Comment on anything you want!

Have you ever wanted to comment when your orkut homepage shows that a friend you haven’t seen in a while just got married? Or maybe when someone you know just got to a new phase in a game you really like as well?

So have we! And we’re now happy to tell you that now you can comment on virtually any update coming from your friends on orkut, such as when a friend joins a new community or changes his relationship status, for example:

We hope that this makes it easier for you to keep in touch with the people you care about. Now go ahead and start commenting!

Posted by Eduardo Thuler, orkut product manager

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New in orkut: Edit your photos with Picnik!

Orkut has an exciting new feature to share with you all: Now you can edit all the photos in your orkut albums with Picnik, the online photo editor. Picnik makes your photos fabulous! It's an award-winning photo editing application that lives online, in your browser, with nothing to download. It's fast, easy and fun.

And now it's right in orkut! Just open any photo in your orkut photo albums and click on the "Edit with Picnik" button above it:

Picnik will load right inside of orkut. You can do basic fixes with easy but powerful editing tools, tweak to your heart's content, then get creative with oodles of effects, fonts, shapes, frames and more:

When you're done turning your photo into your perfect picture, just click the "Save to my album" button in the top right-hand corner to add your new photo right back into the photo album it started in. It's never been easier!

The best part is, this is all happening right in time for the Holidays! Picnik has a whole suite of Holiday tools for cheerful costumes, wintery effects, and all the decorations your photos could ever need to ring in this merriest time of year. So even if you live in the southern hemisphere and you're on your summer vacation enjoying the beach, you can turn your photos into the perfect Winter Wonderland.

Everyone here on both orkut and Picnik teams wishes you all Happy Holidays and Happy Picniking!

Posted by Virginia Roman, Picnik writer and orkut site editor

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Keep your friends organized on the go!

Isn't it great when you don’t have to do work twice? The new feature Groups of Friends in orkut is one way of saving you a little extra effort. Once you group your friends into appropriate groups, such as "family", "college" or "best friends", you can later interact with all these people at once, in a single click. If you haven’t created your groups yet, that’s not a problem! Now it’ll be even easier for you to save new groups when you post a scrap to multiple people.

This is how it happens: when you manually select a bunch of friends to send a single scrap to, a "save as group" button will show up right there:

Save it, giving it any name you want, and that's all: the new group will now be available to you at anytime in the top of your homepage, in case you want to send more messages to these friends later on.

Also, if you choose a group but add or remove some recipients before sending out the group scrap, the "save" button will also be there, in case you want to make these changes to the existing group you’ve chosen or if you want to save these recipients of your scrap as a new group.

Have fun with your groups, and let us know if you have other suggestions.

Posted by Kristian Magnani, software engineer

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Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Yep, it’s that time of the year again when everyone takes a break to celebrate the traditional holidays with their family and friends. At Google it’s no different. Despite our constant work to launch new improvements for you every month, we like to celebrate the holidays with all orkut users :)

This is also a great time to look back to 2010 and plan ahead for 2011. It was an incredible year for us with over 30 launches, such as Groups of Friends, private scraps, badges, themes and many more. And speaking of themes, don’t forget to visit our themes gallery and make your orkut profile ready for the new year!

Looking forward to 2011, there are a lot of new things on their way. You may have noticed one of them: if you receive an orkut badge code during the holidays or at any time next year, just type it in the Badges Management window to redeem your exclusive, limited edition badge:

Also try to type “HOH0HO” in the badges management window :)

To see the Badges Management window, click the “add badges” link, right next to your photo in your orkut profile. Every time you get a code, usually with 16 characters, just type it in the badges window above for the new badge to automatically show up in your collection.

So enjoy the holidays, keep an open eye for exclusive badges codes, and get ready for 2011: lots of good stuff is on the way!

Posted by Frederico Quintão, Santa Claus wannabe in the orkut team

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Share your community’s knowledge with the world

As an orkut user, I always considered orkut communities the best place to find the latest information about my favorite games or my football team. Members of these communities share amazing tips, they know exactly who the best players are, and make great points about who should be hired as a coach or player for each team. Even when I’m not looking for sports info, I know that orkut has tons of amazing information hidden in its communities. My friend planned her entire wedding mostly by the great tips and suggestions shared there, and another friend backpacked across Europe based on tips he found in several communities.

