I am usually hypo active in all kinds of social networking sites nevertheless how good and helpful they are. But I loved Orkut since its launch and being an active user till now.  Orkut has many features to impress me like scrapping and limited customization etc but now it is used as a target to spread mass spam to users. The day since Orkut introduced html support in scraps and Orkut apps, spammers find their goals easy to achieve.

Talking about Orkut apps, a newly introduced app called SMS Me came into my mind. This app is simply wow; it allows me to send unlimited scraps to any mobile number in India. What’s more could one want? Ok, I agree you! There are many such sites which give the same service but feeling the usability and complexity, I feel SMS Me just like using my own mobile. Upon adding this app, it has an interface in which you can recognize other SMS Me users with your friends’ database and display their profile with link to SMS them.

SMS Me has 5 tabs that include the home, friends, anyone, Inbox and Invite friends.  Let’s have an overview about the features. If your friend is not using SMS Me, it prompts him via scrap to install that application.  SMS Anyone allows sending free sms to any mobile number in your country. I wanted to highlight the point unlimited stating that other services have some restrictions while this app can simply be used to bug someone easily.

SMS Anyone section has two fields for Mobile number and the message to be sent.  Like an ordinary SMS, there’s a limitation of 118 characters per message.  Once u send a message from this app, your friend will receive a SMS from MyCantos masking their destination number with a signature for each message like “Sent by yourmobnumber from www.mycantos.com.

Until now I have been talking about the advantage of this social app from the developer’s perceptive view now let me point out how this could influence Orkut and what disadvantages it has.

• Encourage spammers to join Orkut
• Now M-commerce can be spammed easily like never before.
• No need of entering captca test for each SMS you send which gives privilege for a java script to send mass SMS easily.
• No option to block specific users, so until you both get compromised you are never relieved.

Final verdict: I love this app and hate it as well…lol.

When you compare sites like HI5, Bebo, LinkedIn, Friendster with Orkut the main bit Orkut lacking was a Custom URL for your profile page.

                                  A Custom URL is a small and easy to remember web URL by which one can access a profile page in a site. Basically one cannot remember the long URL provided by Orkut for your profile, so instead its easy to create a custom url which re-directs to the URL provided by Orkut.

Creating a Custom Url in Google Pages (Free):

• Login to Google Page Creator with Your Google accounts username and password
• Either create a new site or choose the Create Another site from the drop down box available at the top right corner of the page
• The next step is about choosing an address which is going to be the URL of your Orkut profile, so enter the profile name you want for your url basically it should be like this http://yourdesiredname.googlepages.com which will re-direct you to the Orkut profile.
• Say for example you want to use “XXXX” as your profile url then you should enter xxxx in the box provided for choosing an address and click Check Availability to see if the entered name is available or not.
• Select any layout and a starting look because because it has nothing to do with your url.
• Making sure you have entered the desired URL and check if its available or not, then click the Create Site Button.
• Now you have successfully created a site, click the [no title] link in the page name column to make it open.
• There you go, you are ready to edit the page where Google pages allows you to add title and other bla bla things. But you don’t have to touch them just click the [edit html] link at bottom right corner of the page.
• Type the following javascript code in any part of the blank page.

<script>
window.location = “your link here”;
</script>

• Replace your link here with your orkut profile url which will basically look like this http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=8454709067165079466
• You can find your profile url by login into Orkut and clicking the Profile link in your homepage, then copy the profile link which appears in the address bar.
• After making changes in the javascript code click the Save Changes button
• Now click Publish button to publish your webpage. Cool you are ready to launch your custom url.
• Just navigate to your address bar and type http://xxx.googlepages.com (example) and click ok ……..zooooooooooooo you will be re-directed to your orkut profile page.

Advantages of using this technique:

• You can easily share your profile URL with your friends, family or post this URL in your weblog or website.
• Now they no longer need to remember those long URL to add you as friend.

Also you can create a custom url in your domain name (if you own a domain address) by using the .htaccess technique. You can also use re-direction service sites like SnipUrl, Co.nr, shorturls.co.uk and other sites but it depends on own risk whereas by using this technique you have a google domain url.

Please comment if you have any queries and help related to this technique. Your suggestions are most expected.

Thanks Haochi for the JavaScript code.

It was since one week that Orkut has changed its interface and i discovered a new bug. Although the interface is optimized, which covers the room space perfectly but still Orkut have some bugs in it. Over the last few days my inbox in orkut is following with messages. Generally i get more than 20 mails in orkut a day but now i was unable to delete all the messages.

orkuterror Hosted on Zooomr

The delete selected message(s) function is not working properly, currently one has to select each mail individually and the batch process seems to have some bug and functions void, so mails are just overflowing… Even the From check box doesnt work at all. Hope Orkut will soon fix it or i have no other option but to close orkut account.

[update sep 22 ‘06] Atlast Orkut updated the message box and finally i could delete all my messages in inbox…

Now you can add an image while you scrap one of your buddy and let him suprise… Adding an image is Scrap is simple and its just a code that places an image in scrap.

Just type the followind code in the SCARP

[link=http://renatorodrigues.com/img?i=yourimageurl]yourimageurl[/link]

Example:

[link=http://renatorodrigues.com/img?i=http://a.com/img.jpg]http://a.com/img.jpg[/link]

Please don’t change the url renatorodrigues.com, i got this idea from the great work of Raver who designed Orkut toolbar.

[update] This Trick Works no more after the change in Orkut’s Interface that happened 2 weeks before.

[update 2 on  12/08/07] Orkut now allows graphics, Videos and html in scrap. To know more about it read here !