Category: News

Categories
News

Orkut Now Suggesting New Friends! [New Feature]

During the mid of this year, Orkut launched a new feature wherein it was recommending users to join communities that may be of their interest. Though the feature was not of much use, but after having a look on the community recommendation feature, Orkut users in the Orkut help group started demanding for a feature wherein their profile may list a couple of persons they may be knowing. And it is good to know that, it did not take Orkut too long to introduce what its users demanded. 🙂

If you have ever used other famous social networking sites like Hi5 or Facebook, then by know you must have surely understood what exactly this feature is and what is the real funda behind it. Basically ‘friend suggestions’ feature works by searching people who are more common to the network of friends in your existing friend list. The above displayed pane of ‘Friends suggestions by Orkut’ can be viewed on your homepage just below the ‘Recent Visitors’ area. If you are yet to see this feature on your profile, I guess it need not be mentioned that Orkut has a practice of rolling out new features phase wise. So, till then enjoy looking the above image. 😉 Though this feature too may not be of much use, but it seems Orkut is trying to bring all the features its competitors like Hi5 & Facebook have, doesn’t matter how useful they are. Isn’t it?

Related: Orkut Now Recommending Communities

Thanks Vishal for the tip and screenshot. 🙂

Categories
News

Under Sea Cable Cut Disrupts Internet in Middle East and South Asia

Since last one day or two, I noticed that my BSNL broadband connection was too slow and I was wondering whether there is some problem in my local exchange, in the mean time I came across an article where in it was mentioned about the faulty optical fibres that prevented Internet users to have a consistent and speedy Internet connectivity. Also, those optical fibres break resulted in disruption of International telephone services.

As per the statement:

Breaks in three submarine cables which link Europe and the Middle East have disrupted Internet and telephone services in the Middle East and South Asia, officials said on Saturday. The disruption reduced Egypt’s Internet capacity by about 80 percent. Technicians were restoring some capacity by diverting communications traffic through the Red Sea.

So, not only India, people of many other countries as well, are suffering from Internet outage atleast, if not long distance phone calls. Though, the exact cause of break in sub-marine cables is not yet known, but according to experts, due to such disruption in services, the economy of these countries will surely be affected. The statement added, it may take few more days to the respective agencies to fix those faulty lines.

So all internet users out there, are requested not to panic if you too are suffering from slow internet connection, and wait until it takes the respective officials to restore the connectivity to normal condition. 🙂

Image Credits: Techshout

Categories
News

Google Image Search Just Got Even Better

Few days ago, Google announced the launch of a new feature in their Image Search Engine, using which one can search exclusively for faces and later on they released photo search feature. But now, they realized to do something even better and the output is what I am going to write about.

Now Google have included features to search for Line Drawings and Clip arts as well. So, if you are looking for some specific formats or types of images, then you can now easily locate the images you are looking for using these new options in Google Image Search.

To check out these new options, I personally tried searching images using the different options for the Keyword ‘Christmas’ and here are those images.

 

If you remember, few days ago I mentioned a feature in Live image search using which we were able to find images using similar images. This new updates by Google, seems to be a reply to those guys at Microsoft. 🙂

Link: Google Image Search

Related: Use Images to Find Similar Images

Categories
News

Orkut’s Christmas Special Theme!

Just a day before, I concluded a post about Orkut’s treat for this holiday season with words,

… If you like themes on Orkut, keep an eye on themes tab as special holiday theme will appear anytime…

and just checked Orkut to see Christmas special theme is there!

You can find it under themes tab on orkut…

I personally don’t find theme option much attractive, but this Christmas theme is really nice. You can see it in action below on my Orkut homepage…

I hope new year theme will be equally nice which is not yet released!

Link: Orkut Apps and Features you can use this holiday season

Categories
News

Orkut Scrap Notification Emails Just Got Better!

Story 1: Around 3 months back, Orkut improved its email notifications for activities like someone send you a friend request, post a scrap in your scrapbook, etc.

Story 2: At OrkutFeeds, our service which provide updates for Orkut scrapbooks in RSS feeds format, user demanded we should offer an email alert service where they can get complete scrapbook updates. They wanted emails with actual content of scraps!

Now a new update by Orkut connects these two stories. Orkut has improved email notification for scraps, again!

As you can see, above email notification screenshot contains, actual content of scrap as well as display pic of sender.

The only problem with display pic if you are a Gmail user is: you have to enable display of images in every scarp notification email you will get. It would have better if Orkut has used same common email ID to send all notifications.

