O(u)rkut really!

Hey... how come you are not on Orkut?” a friend asked me anxiously a few years ago when the Orkut fever was just seeping in the virtual world and I wasn’t aware of its hysteria yet. “What’s that?” I asked in return. The expression of sheer disbelief on his face after hearing my question forced me to check out what Orkut was all about. Once I did, I got hooked on to it too, just like the others. But my excitement and addiction died down just as fast it had developed. Getting in touch with long-lost friends, seeing a new scrap in your scrapbook everyday from someone or the other, receiving flattering testimonials from friends — all the thrills and frills overtook one aspect: lack of privacy. ‘Accessibility of your info to one and all’ was what made me go off Orkut and I am not the only one.

Fans Corner: East Bengal Community On Orkut

Firstly we caught up with Kallol Das, who is one of the moderators of the community 'East Bengal the Real Power'. Kallol is 29 years old and is a businessman by profession but he spends most of his time by doing something or the other related to his favorite club East Bengal.

Goal.com: What has been the main reason for East Bengal's turnaround this season?

Kallol: There are many reasons but if I have to choose one I would say that the players have adapted well to De Ridder’s tactics, which they were not able to do unfortunately under Subhas Bhowmick. There is a lot of team spirit in the squad which is very important for a successful team.

Google Orkut Vulnerability Patched

Google Orkut Vulnerability Patched


Google has fixed a cross-site scripting vulnerability in Google Orkut a security researcher said could be used to steal cookies and other information.

Nir Goldshlager, who also recently uncovered vulnerabilities affecting Google Calendar and Twitter, told eWEEK the problem was due to an input validation error.

Chennai executive held for obscene orkut profile

BANGALORE: An executive of a Chennai-based firm has been arrested for creating a fake e-mail through which an "obscene profile" in the name of a housewife here was posted on a popular social networking site, police said today.

A resident here had lodged a complaint with the cyber crime police station in October about the fake profile in Orkut where her phone number was given inviting for sexual favours, following which the woman started receiving calls regularly from strangers, police said.

India survey says Facebook affects productivity

Indian firms are losing productivity because office staff spend too long on social networking sites, a survey says.

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Assocham) says workers use Orkut, Facebook, Myspace and Linkedin for "romancing" and other purposes.

Office employees questioned in the survey spent on average an hour a day on sites like Facebook, leading to a loss in productivity of nearly 12.5%.

The findings were based on responses from nearly 4,000 corporate employees.

'Dangerous'

"Close to 12.5% of productivity of human re

source in corporate sector is misappropriated each day since a vast majority of them while away their time accessing social networking sites during the office hours," according to the findings of Assocham's Social Development Foundation survey.

"As a matter of fact, [the] growing use of browsing sites can be dangerous for overall productivity and IT companies have already installed software to restrict its use," Assocham secretary general DS Rawat said.

The survey questioned 4,000 employees between the ages of 21 and 60 in Delhi, Bangalore, Madras (Chennai), Cochin, Indore, Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai (Bombay), Pune, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Lucknow and Kanpur.

The survey found that 77% of workers who had Orkut accounts used them during work hours.

Nearly half of office employees accessed Facebook during work time.

Moreover, four in every 10 workers built their entire Orkut or Facebook profile at work, the survey found.

Some 83% saw nothing wrong in surfing at work during office hours.

According to the survey, 19% of companies allow use of social networking sites only for business purposes, while 16% allow limited personal use.

Only 40% of the employees interviewed said that their companies allowed staff full access to social networking sites.

The survey also says that 84% of respondents in India's major cities show signs of internet addiction - they do not take breaks at appropriate times, they spend more than a "normal" amount of time online, and can get irritable if they are interrupted while surfing.

In September, Portsmouth City Council in southern England banned staff from accessing Facebook on its computers after it was revealed they spent on average 400 hours on the site every month.

The move was expected to stop the "waste of public cash". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8423888.stm

Computer hacker accesses 30 million Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut usernames and passwords

Redwood City, CA - Hackers broke into an online database hosted at RockYou.com and illegally accessed the usernames and passwords for more than 30 million users of Facebook, MySpace, Friendster and Orkut. The hacker may also have accessed usernames and passwords for Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail accounts as well.

RockYou produces widget applications that are widely distributed on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. In order to work properly, these widgets require the user’s username and password. Most social networks have data security requirements for its widget developers, and it may be possible that RockYou was in violation of these requirements.

Orkut Introduces Inline Photo Browsing, Slideshows and Face Detection

Orkut the social networking site popular in Brazil and India has rolled out a new set of features for photo sharing on the site. The new features include Inline photo browsing, photo slideshows and Face detection for tagging friends.

Photo tagging has been pretty popular on Facebook, however, Facebook still does not have options for inline photo browsing and photo slideshows.

Orkut has been spicing up the site by introducing a new design and several more features which have brought it on par with other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. However, Orkut still lacks the popularity of Facebook and more and more users are now migrating to the other available options.

Do you use Orkut? Have you left it recently for Facebook or Twitter? Let us know through your comments.