At Google we believe that information should be universally accessible and useful. With that in mind, we’re making the information created and shared by users in their communities accessible to the world! Any Internet user will be able to find communities content using search engines like Google.

Starting shortly, people will be able to find your community much easier. If your community isn’t private, anyone can discover the amazing discussions happening inside your community in the search results for related topics that they’re interested in too. That way as well, more members can join if they think the content they find there is useful for them.

If you’re a community owner and would like to restrict access to your community content, don’t worry! If your community is private (content visible by members only), then only the community description page will be available on the web. If your community is public, the description page and its topics will be available, allowing you to reach so many more people because users not on orkut yet will also have the opportunity to learn and discover great new things from your community and its members.

Community owners can disable or re-enable the privacy setting at any time on the settings page. And if you’re one of the members of those communities, there’s no need to worry about your own privacy because orkut makes sure that no name or photo will be displayed for non-orkut users.

So what are you waiting for? Make a cool and informative description for your community and let the whole world enjoy it!

Posted by Bruno Fonseca, software engineer

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Badges on orkut! Can you collect them all?

You might have noticed something new in orkut. Some of your friends may have little icons on their profile pages, and you may start seeing some updates from friends as well. These are our new orkut badges!

Badges are another way for you to express yourself on orkut, with different sets of badges for users that engage with orkut in different ways. For example, if you've been on orkut for a long time, you might get an Early User badge! Or, if you created a popular promotion, you might get a Promoter badge. Once you win a badge, it's up to you if you want to display it on your profile or not.

There will be lots of badges available for you to collect, based on your interactions with orkut. Here's an initial list of badges that we plan to make available over the coming weeks. Can you collect them all?

Also, keep an eye out for more, because who knows what other badges might show up around here? Imagination is the limit! :)

Posted by Igor Cananea and Ranveer Kunal, software engineers

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What are you thankful for?

Today is Thanksgiving, a holiday dedicated to showing your appreciation for all of the positive things in your life. If you'd like to read more about the holiday, check out last year's post.

On the orkut team, we're thankful for a lot of things. We're thankful for our families: our loving parents, siblings, spouses and children, who sometimes put up with our long hours at work. We're also thankful to be able to work on a product we care deeply about and thankful that it brings happiness to so many people around the world.

Of course, we're also incredibly thankful for all of you. We've said it before, and we'll say it again: you guys are what powers orkut to be what it is today, and your feedback is our motivation to continue innovating. So thanks everyone– we really appreciate you!

Now it's your turn. What are you thankful for? Send a group scrap to your friends or family and let them know. Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by Barbara Veloso, user experience team

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Orkut hears a bump in the night

Boo! We’ve been getting some strange reports recently. Bat sightings, ghosts appearing out of thin air, wolves howling in the night. Oh, and don’t even get us started on the number of zombies that have been seen lurching around. Even the orkut logo seems to have gone through a transformation:

Without a doubt, there’s something spooky in the air on orkut. Before you get scared, remember that today is Halloween, one of the funniest holidays in the U.S. calendar and many other countries around the world. Millions of people, both children and adults, dress up in their best costumes (the scarier the better), decorate their houses and head outside for some trick-or-treating or a plain old-fashioned costume party.

To join the fun, you don’t even need to come up with a costume. Just decorate your orkut profile with a theme or background color. Black and orange are the official Halloween colors in case you’re looking for some inspiration.

And here’s another tip: You can also create a new cool scary profile picture using Picnik, Google’s free online photo editor.

Hope you all have a hair-raising holiday!

