Author: Rahul Bansal

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News

Orkut Added Scrapbook Privacy Feature! Safeguard your scrapbook against strangers!

Just noticed a new Orkut Setting so that you can choose who can scrap to you! You can choose between…

  • Friends Only
  • Friends of Friends (recommended by DW)
  • Everyone in your networks

If you haven’t noticed it yet, look for a handy link in your scrapbook as shown in following screenshot…

Clicking on it will take you to the Privacy Setting page of your Orkut account. Under setting “select who is allowed to view my content“, modify write in scrapbook option from drop-down menu. Setting it to all of my friends will prevent rest of the people on orkut from scrapping you.

I guess people (specially girls) concern about their privacy should choose either Friends or Friends of friends!

This will surely bring some relief to girls who are annoyed by sick people on Orkut! Isn’t it???

Categories
News

New Google Search Feature – Live & Recent Cricket Scores are just One-Click Away!

Just type cricket in a Google search box and you’ll see a brief score of all the current cricket matches. A single click will also give you access to a detailed cricket score card. (see following screenshot…)

If you’re a diehard India fan, then type cricket india or cricket score India England to get results for Indian matches. Of course, feel free to replace India with the country of your choice for country-specific results.

If there is not any live match going on the search will return most recent matchs’ scorecard link!

Also one thing Googlers forgot to mention on their blog is, the results are simultaneously available from three sources Cricinfo, Cricbuzz & Willow. So look at green un-clickable link in result (in above screenshot its m6.willow.tv) and if its not the place where you enjoy cricket then look for clickble blue links just below it for alternate resources (in above screenshot its Cricinfo, Cricbuzz & Willow).

Thats it! For time being enjoi Twenty-20 worldcup! And in a break let us know where you enjoyit most, i.e. Cricinfo, Cricbuzz, Willow OR some other site?

Categories
Tips

Be on Facebook to be in Google Search!

Very soon your Facebook profile will be going to be in Google, Yahoo, MSN & other search results so that people searching for you will be able to reach you via facebook.

Does this mean threat to your privacy???
Not at all as you can control whether you have a public search listing, and where it appears, from your Search Privacy page. Also anyone who discovers your public search listing must register and log in to contact you via Facebook.

Here is preview of my facebook profiles public search listing…

Since your search privacy settings are set to “Everyone” (by default) you now have a public search listing. This means that friends who aren’t yet on Facebook will be able to search for you by your name from Facebook Welcome page. Public Search Listings may include your name, profile picture and few more things depending on your choice (see following screenshot).

These public search listings can be found by search engines like Google. If you do not want to show up in Google and other search engine results you can go to Search Privacy page and “uncheck” Allow my public search listing to be indexed by external search engines (ex. Google, Yahoo, MSN) option… (as shown in following screenshot)

Thats it from my side! (want to read more…)

By the way have you ever Googled Yourself? Yes this is not something abnormal and I always do it to check if I am top in Google Search result!

Yes google for Rahul Bansal and first result will be pointing to this Devils Worksho… Where I Belong! 🙂

Categories
Tips

Know what are your friends upto on your Orkut Homepage!

Seems orkut is serious about new features and this time they are determined to save you from pain! From pain of checking hot babes orkut album for their new pics (and your new wallpapers), monitoring some friends favorite video list as they have really great taste about music or keeping eye on your boyfriends ever growing friend-list! Everybody on Orkut is always checking out something about someone (flirts can read everyone 😉 )!

So orkut has decided to do a you a favor by adding a new section on your homepage named “updates from your friends” (see above screenshot). It shows updates when your friends perform the following actions on orkut…

  1. make changes to their profile
  2. make changes to their photo album
  3. make changes to their video favorites
  4. accept new testimonials

Also when you make these changes to your own profile, your friends will see your updates on their homepages. You can have a look at your update here… (also see screenshot below)

Privacy Concerns…

Although it’s not possible to remove the updates section from your profile, but you can control if you want others to see updates you’ve made…

  • either by going to my updates page and clicking on “hide update” button (see above screenshot) for selected updates which you want to hide
  • or by changing your privacy settings (see following screenshot). Just click on hide updates and hit save changes.

Good thing about this – You will be able to see updates from friend even if you choose to hide your updates! (unlike profile visitor feature)

Bad thing about this – RSS feed of updates is missing! 🙁

Important Note: As orkut is rolling this feature out over the next couple of days, so if you don’t see it yet, you will soon! Be patient! 🙂
Related Links: Orkut Help Page | Orkut Blog Post

Categories
Tips

Making New Orkut Compatible With Higher Resolution on Widescreen Monitors!

If you have have either widescreen monitors (like 15.4″ TFT) or resolution with width > 1024 then you might have noticed some free space as shown in following screenshot…

(click on image for fullscreen view)

If you hate Orkut wasting your screen space then you can use this greasemonkey script created by Gaurav Verma. It will fix Orkut width and it will look like as shown in following screenshot…

(click on image for fullscreen view)

#Installation

Thanks Gaurav for fixing this!

Categories
Tips

Top Orkut Hacks, Tools & Scripts Collection for NEW LOOKS!

