Many users of Scrap All Script had problem sending images with script! Problem is if you have image hosted on third-party server orkut turns on image verification (called CAPTCHA) which script can not bypass!
So here are steps to bypass orkuts image verification while sending images…
Save image on your PC first. (If image is located somewhere else online download it to your PC)
Go to any orkut your scrapbook. There is a button add photo beside button post scrap
Click on add photo button their. That will open a wizard to add photo to scrapbook as shown in screenshot below.
Click Browse button and select imagefrom PC.
Next click Upload Picture button.
When uploading is done you will see a URL in scrapbook text box.
Copy the above URL and paste it in Scrap All scripts text area. The image will be sent without any problem.
Also next time while scrapping you can click on link Picasa Web Albums directly as shown in above screenshot to insert images directly from Googles Server. Every image you sent this way is saved online into Picasa Web Albums.
Image verification has gone because your image is hosted on Googles server. Please do not confuse this with breaking of orkut CAPTCHA or breaking of image verification. 🙂
This should have been last post in 2007 but instead this is going to be first post of 2008. Anyway here is summary of 2007…
The biggest thing we have done is moved to WordPress from blogger(blogspot) in June 2007. Because of few mistakes it took some time to catch up with this new domain. Still with all your support we are happy with progress of Devils Workshop!
#Stats:
Unique Hits ~ 159000
Page Views ~ 405400
Posts ~ 155
Comments ~ 1100
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#Earning (Annual):
Google Adsense – 4 Digit Fig (in USD)
Other Source – 3 Digit Fig (in USD)
Now lets turn to best posts. We are picking up 2 sets of top 10 posts. First set is for Orkut only and other set for rest.
Finally let us know if anything is missing from above lists which you think should be part of it!
Thank you all for a wonderful year… 🙂
Our Sincere Request: Spare a minute to let us know about your favorite post of the year 2007 and what are you expecting from this Devils workshop! Thanks in advance for your time 🙂
Yep. Soon Google crawlers will be indexing orkut profiles and everyone on orkut will be googlable. In simple terms you can use google search to find your friends’ orkut profile and your friends can do same to find you!
Although there is no official post regarding this on any Google or Orkut official blog, a new privacy setting – "orkut in google search results", indicates just this.
By default this setting is configured to show your orkut information in search results! That’s why you don’t need to do anything to appear in google search.
Those who are concern about privacy can choose "hide information" option. There is no fine grained control like facebook provides. So better opt for hiding if you have doubt on how this feature will be used (or abused).
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!
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!
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!
This new feature by Orkut wil remove need to use Google Talk, Gmail or Thrid party scripts/tools to get instant notification when someone send scraps to you!
Now whenever a new scrap appear on your scrapbook you will see a notification balloon in bottom-right side of your browser. (as shown in above screenshot)
If you have noticed then it seems orkut added complete new column named notice for this feature. We may expect more notice box specially next to new friend requests, new friend approval and other stuff!
Two days before I read about this cool feature on Orkut’s officical blog itself but was waiting eagrly to get it on my account.
If you havent got it yet, don’t worry as you will be geting it on your account soon!
Just noticed two new features on Google Talk – my favorite instant Messenger Client!
New picture emotions
Group-Chat Feature
1. New Picture Emotions!
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Like other big-old messenger (yahoo, msn, etc) Google talk now have limited picture emotions!
The quantity and quality of these emotions is but surprisingly low. May be Google will add more and better emotions soon.
Screenshots below will show you as how to express these new emotions while chatting on Google Talk.
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2. Group-Chat Feature
This is one I guess most guys eagerly waiting for. Very often bunch of people are chatting on common topic like recent cricket match, a new offer, movie, etc.
Now curtsey of this feature you all can chat in same window! 🙂
Simple way to do this is start chatting with your friend and as people come online invite them to join conversation. Following screenshot shows pictorially how to invite people to join your Google-Talk conversation!
These new feature are only available with GoogleTalk embedded in Gmail. Lets hope an update for official Google Talk Client soon!
Like me, many of you just love simplicity of GoogleTalk! So let us know if these picture emotion disappointed you?
Today I have noticed orkut added cool interface for adding photos to 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 where you will have three options…
1. Upload a picture from your computer to scrapbook (as you do while adding picture to your orkut album)