Posted by Natália Gerassi, orkut operations team

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Tips for a more secure orkut experience

We all like to have fun online, but it’s important to be wary of security threats like fake websites or emails, and misleading messages and links. Losing your account is no fun, so to help keep you from falling into a virtual trap, here are some important safety tips and signals to keep in mind while browsing the web:

Ignore phishing and hoaxes
Hoaxes are false and usually alarming messages that attempt to persuade you to forward them to others. If you do so, you end up spreading a lie. Phishing is an attempt to steal personal information through fake emails or websites. To know when you should immediately delete or ignore these messages, here are some common signs of phishing and hoaxes:

• Messages about security or sensitive issues which ask you to forward to friends
• Sites that try to look like orkut but are not at our official address (www.orkut.com/ or www.google.com/)
• External sites that request your orkut or Google account password for any reason
• Messages about amazing (or terrible) changes to orkut or your account if you do (or don’t do) something

Remember that all orkut announcements are posted on the official blog, so if it’s not here, it’s likely not true. If you notice any strange activity on your account, change your password and follow the steps in this security checklist.

Get a safe lock
You wouldn’t protect your house with a toy lock, right? It shouldn't be any different on the Internet! Always use a strong and unique password for all your online accounts, including orkut and your email service. Check out some tips on how to create a strong password, and remember to change it periodically, especially for important accounts whenever you suspect one of them may have been at risk.

Say no to codes and scripts
Don’t ever click or enter any code/script in your browser’s address bar when signed into orkut or other services. That is one of the most popular methods used to steal information from your account. Usually they promise some miraculous outcome if you run their code or click a link to automatically run a script, but be cautious — most of the time the code will actually do something else that could be harmful.

Keep your browser and anti-virus updated to browse safely
Navigating the Internet on an outdated browser is like driving in a broken old car — not only are you unable to speed up, but it’s also more likely that something bad may happen. If you always keep your browser updated, websites will load much faster, and you will be safer because the more recent versions contain the latest security updates. Don’t forget that updating your browser is always free and takes only a few minutes. Also, if you use Google Chrome, your browser is already updated for you — no more action required on your part.

Another important way to keep your computer safe is by always having an updated anti-virus program. The good news is that you can get quality anti-virus software for free. If any virus is found on your computer, get rid of it first, and then remember to change all your passwords, as they could have already been stolen.

Close the door when leaving
Finally, remember to always click the sign-out link on the top of the page when you’re done using orkut, especially if you’re on a shared computer or using a friend’s computer. If you simply quit the browser but don’t sign out, anyone can reopen orkut on that browser later and access your profile.


Keep these instructions in mind to browse the web more safely! To find out more security tips, don’t forget to check our other posts for Cyber Security Awareness Month.

Posted by Natalia Gerassi and Ariel, orkut operations team

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Finer control for Groups of Friends

Since we launched Groups of Friends, you’ve likely been using the groups management page to quickly rename, remove and create your groups. So, we’d like to let you know about two improvements we just added to that page.


Remove suggested groups
See a suggested group that you don’t really like? Not a problem, now you can easily remove it so it doesn’t show up again!


Move friends to different groups
Now you can select several friends from one group and add them to another. Just select multiple friends by pressing the key to drag and drop them into their new group:

To open the groups management page at anytime, just click the "+" button on the top of your homepage and select "manage groups".

Hope you enjoy it, and let us know if you'd like to see more improvements in there.

Posted by Rodrigo Paiva, orkut operations team

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There's a world of posts out there!

Orkut is available in more than 40 languages and brings together people from everywhere in the world. If you make friends abroad, sometimes they may post updates or comments in a language you don't understand. If you've ever wanted to find out what they're saying and then jump into the conversation, you should check out a new Google Chrome Extension: Social Translate.

The Social Translate extension detects the language of your friends' posts and then automatically translates it into a language of your choice. The extension allows you to select a primary language and a list of secondary languages you can read without translation (for any of you who speak more than one language).

You can also select two different modes of translation, "reliable" or "aggressive". "Reliable" is set by default and will only translate feeds for which it's confident of the translation. "Aggressive" might be a bit less accurate but will attempt to translate more posts.

Besides orkut, Social Translate also works with other social sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. It will help you stay engaged with your friends around the world who speak different languages, and it will also give you an opportunity to interact with people you might never have been able to, due to language barriers.

Give it a try!

Posted by Andrew Swerdlow and Nav Jagpal, software engineers

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Kicking off Oktoberfest on orkut

Today is the kick-off ceremony of Oktoberfest, a traditional German celebration of food, drink, music, dance, and culture that has become so popular that it has spread all around the world.

