of my friends falling prey. I agree it is their fault but orkut should do something on their part to make it safe in the first place. How do you explain a 10 year old kid not to click on ‘javascript’ when all he wants to do is ‘open locked albums’. With good competition in the market, and most importantly- orkut being a Google product must maintain some standards like every other Google product that doesn’t fail to marvel the world. I hope that Google/orkut team takes this seriously as a major concern and do something about this. In my solidarity to express grave concern I have decided to remove all pictures from my album.

Here is coping it gets published and takes seriously
Untill there, this picture remains on my Orkut album as one of the two pictures.

Banni => I AM “MTV ROADIES” GIRL

doesn’t work and can hijack your profile, so don’t click on it.

The script is written in the about me section of the user profile and looks like this.
A lot of people who have already “sent” these scraps without knowledge, please change your password and report abuse these profiles and scraps.

I think SoNets(Social Netwroking) should be used as a companion and not cumpulsion, as is the case with half the Indians. Logging in every 2 hours to see if anyone ‘scrapped’! I last logged in 2 days ago and all I had on my scrapbook were 4 identical junk scraps containing huge flash font and links to javascraipt(oh yea! like it will ACTUALLY tell me who i have a crush on!)
Facebook has nothing but re-hall-ee annoying application requests flooded. Guys, thanks for the ignore all button but you seriosuly goto do soemhting about these applications.. its out of control!

Today we’re announcing our latest improvement to the site: an updated look! Just as you change your profile picture to keep with the times, we’re updating the look of orkut. The change isn’t live yet, but starting soon, we will start rolling-out the new look. To start, we will roll it out to a small group of users randomly selected, and will continue to do so until everyone is on the new site. We’ll tell you a little more each day, so come back to the blog to get a few sneak peeks.

Source : Orkut Blog

Oh my my. Sense has prevailed and Orkut has finally decided to kick itself and give a revamped look. Rightly said, It’s been 3 years since you’ve seen that pale blue look and frankly its started to get boring. Keeping a tight lipped about the new design, Orkut promises to leak out bit bit information on their blog. After winning the MTV-Pepsi youth icon for this year, Orkut India has started to take things seriously. Being the number two most visited website(after Yahoo.co.in) in India – Orkut is the heartthrob and lifeline of millions of Indian teenagers. Lets just hope the new look keeps up to the hype (fingers crossed)

Major Edit (August 24 @ 2331 IST) : Orkut just put up a screenshot of their new design. DON’T MISS IT !!

You can upload photos, enter HTML code or URLs, and the content will appear in your friend’s scrapbook. To upload a photo simply click on the “add a photo” link below the text box for your friend’s scrapbook. You can choose to upload a photo from your own computer or enter the URL of a photo you’d like to add. Your photos will be saved in a Picasa Web Album, so you can click on the “Picasa Web Album” tab in the photo picker the next time you upload images. For those of you who want more than static photos, you can enter the HTML-embed code and add things like videos from YouTube or slideshows from slide.com.

Some of the updates like the “add photo” button is still not available to all users, Its not going to be long before everyone can start using it!
Here is a scrap I put on Shrey’s profile from devaintART :

click to enlarge

The users of the subcontinent are also to be blamed in this. It is after all the users who encourage such activities. It is my earnest request people, Please flag [ use this button : ] such profiles and communities.. If you want to look at porn simply go to appropriate websites. Orkut is a social networking website where people come to connect with their friends. Small children often stumble upon such lewd content and start indulging in various activities after that which is very distracting at such an age.

The media is going crazy and so are political parties. I know that most of them are creating a huge hue and cry about trivial issues without most of them raising a much graver topic such as this, but it is time Google checked this issue before it goes out of hand. It certainly is going to be a huge embarrassment for them is this blows up. Some one has to take the first step and I wish that it is we users who take it. So from today please make a habit to mark all objectionable material and and discourage all such activities.
Help Keep Orkut Beautiful

[tags]Orkut, Pornography, Ban , Social-Networking, India, Asia [/tags]

Orkut has now introduced polls in its communities. Members can now hold public polls and get opinion. This is areally cool feature which was missing and will now liven up communities to a great extent