As of now most of the Orkut User seems to have new Orkut interface on their account, its time to revise & update top Orkut hacks, tools, scripts & everything else which made Orkut more beautiful for geeks like you… 🙂

Here is the list of WORKING Hacks…

  • Orkut Scrapbook Flooder Extension (ScrapperV1.2) – One of the best creation of Devils Workshop till date! Glad to say its updated to work with new Orkut Code! Thanks Rohit Singh for testing this throughly and giving constant feedback 🙂
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  • Orkut Toolbar – Well I know many orkut addicts for whom sending a scrap without proper formatting is like not orkutting at all!

If you got any working hack which you think should be part of this list please let us know as this list will go through many updates as more hacks will be updated! 🙂

Categories
Tips

11 Styles/ Themes for Orkut!

Important Update: Orkut launched theme feature officially now. (Read More…)

More than a year ago we have published collection of Orkut skins! That is still our one of the best post!

It used GreaseMonkey scripts to change the look of the orkut. Then around 8 months back we wrote about GreaseMonkeys cousin extension – UserStyles which is specially designed for changing looks of a site at client side i.e. CSS! It was cool but at that time there was not any complete ready-to-use style there! But over the time there are lots of styles now and today we are listing them!

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#Before Styling…

  1. You must have Firefox
  2. Install Stylish extension!
  3. Restart Browser!

#Now Click on any of the styles you like…

[Note: – Click on any thumbnail for fullscreen view]
1. DeviantART v5 Orkut Style

  1. last.fm Orkut Red Style

  1. Minimal Orkut
  • Great for users with slow connection

4 Office 2007 Orkut Style Beta

  1. Orkut Black, NoAds

  1. Orkut no ads
  • Removes the ads on Orkut.com. You may not notice any change!

  1. Orkut Stripped and brushed

  1. Orkut v.0.2
  • Removes useless corner images on buttons and other such crap…

  1. Orkut: underline only on hover
  • Use this if all blue links everywhere on orkut irritates you

  1. orkutwhite

  1. Yo! Orkut Beta
  • If you love yahoo too much…

Categories
News

Orkut Planning for Major makeover! Adding Photo Upload Support to scrapbook!

Last week we started discussion – Why Orkut removed user pics from its homepage Logo???

It seems Orkut heard about our conversation (i know its stupid 2 imagine… lolz) and confirmed that they are coming with a new look! This turn out Pramod Ghuge prediction to be true as he said in his comment on above discussion,

Orkut is gearing up for a new look and great new features
it is not a coincidence that new logo was unveiled at the same time that most users can send rich content scraps (images, flash, html)so definitely Orkut want to make the public feel like its newer and better!

Good guess Pramod! 🙂

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Well we have more! Although Orkut said the new look will take time to reach all users we managed to capture few screenshots of one such feature. The feature will allow you to upload pics directly to the orkut scrapbook!

Look for “add photo” link in scrapbook. It is below the textbox for writing scraps. You can also check following screenshot.

Now once u click on the link you will get a wizard as shown in following screenshot… (click on image to enlarge it)

No we have not yet got new looks of orkut!

If you have noticed in above screenshot there is only cancel button on screen which is also not working yet! Forget about OK or Upload button!

By the way you can still send images, videos and other content in scrapbook!

Lets see whats coming… 🙂

Categories
Editorial

Happy Birthday Blogger!

Blogger is a blog publishing system. It was created by Pyra Labs originally on August 23, 1999, and was bought by Google in 2003. Today blogger completed 8 years! (Thanks Blogger Buzz for reminder)

I am grateful to blogger as I have grown up with it! I started my first blog on blogger itself and still I have two blogs there – Cricket Fever and My Fwds!

The most memorable thing about blogger I remember is my first earning of life through adsense!

Here is a childhood snapshot of blogger on Oct 12, 1999 via archive.org (click on image to enlarge it)

Wish You A Very Happy Birthday Dear Blogger! 🙂

#Related…

Categories
Tips

3 steps to add YouTube style Google Maps!

How often you want to show a map like Google Map or a location from wikimapia on your blog/websites! If you are blogging about tourism then you might be tired of capturing screenshot or making videos of maps!

What about adding a live Youtube-style embedded Google map on your site/blog which user can zoom in, zoom out or navigate like they usually do on Google Maps or wikimapia site! All this is possible without leaving your site and all you need to do is just follow 3 simple steps which does NOT involve any sort of coding…

Step 1: Go to Google Maps and pull up the map you want to embed. It can be a location, a business, a set of driving directions, search results, or a map you’ve created using our map-making tools. You can watch following video too if you want to do more with Google Maps!

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Step 2. Then click “Link to this page” in the top right-hand corner (as highlighted in following screenshot). Copy the text that you see in the second box.

Step 3. Paste that text into your blog editor or into the HTML of your webpage. Google uses an <iframe> so it works on most blog hosting sites like Blogger, wordpress, etc! (click on following image to enlarge it)

Finally its time for some live example! So navigate around Devils Workshop location on earth! 😀

View Larger Map

(Source: Google Maps API blog and Googles LatLong Blog)