The world’s largest Oktoberfest celebration takes place in Munich, Germany during the last few weeks of September and beginning of October, and regularly commands millions of visitors.

Even if you’re not able to make it to Munich this year or participate in any of the local celebrations going on near you, we wanted to offer you this special doodle to help you get into the spirit:

Hope you enjoy it!

Posted by Ariel, orkut operations team

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Video chat in high-resolution

If you use video chat in orkut, you might be interested in a new feature we just rolled out: now you can video chat with your friends in high-resolution! It’s like talking face-to-face with them, directly from your orkut pages.

To enable it, click "Options" at the bottom of your orkut chat list, then "Chat Settings". In the settings window that will open, check the "Enable high-resolution video" option, and you’re done! Right away, if you and the friend you're chatting to have both enabled this option, you will be video chat chatting in a much higher resolution.

And if you’ve never used video chat in orkut before, it’s really easy to get started. Once you have a webcam and a microphone, you just need to download a small plugin, available for free at www.google.com/chat/video

Oh, and for Linux users, we’re pleased to announce that video chat now supports Linux too. But don’t panic if you don’t see the high-resolution video checkbox - we’ve designed our Linux version from the ground up for this new feature, so it’s always on for you.

We hope you have fun chatting in high-resolution, and free to share your comments or report any issues you encounter in the video chat forum. Enjoy!

Posted by Tristan Schmelcher, Software Engineer

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A new page for your promotions

One year after launching orkut promote, we're happy to bring you a new page for your promotions. Now it's easier to create and to review all your promotions, ‘coz they're all in a single page. Check how many people re-promoted them, how many clicks, views and trashes each of them received, and also preview your promotions on the fly:

Creating a new promotion is very easy. On your orkut homepage, click the "applications" drop-down menu, at the top of the page, and select "promote". Then just choose the kind of promotion you want (text, image or video) and directly type an accompanying message. Keep the text field empty to create an image or video-only promotion.

So what are you waiting for? Visit the new orkut promote page and spread your message to the world!

Posted by Koji Pereira, user experience team

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What's your fortune today?

One thing that many new orkut users missed is back at last: your daily fortune! Now, when you sign into orkut for the first time each day you'll get a new fortune generated for you! Pretty sweet, huh?

Your fortunes are only visible to you, and if you don't like one of them, you can either delete it or just ignore it until other updates take over the page.

If, for any reason, you don't want to see your daily fortunes anymore, it's easy to stop them by clicking on the "options" dropdown menu next to them and select "never show updates from this app". Later on, if you have second thoughts about this and want your fortunes back, just open your orkut settings window and unhide the Fortune of the Day app at the "updates" tab.

Enjoy yours every day, and may you always be lucky!

Posted by Guilherme Trielli Ferreira, software engineer

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New themes for a new orkut

Like you, the Google Chrome team was pretty excited last week to see all the new features debut on orkut. The improved page rendering and image loading on orkut really take advantage of the speed and functionality of modern web browsers like Chrome.

It got us thinking: how can we show how excited we are about these new features on orkut? And here's our answer! We're pleased to announce new themes for a new orkut:

We asked artists, hailing from all over the world, to design 6 themes inspired by today's digital lifestyle. Some designed beautiful patterns out of the gadgets that keep us connected. Others celebrated the communities we form and the emotions we feel when staying in touch with our friends and family online.

Just visit the orkut themes page and pick a new theme! Once you choose your favorite, you can get the same theme for Google Chrome, a fast web browser, and then browse the web with speed and style!

Download Google Chrome now and get the official orkut extension built right in. From anywhere on the web, you'll receive orkut updates and scrap notifications, and you'll be able to search on orkut or share the webpage you're viewing with your friends. There's no better way to stay connected!

Dress up your profile and your browser in a spiffy new theme and join us in celebrating the modern web.

Posted by Sarah Nahm, Google Chrome team

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A new sign-in page for orkut

We've all been having so much fun releasing exciting new ways to connect with your friends and share the things you're interested in, we've even made a new sign-in page to reflect all the wonderful newness of it all before you've even logged in:

Besides being brighter and more welcoming, it will have links introducing the latest news, so it'll be easier than ever to keep up with everything that's new on orkut.