Anyway this is real treat for users who don’t use Orkut much. Thanks Sreejoy. 🙂

Useful Link: OrkutFeeds – Get RSS Feed for Orkut Scrapbooks

Categories
News

Blogger Introduced New Feature: ‘Geotagging’

Blogger (Also called blogspot) in draft has recently announced a new feature called Geotagging or location labels which enables you to add locations to each of your post through Google Maps. It is similar to time stamps of blogger posts which help to browse using specific date/month whereas Geotag give your readers a way to browse posts near a specific location.

As per official blog of Blogger in draft

We’ve just added geotagging to the new post editor on Blogger in draft. With geotagging, you can add a location to your each of your blog posts. Just as time stamps help readers find posts from a certain date or time, geotags give your readers a way to browse posts near a specific location.

Adding a geotag to your post is easy. Log into draft.blogger.com, open the post editor, and click the ‘add location’ link below the main text field.

ADVERTISEMENT

Use the location editor to search, drag, click and zoom on a map to choose and save a location. Google says- “We’ll try to label the location you choose using our reverse geocoder, which looks up a name for a point on the map”. You can also edit the location name by clicking the blue location name text below the search field.

As said earlier, you can see clearly, this feature is integrated with Google Maps:

Link : Blogger in Draft

Categories
News

Enjoy Holiday Season on Orkut!

Like everyone else, team Orkut is all set to squeeze maximum juice out of this holiday season! Just logged on orkut to see following message…

 

When you click on it, it takes you to a page where Orkut recommends (read promotes) some of its feature and applications which you can use this holiday season.

Apart from albums and videos, the other feature orkut is promoting with maximum efforts is their newly launched events feature.

Three holiday applications they have listed are BuddyPoke, My Music and Christmas Tree.

Also, we can expect different homepage designs on Xmas and New Year. If you like themes on Orkut, keep an eye on themes tab as special holiday theme will appear anytime!

Thats All! Enjoy holiday season on Orkut! 🙂

Categories
News

New in Gmail Labs: Covert Google Mails into Google Docs

Just activated the newly launched labs feature in Gmail: ‘Create a Document’. Using this feature, you can easily convert any mail in your Gmail inbox into a Google doc and immediately start sharing them with your friends or even publish it on the World Wide Web (WWW).

As you can see on the image here, immediately after enabling the ‘Create a Document’ feature under Labs tab, you can view another option on the right side of all individual mail, clicking which, would divert you to Google docs with the whole contents of your mail on that page.

Just for experimenting, I tried making a document out of a mail in my mail box and here is the final output that I got just within fraction of seconds. Though, like many other labs feature, this feature too will not be used many a times, but will really prove helpful and useful when you want to share a specific mail in your mail box with a huge number of viewers.

Categories
News

Now View Gmail PDF attachments inside browser!

Next time when you get an Email on your Google mail account with a PDF attachment in it, you need not bother downloading it just for having a single look. Using the recently announced “PDF viewing in browser” option for Gmail users, just as you view image file attachments, you can view PDF attachments as well. As shown on the image below, you can click on the “View” option (instead of “Download”) to view the PDF file right on your browser without needing to waste up a lot of bandwidth to download the whole file. 🙂 Just have look on the image below, which will make you clear on how the whole thing will work for you.

 

Though its not a major or a great feature, it can just be another reason for you to stick up with Gmail. 😉

Links: Official Release

Image Credits: Gmail Blog

Categories
News

$6000 Worth Giveaway at Digital Inspiration!

This is a regular practice for bloggers to give away stuff to their blog visitors to increase the number of loyal readers and so. If you remember, previously we mentioned about few give away by many bloggers which included Rapidshare accounts. Similarly, a new contest is being initiated by Amit Agarwal in his well known tech blog – Digital Inspiration (Labnol.org). Amit is giving away stuff costing more than 6000 dollars which I think is really a good opportunity to grab. 😉

The give away is being divided into seven prizes which consists of products ranging from Laptops, Printers, Scanners and other similar HP products. All you need to do for being eligible for this contest is, you need to fill this short survey form and tell Amit what you think about his blog and also you can give some suggestions and criticism that would help him improving his blog. Personally I think, this is a way Amit wants to get exposed to the blogging world and increase his number of readers, also, its a  a nice opportunity for you to try your luck. So, what are you waiting for? Just fill out this form without waiting any more. 🙂

Links: Official Release | Survey form