The Google Social Networking site, hugely popular in Brazil, India and Pakistan, turned 4 years old this 24th. As expected, the logo was changed, and is shown above. I joined Orkut in late 2004, back in the days when it was quite exclusive, and was invitation only. It has grown by leaps and bounds in the last 3 years with the number of members exponentially multiplying, and communities spawning like anything. Orkut has also often been a target of moral police due to its “Anonymous/Fake identity” enabled features. And this has more than often caused disturbances and uproars, especially in India.
A t Year 4, Orkut is now open to all. Does that mean, it is going to be more of fake and pseudo profiles, more spam invitations to even more spam communities, or is Orkut fighting back? Orkut has seen a lot of changes, especially in the last one year, with the addition of new features. Like the Report Spam to Scraps, and also New Privacy Options. And now, the ultimate measure in tracking down spammers. Apparently, whoever creates an Orkut ID, his/her IP address, ISP provider address and machine name will be logged in the Google server. So, no one in the Orkut network is a stranger for Google.So beware anyone who is planning to play a prank against any sensitive person/organisation. They might get in touch with Google and hunt you down.
In the coming year, I have a lot of hopes from Orkut, as it still remains my favorite social networking community. Primarily because I have all my friends here. But also because, I still see Orkut having enough room for improvement, and also we are yet to see the actual dawn of Opensocial on the Orkut platform. Let’s hope that 2008 be a fruitful year for Orkut. Cheers!
Have you ever wondered what new does the Web or for that matter,Web 2.0 has to offer you? Even more for you to think upon, is the number of services that are online and available for even most of your specific needs. All you need is just a basic know-how of getting your hands on it. And this is where Go2Web2.0 enters. Go2Web 2.0 is a complete directory of the many Web 2.0 Services available, and has a interactive search facility, tag-wise and even with a flash bashed thumbnail surfing. A mouse-over on the thumbnails gives a brief description of the Service.So right from your regular Blogging Promotion services to Image Uploading, Web OS, Social Networking ,Community IM, Social Bookmarking et al, all can be found here. Just take your pic to find the one that suits you the best. Some of the few ones featured on the list are : Mahalo, Zoom.in, Project Playlist etc. I shall be reviewing a couple of them for sure. For more, watch this space.
It seems to me now that Tech News is in desperate need of something on the lines of tabloids or the P3 Glitterati; of course Porn being one of its Paris Hiltons. No one can doubt about the online traffic and revenue that porn generates, especially because of its paid nature and ahem! because of its nature as well. Until well, Ning.com came up with the new in-thing-sub-domain parking of the porn kind, and well,shockingly, the entire web world stood up and took notice, like it never had been done before. In some way or the other, sub-domain hosting of pornography has always existed, well since Blogger or even WordPress days. Would love to know the statistics, as this is is going to be much larger than Ning’s.
The journey from being a Hello World page to the Page you see now hasn’t been quite smooth, thanks to me being unprepared, and of course being spoilt by the drag n drop of Blogger Template. So to not repeat the same mistake, here I have prepared a To-Do List to make your Blog as beautiful as mine (if you consider it to be). As in “How to go for the default page to having a fully functional Blog page”. I presume you have your domain, you’ve hosted it and got your WordPress already installed properly. In short you can see the default Hello World page on your Homepage with the Blue Header (Read the WordPress official installation page if you at all are having problems knowing how to do so, or just type your question on that blank space known as the Google Search ). Let’s take it from here then, shall we?
To-Do List for Setting Up your Blog (From Hello World to Wassup World).:-
Being unprepared is not at all an option if you want your Blog to succeed. Success here means traffic, people visiting your Blog regularly, Subscribing to your feeds, may be clicking your ads even, but above all reading your posts and commenting on them. So you do not want your blog to look like a shabby, crumpled, torn newspaper column. I have literally read almost a 100 “How To”s over the last few days, to have come up with this list . Here we go!
- Selecting the Right Theme:-
Unless you are a CSS wizard, this one comes directly from the huge repository of free WordPress templates available online. I chose a suitable theme from wpthemesfree.com and there is just more than one to fit your need.All you need is to look around, sit,decide and finalise on the theme and of course make your own changes to fit your purpose. Important points to be noted are whether you need a two column or a three column theme, what should be the entire theme color, and most importantly the text font size. All these small things go a long way in enhancing the user experience. Template editing is of course possible, with the usual trial and error procedure.