We hope you enjoy it!

Posted by Ariel, orkut operations team, and Virginia Roman, Google editorial team

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You’re not always the same person. Why should it be any different on the web?

Imagine Sarah, a 21 year old girl who just created an orkut profile. To get started, she adds her college friends to her friend list. They share photos, join communities, exchange scraps, discuss everything that's hot on campus. A few days later Sarah finds out that some friends from high school are also on orkut and adds them: what's better than keeping in touch with old friends?

Then Sarah gets her first job and adds her office colleagues to orkut: you can't decline a friend request from your boss, can you? Sarah's social network keeps growing. Even her parents, aunts, uncles and cousins are on orkut, and she adds them to her friend list.

The college gang, old friends from high school, office colleagues, family, everyone is in Sarah's friend list now. Soon enough she will not be able to share anything with anyone anymore - after all, jokes and photos from the office party should be shared only with her work colleagues. Scraps and photos of her baby nephew at the family reunion should only be seen by members of her family. The plans for Saturday night and the photos of the parties she went to should be seen only by her party friends - Sarah does not want her boss or her young cousin to see those.

Just like Sarah, we all maintain different groups of friends, and the Internet was not able to reflect that. Until now, social networks treated people from different groups like they were all the same: they were all "friends".

So we asked ourselves: does it need to work this way on the Internet? Can we reproduce our groups of friends from real life on the Internet? The answer is "yes!" Starting today, we will change the core function of orkut so we can share and interact with different groups of friends on the Internet just like we do in real life:

Like that? Then visit this page to see an overview of this big orkut launch or see below for all the new features:


Scraps to multiple people
Now you can send scraps to your friends straight from your homepage in orkut. And more: you can send the same scrap to many people at the same time or even to all your friends. That's right: no more copy and paste!

Privacy in groups
You can choose the privacy level you want for your messages. For instance, you can send a private scrap to a group of four people and only those four people can see it and reply to it. If they reply, you guys will have a private, group conversation visible only to you and those four friends. If you prefer going public, just send a scrap visible to all your friends or even send a public scrap so everyone in orkut can see it. It's your choice.

Groups of friends
To make it easier for you to interact with your groups of friends, now you can open them from your homepage. Your groups will always be a click away from you, on the top of the page. When you click a group (for example, "college friends"), you'll see updates, photos, videos and activities only from people who are part of that group. If you want to write them something, the scrap editor will automatically select everyone in the group and the privacy will be set to "Private" so you can share information that is relevant to that group only. And, of course, you can change that privacy setting before sending the message.

We know that sometimes we invite someone from work to a family party or we bring a gym friend to the office happy hour. That means: sometimes our groups of friends mix together. Thinking of this, you can easily add or remove as many people as you want from the recipients of a scrap.

Oh, and yes, remember that the groups are yours only. Nobody else will know the names of your groups of friends. When you send something to the entire group, people will know who else can see the message, but they will not know the name you chose for the group within your orkut. Also, you can change and edit your groups whenever you want, the way you want it!

Groups formed automagically!
You can create your groups of friends manually. However, as you know, here at Google we love simplifying tough problems to make people's lives better. Thinking of this we came up with the "automagic groups": Based on your interactions, orkut automatically suggests some groups of friends for you, and these suggested groups will be ready for you to use. Also, you can add your personal touch to your groups at anytime and make them any way you want.

Because new friendships usually come along with time, orkut will also suggest new members for your groups over the time, so they are always up-to-date with minimum work from you.


More news and what's to come

Birthdays: we're also improving the way birthdays appear in your page, and you can send your friends birthday wishes without leaving your homepage. You'll also be able to interact with other people who are also sending them happy birthdays and celebrate your friend's birthday with them. And remember: if the idea is to organize a surprise party, don't forget to send a private scrap to your friends ;-)

Friend Suggestions: we will always be improving the friend suggestions, and these suggestions will be part of your updates, moving down in your page along the day, just like any other update. When we've a brand new, really good suggestion, we will bring it to the top again.

