Orkut is 3 years old

Orkut deserved one more review...

Orkut redefined the history of communication technology of the past two decades, out of email, newsgroups, groups, instant messaging, profile management, friend management and online databases.

When orkut.com started in Jan 2004, I thought it ushered another era of technology. Such a "social network", where each user comes with a standard profile, is a significant improvement to mailings lists and online forums because, what plagues such forum is that people are more or less anonymous.

There are a number of problems stemming from anonymity but I don’t intend to buzz around with them (in fact there are a lot of materials on the web about serious blaming to such facilities). Orkut provides a template for exchanging information from marital status to religion to what-not. though not a tailor-made cut out of exactly the users want, it suits the generic interest of almost all users. I think the interface is so staunch, that users even don’t mind public scrapping and public showcasing of personal attributes or happenings. With an user photo and an album it tends to strengthen that false sense of being connected (though it still remains false.. but who cares when everything else in this world is also an illusion).

Thus, today after 3 years of its in-effect Orkut stands as a tool in the life of every average computer user. Even the most infrequent internet user possesses an orkut profile with a few friends and communities. The corporate computer usage struck so high that today most software companies have banned orkut usage from work place.

Friend management is one of the major advantages orkut has to offer. With having the full array of friends (and foes) you can categorize their importance in your life, send a mail to all them making them feel you still remember them (when you actually don’t). The next best is the communities with an overflowing redundancy orkut communities still stands among the largest set of discussion forums.

Dating seems to be the natural outcome of such things and no wonder its flourished well in here pretty healthily (the consequences of which is beyond the scope of this blog). You have friends-of-friends, mutual-friends, friends-in-communities and what not.

Orkut.com set out to be a "social network" with the goal of real-life friendship and partnership building, its organization and features prevents it from becoming a wild virtual fantasy world. It becomes a social responsibility in our own interest to save Orkut.com by getting rid of some morons or moronic behaviors.

A humble thanks to Orkut Buyukkokten (there are so many email fwds i get about he making this site for his lost girlfriend ... I am not sure he did or not .. but I definitely did ;) who is known for his tremendous efforts for creating such a masterpiece utility helping really old lost friends to reappear.

Being just another orkut user for more than a year now, I just want to document some useful tips and tricks that you can honestly use to have just a little edge over some other users.

How to find emails of persons who have hidden their emails from non friends?

first add the target person as a friend (by going to his orkut profile).
Needn’t wait for the approval. Go to your "friends" page immediately.
Click on "Open friend requests" on the top-left corner.
Find the name of the person whom you just added.
Click on "EDIT" at the right side of that person’s profile.
You can see his/her email id here

What can you do when you want to scrap from office and all proxies are blocked?

Use http://www.powerscrap.com

-A

http://arnabpal.blogspot.com