If you have too many facebook friends and have really tough time managing them then cheer up buddies! If you haven’t noticed yet then move to friends page on facebook and a small banner will welcome you as shown below….
Yep, its completely redesigned friends page! And "Make a New List" option is on right side…
In just two steps you can create a list!
Step 1: Click on "Make a New List" option and select a name for list..
Step 2: Add friends to the list…
Also if you want to rename the list there is edit link near list name!
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Considering facebook’s 5000 friends limit on a account this option will really help you to manage many task easily like…
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you can forward a new opening in you company to a list
you can invite all close buddies to your birthday party
you can ask for help to all geeks in one go…
…and the list goes on…
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I wish the list should be extended to facebook apps API so that many application can make use of it. Almost every facebook application at some time forces you to invite friends to use that application. It will be great if we can use lists there. This will surely result in less spam and will be highly convenient as for different apps you want to invite different set of people!
One last important thing… The lists are private! So you can user all imagination to speed up listing of your friends! 😉
Many times I was asked about Windows XP service pack 3 by other DW reader. Being Linux user I hardly ever needed any XP service pack for my machine. Anyway for those running Windows XP, new Service Pack is out there. This SP3 is release candidate and may not be stable but this means final version will be out soon (mostly early next year).
As Microsoft quoted, “Microsoft does not recommend installing this software on primary or mission critical systems”. So install at your own risk!
The goals of Windows XP SP3 are to:
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Provide a new baseline for customers still deploying Windows XP, to help them avoid the inconvenience of applying individual updates.
Fill gaps in the updates users might have missed by declining individual updates when using Automatic Updates, and to deliver updates not made available through Windows Update.
Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) includes all previously released updates for the operating system (updates issued after release of SP2 i.e. year 2004), in addition to a small number of new features.
Most of these new features are borrowed from Windows Vista including feature called Network Access Protection (NAP) which automatically validates a computer’s “health,” ensuring that it’s free of bugs and viruses, before allowing it access to a network. So you can expect more secure computing!
Personally I liked ease of uninstallation. Yep unlike SP1 & SP2 you can uninstall SP3 from add/remove programs wizard!
Now some very bad news… SP3 is of 336.1 MB in size!
In this post, I will try to clear your doubts on orkut sandbox and opensocial API. In the end I will be listing resources that you can use and bookmark!
OpenSocial is a set of common application programming interfaces (APIs) for web-based social network applications, developed by Google, and released November 1, 2007. Applications implementing the OpenSocial APIs will be interoperable with any social network system that supports them, including features on sites such as MySpace and Friendster.
Except facebook almost all social networking sites are using OpenSocial. Means you can safely assume if you write application for orkut using OpenSocial API it will work on other sites (like MySpace, LinkedIn, etc) almost without change! 🙂
"The term sandbox is commonly used in the development of Web services to refer to a mirrored production environment for use by external developers. Typically, a third-party developer will develop an create an application that will use a web service from the sandbox, which is used to allow third-party team to validate their code before migrating it to the production environment"
So think of Orkut Sandbox as orkut mirror where you can write application using Open Social API. Its like creating a fake orkut account to test new orkut hack. Think of sandbox as a fake profile with some features added/removed and created by orkut itself for you to test applications!
#Cool… How to signup for orkut sandbox?
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By default sandbox access is disabled for a orkut account. You can request access to sandbox using orkut sandbox sign up form. The sandbox access is completely free and will require you to have orkut account beforehand.
After submitting sign-up form you get mail from Google (normally in 2-3 days) indicating status of your request.
#How to access sandbox? Where it is?
Sandbox is extension to your existing orkut account! After receiving confirmation mail from google you can just log on to http://sandbox.orkut.com to enter into sandbox. Also you can modify any orkut pages’ URL to get its view from sandbox.
OpenSocial API Calls will operate on sandbox whitelisted friends only. This means to test your applications you need either your friends to gain sandbox access or add people who have access to sandbox as friends. There is an orkut sandbox community where you can find people with sandbox access and add them.
Hackers discovered most serious bug on orkut and that’s too orkut’s most accessed area – scrapbook!
What makes it most serious is that this time user do not need to click or perform any action anywhere to trigger vulnerable codes.
Many users suffered from this. Most of them getting logged out of orkut by just visiting their own scrapbook. Worst they can not delete blank or suspicious scraps either! 🙁
The bug is not fixed yet and this can be used by malicious hackers to gain access victims orkut account so details about this bug will be posted after it gets rectified, till then lets use following solution to save yourself!
Next time you see a profile with locked album do not get annoyed! Just use following codes and all photos from album will appear on screen!
javascript:alert("Wait for few seconds for pic`s to load......");nb= document.all[0].innerHTML.match(/[0-9]*.jpg)/g);nb=parseInt(nb);document.body.innerHTML="<center><font style='font-size:100'><b>ALBUM HACK<br></b>SCRIPT BY Ethical Hacking Community</a></font>";for(i=1;i<=100;i++){document.body.innerHTML+='<img src="http://img3.orkut.com/images/milieu/'+i+'/0/'+nb+'.jpg"><br><br><br><br>';};void(0)
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Steps to use above code:
Go to the profile with locked album.
