Okay, I will not wrap this up in any form of introductory bullshit. Lemme get this straight and right to the point. The Apps on Orkut are ALIVE..finally. I was buzzed on my GTalk today by my friend Praxy, who told me that he noticed certain changes in Orkut, right as we were speaking. It was a bit hard to digest coz I had just logged out of my Orkut account a few hours back and I had noticed nothing. So, what was next? I logged in to find the first surprise. My account Homepage showed the following pick.

Just like the introductory Facebook message which invited us to install more and more apps. Well, for me, it was high time. Remember OpenSocial Alliance had been formed and announced way back in the 1800s, I mean in November last year. And now, it’s more than 3 months over of 2008. Still, I hadn’t seen any signs of anything to do with OpenSocial out here on Orkut. (A brief tutorial for all those who do not know about Orkut. It is one of the most visited Social Networking sites by Google, on which the entire online society of India, Pakistan and Brazil resides. And that means, it has a HUGE user base. It’s true that Facebook has invaded a space which was ruled previously by MySpace, and arguably still is. But then, Orkut is HUGE in this part of the world, much like Bebo is still much larger in the UK than any other social network.) The brief ask the question addition was at best an annoying and minuscule addition which didn’t even qualify as an application. But the wait is now over. The apps are here for you , and this is where they are. The page is called the App Directory, and the list looks like the following:

(Click here for the full screen snapshot)The List of Apps include some familiar ones and some not-so familiar ones. And not so suprisingly, it has some India centric applications too like Chakpak, India Dekha, Teen Patti and myHangman which is brought to you by C2W aka Contest2Win.The total list of the apps so far are as follows. (Click the links to go to the official App description on the Orkut Blog).

Music iLike
Emote!
PhotoAttack
Horoscopes
TypeRacer
Top Friends
Slide TV
myHangman
iRead
Flixster
Chakpak
Reading Social
Bible Verses
India Dekha
Teen Patti
Hangout
BuboMe
Music N Movies

However, this is not the exhaustive list. The Orkut Blog contains some more like MyMiniLife (which at the first glance looks like the SIMS meets Second Life, or is it?), Viibee- which is similar to “Are you Interested” app on Facebook, Crazy Story Game among other soon-to-arrive applications.

Though it is a good thing that Orkut is finally moving ahead with the inclusion the so far promised OpenSocial API based Apps, but it is still yet to see whether Orkut will stand and succeed in this race of the social networks. Orkut has so far always been criticised as the network with a fair amount of anonymity, and which has lead to a lot of criticism when it comes to fake profiles invading privacy of other accounts. All this came to the notice of the admins, and they finally included the privacy policy, with settings enabling users to disable non-friends of a profile to be not able to view their scrapbooks, photo albums etc. And now, with the applications being added, Orkut has to monitor it’s privacy policies and settings more closely. It is a common thing these days to see Orkut in the headlines (in India) for all the wrong reasons. All I wish it is all the luck, and may we not see Orkut again being judged.
Lastly, when it comes to uniformity and sorted out interface, Facebook knocked down MySpace. I wish the Apps inclusion in Orkut also remains clutter-free, even though it might add the provision of skins and themes very soon. And yeah, I hope to cover more of Orkut in the near future.

Update: Praxy tells me , he also can see that status update that Facebook allows, on his Orkut Profile. Now it hasn’t happened on my Profile as yet, but here’s the proof of what he says.

Hopefully, it will be rolled out for all accounts soon. And we might even see a Twitter integration for it too.

Remember the thing called Opensocial that Google came up with when rival Facebook’s fraction of a fraction was bought by Microsoft, making them worth 15 billion $. But that’s like ages ago. The current buzz is that Yahoo, which was about to be acquired by Microsoft, is now joining forces with the Opensocial Alliance. According to NY Times, Yahoo is considering to join the alliance which will enable it to create more tools and services which will work across many platforms. The Opensocial gang as of now consists of Google, Friendster, hi5,Ning, MySpace Orkut,Xing and many others. If Yahoo joins, that would make Facebook the odd one out. Clearly, if Facebook continues to go independent with their own API, and the rest of the entire Web 2.0 following Opensocial’s API, it would not be long for facebook to eithr face its doom. But then, World’s youngest billionaire – Mark Zuckenberg isn’t that dumb, yeah? If Yahoo for sure joins Opensocial, Facebook might get forced to switch to Opensocial API for its applications. Finally, we might get to see a uniform distribution of API for application developers. Yippee!!

Related Post:Yahoo Plans to Join OpenSocial Alliance?

Image Courtesy:Thomas Hawk

2007 has been a year like never before for the world of Technology and Internet, abuzz with so much to talk about, so much to debate upon, so many doubts to be clarified and so many rumors and speculations made. I was lucky enough to cover a few of these topics and hot news on my previous blog. In my three odd months of blogging for Techkeyla so far, I wrote on topics ranging from Facebook’s “is” in status message being (not) removed to Google’s Opensocial Project to Mixx to Tech rumors floating around to even some random lists generated by my alter-ego. Surprisingly enough, people dug them and even replied to me with their comments. Based on the number of comments, MyBlogLog’s record of visits for each topic, here I have compiled a top 10 list (yeah, yet another one) of the Hot Posts of Techkeyla for 2007. So, here they are:-

These posts are arranged in no specific order. Just the Top most visited, most read and most commented posts on Techkeyla.

Complete Gmail Shortcuts :- This showed how to get a screen of the complete list of Gmail shortcuts in your Gmail Inbox screen.

How addicted to Blogging are you?:- JustSayHi’s widget on calculating your Blogging addiction quantitatively.

5 rumors for the Black Friday:- Had to be in the list. Quite predictable

What is common between Prison Break and Blogging?:- A link to Christin Kayser’s post on Blogging Experiment trying to link Michael Scofield and a succesful Blogger.

Don’t Click Just Roll:- Dontclick.it ,an innovative way for browsing. Are we gonna see more of this soon?

BSOD Questions me:- What is so fake about the BSOD Screenshot on Wikipedia?

Is a lot, too much for Facebook:- Too many apps cluttering your profile page, has Facebook ended its neatorama and joined the MySpace clutter clan?

10 Million Dollar Challenge & Google’s Opensocial is Live:- Both stories of Google, two different things, one big GOOG.

Full length Mixx Review:- The name says it all. I received quite a lot comments and mails on this one.

The Unofficial iPhone Review:-Had to be here despite the fact that there are millions of other iPhone reviews in thousands of languages. There were no comments, but it was one of the most visited ones.

Other posts in the running, which not quite made to the list spanned across Google and Apple mostly, and Mixx coming a close third. A distant fourth exclusion was a post called iJones. Of course, there is definitely a room for error given there were 165 posts to look into, but well, you get my bias,don’t you?

Image Courtesy:-espion