After Google added a new entry into their robots.txt file tonight (Disallow: /orkut/albums), I began doing some research into Orkut's photo album feature.  If you listen to many, the current version sucks compared to what could be possible if they just integrated it with Picasa Web Albums. When Google adds something to this file, it almost [...]

Natalie Schwartz from the Orkut product team announced on the Official Google Blog that Orkut is having a new feature, Poll, which allows members to create polls in their forums, or communities, in the words of Orkut.
“Google seems to be releasing this in smaller forums first, probably in order to keep the donut errors from reappearing”, Inside Orkut said. No wonder why I wasn’t able to create a poll in my forums this morning

Business Week is reporting plans by many social networking sites to open up their network to content developers, in an effort to grow their user base.
[Facebook], MySpace.com, LinkedIn, Friendster, and Google’s orkut are expected to…open their code to third-party developers this year as well—promising to kick off a spurt of innovation in social networking.

Virgin Mobile is among the many company’s licking their chops, at the thought of tapping into these mega-networks

Google Video’s homepage added arrows for each category so you can browse more videos without leaving the homepage. This is a nice trick to fit more content in a limited space and could be used in Google Video’s right sidebar, so you don’t have to scroll too much to see related videos or the playlist.If you use orkut, you have another way to discover videos: directly from your friends

Posted by Anisha Malhotra, Software EngineerWe’ve all been obsessed lately with watching videos on the web. And when we come across something that strikes our fancy, we can’t wait to share it with our friends. That got us thinking: rather than sending multiple emails and IMs to share the video URL, wouldn’t it be nice to have a feature for sharing videos on orkut?From now on, when you see that crazy video you feel is a must see for all your friends, now you can create your own video playlist on orkut to share with anyone who visits your profile

Posted by Pedram Keyani, Software EngineerWhile orkut users love having an online social network, we understand that a good deal of your social life happens offline. We wanted orkut to enrich the offline social life of its members, so we thought we could either give you computers with really long cords or we could bring orkut to the device you carry around in your pocket: the mobile phone

I told you in November that orkut will add scraps by SMS and photo tagging. Google Blog announces that orkut SMS is live, at least for Brazilian members who use Claro’s services.”With orkut’s new SMS feature, you can scrap your friends, look up their contact information and receive scrap notifications.” Scrapping is a way of messaging another orkut user, by leaving a public comment.Google also owns dodgeball, a mobile social network acquired in 2005, that informs users when their friends are nearby

Now, no one’s going to suggest YouTube has passed MySpace to become the number one trafficked website on the internet (assuming MySpace is even that), but Google’s aquisition can claim one thing: #5 on Alexa’s rankings. It’s quite an honor, to be moving up a questionably accurate, non-respected, easilly spammed service

Google has had a rash of missteps in the last few day, leaving a negative feeling going into the new year.
First off: Google accidently deleted the inboxes of some 60 Gmail users, leaving them with none of their stored email (and, surprisingly, Google’s vaunted server architecture didn’t have any backups either)

The US government has issued its report derived from all the user search histories it subpoena’d earlier this year. Seth Finkelstein says the findings include: “About 1 percent of the websites in the Google and MSN indexes are sexually explicit. About 6 percent of queries retrieve a sexually explicit website