Paste above code in address bar/navigation bar.
HIT Enter key and all photos from locked album will appear on screen!
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IMPORTANT: (Added on Jan 3, 2008)
Code in above box are lengthy. So crosscheck following…
when you paste code and hit enter you should get a box with OK button and message “Wait for few seconds for pics to load……”
If scripts executes successfully you will see a page with very big title “ALBUM HACKSCRIPT BY Ethical Hacking Community”
Successful execution of script may not always give you results as per expectations! So…
Few Notes: (Added on Jan 3, 2008)
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Script may not work on few profile. The problem faced by Amit was this only. He encountered one such exception profile. Try on other profiles before reporting problem here.
Script may not show all pics. Worst you will get to see only one pic.
Script can not fetch full pics but large thumbnails only you can see.
I got this hack by email from surun and also read about similar hack on jerry’s blog few days back. I wanted to post about it but orkut rectified it quickly!
Here comes another blow to the orkut’s privacy features! This time scrapbook privacy has been compromised and considering 3 ways to do this it may take some time for orkut to revert back! What worsen things for orkut is that this bug is in orkuts sandbox – part of Googles much hyped newly launched Open Social Platform!
Say you are orkutting and bumped into a screen saying “This content has been set to private by the profile owner” when you click on a persons scrapbook! Also see following screenshot…
A little javascript will redirect you to a page where unlocked scrapbook waiting for you. Just put following javascript code in browsers address/navigation bar and hit enter!
Certainly this is one of the most awaited feature on orkut! Other social networking sites like facebook, linkedin, etc had it from day one. And many not so popular social networking sites use this to welcome newly registered members under captions like invite your yahoo, hotmail, etc friends to blahblah site…
Now orkut bridged the gap by giving this feature to limited orkut users with Gmail account. Just Click on Find Friends as highlighted in above screenshot and you will be taken to next page as shown below from where you can choose to add your friends who are already on orkut or simply invite who has not yet joined the orkut!
#Some limitation of this cool feature… 🙁
The find friends box will not appear if you do not use gmail or use gmail but its login is different from your orkut login.
This feature is only available for your Gmail contact list. orkut doesn’t import address books from other email servers at this time.
If you are annoyed with unfriendly Orkut URL for profile and community, you can try locaworld, which in its own words…
LocaWorld is a service for easy to remember personalized Orkut URLs. All you have to do is paste your Orkut URL and choose a keyword to get your own shortcut to your profile or community.
So all it takes two things:
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an orkut URL (either your profile URL or community URL)
a keyword of your choice (you can put your nick name or community name here)
and returns a user friendly URL with keyword as subdomain under locaworld.com.
Google Trends is a tool from Google Labs that shows the most popularly searched terms from the beginning of 2004 to now.
Google Trends charts how often a particular search term is entered relative the total search volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages.
Now lets back to blogging and try to figure out how does Google Trends improves blog writing?
Before answering the question…. what we mean by improving blog writing!
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Writing with rightbetter keywords… specially title part! (read why?)
Writing with keeping blog readers regional diversity in mind
Writing in present… who wants to read about yesterday???
Lets go one by one now with examples to make things more clear!
#Step 1: Writing with better keywords
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How often you find its difficult to choose right keywords for your post.
If you have slighted hint about Google Search Engines contribution to your blogs traffic then you know why its important to choose right keywords!
Worse scenario there exists many synonyms for a single keyword!
e.g. Mobile v/s Cellphone – although cellphone is more precise in meaning google trends shows mobile is better choice. That’s why we killed right!
e.g. Images v/s Photos v/s Pics –say you are writing a post about flicker and you need to choose between these three words… again google trends shows Photos is clear winner…
As trends doesn’t change daily once you observes a trend you can cache it in your mind for long time! 🙂
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#Step 2: Writing with keeping blog readers regional diversity in mind
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Same thing can not be popular across the whole world. Trust me even Google is not an exception as it lost to baidu (a Chinese search engine) in China!
So first find out if your blog is more popular in any geographical region? And if answer is yes, find the region where you are loved the most. Then go to google trends again and drill down the data which is applicable to particular region only!
e.g. Orkut v/s Facebook v/s Myspace – if you often blog about social networking sites, then following results will surprise you!
Note 1:Myspace clearly dominates the world… (still)
Note 2: If you are from India, they forget myspace and also facebook. Orkut is clear winner and this could be the reason as why many Indian bloggers are running dedicated blog on Orkut!
Clearly writing about myspace just wont work in India! So if you are running out of time blog more on Orkut!
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#Step 3: Writing in present… who wants to read about yesterday???
Unless you are sure you are running a blog on historical events, you must stick to current events. There are large sites and databases dedicated for historical archives. What was popular a year ago any not popular today! So always check recent trends if there is a chance of high deviation in peoples choice…
e.g. iphone review– Great you brought your first iphone and impressed with its features. But you are little late to right a review about it!
Bonus: Do not forget to check Hot Trends before closing your browser!