Fortune of The Day and Recent Visitors will also appear every day as activities, scrolling down as new updates from your friends come in.

Games and Applications: millions of people are playing with and using applications in orkut every day. In the period of two months, more than 6 million people created cafes in CafeMania and 36 million people manage their Farms, all on orkut's game applications. To make accessing games and applications easier, now you can find them in your homepage, right below your communities. Not to mention, applications also have new pages now.

Communities: Orkut communities are a great way for people to expand their groups of friends and know other people who share the same interests, support the same team or want to know more about a place or event. A few days ago we started testing a new platform to support orkut communities, and soon we will release it to everyone.


If these changes are not visible for you yet, don't worry, over the next few days everyone will enjoy these new features.

Is there more to come? Absolutely! So buckle up and have fun :-)

Posted by Victor Ribeiro, orkut product management director

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Celebrate your friends on Raksha Bandhan

One of the most powerful things about orkut is the way it's able to strengthen the bonds between friends. With scraps, photos, chat, video chat, and much more, we do our best to make it simple and easy to keep in touch with the people you care about.

That's why when we learned about Raksha Bandhan, a festival taking place today, celebrating the love, affection and protection of siblings and close friends, we thought it would be a fun thing to highlight to the orkut community.

Popular in parts of India and other countries around the world, tradition has it that women tie "rakhis," or charm bracelets, on the wrists of the men they think of as brothers (whether they're related or not). We designed a special doodle to celebrate:

Regardless of whether you plan on celebrating Raksha Bandhan, it's always nice to have a reminder of how important friends and family are in all of our lives. Take a moment to send a scrap to someone you care about– they'll appreciate it!

Posted by Sagari Venkata, orkut operations team

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Happy Mother’s Day

It's Mother's Day in India today, and the orkut team wants to celebrate it with all moms and the people who love them. Check out the special doodle we’ve created for this occasion:

If you're looking for a way to show your mom how much you care, there's plenty to do on orkut. Try joining "I Love my Mom" community for starters. Don't forget that you can also send a special Mothers' Day scrap, leave her a video, or upload photos with your best adventures and memories.

Of course, the best present you could give is just spending some quality time with her, but if it's not possible, remember that with orkut your mom is only a voice or video chat away.

Congratulations to all mothers out there – we hope you and your families enjoy this special day!

Posted by Sagari Venkata, orkut operations team

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Celebrating the Tanabata Star Festival

The Tanabata Star Festival is an incredibly popular festival in Japan and this year it’s made its way to orkut as well. Although many celebrations now take place in July and early August, traditionally the festival has been celebrated on the 7th day of the 7th month of the lunar calendar year (which is actually today, August 16th).

During the festival, you can see colorful fabrics in the streets and large bamboo poles decorated with paper ornaments symbolizing the stars. We made our own ornament just for orkut and wanted to share it with you:

Folkloric performances, like Taiko drumming, dancing and concerts are all a part of what makes the festival so special. We hope you enjoy (or have already enjoyed), the festivities this year!

Posted by Ariel, orkut operations team

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A new search page on orkut

Lately we've been working to make orkut more fun, safe, faster and easier to use. After several releases and updates, here's another one: a new look to the search page on orkut! Check out what's new:


Faster
The new orkut search page was built using the Google Web Toolkit, making it more interactive and faster than ever. Just try it yourself and feel the change!

Cleaner and easier to read
When showing you the search results, our new page design makes it easy for you to pinpoint exactly what you're looking for.

Simpler filters
We've moved the filters to the left side of the page, and made them simpler to use to refine your search query and find exactly what you're looking for.

One-click safe browsing setting
Part of improving orkut is also making it more safe every day, so now you have the option to switch the safety filter on or off directly on the search page, also on the left side. The safety filter gives you a more fun and safe experience, because it only shows profiles and communities that have been screened for potentially inappropriate content.


While we're very happy about these latest improvements, we're already working on additional refinements, so don't forget to let us know what do you think and help us improve orkut even more.

Posted by Fernando Fernandes, software engineer

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New pages for all the apps on orkut

Since we launched the new orkut, we've been working hard to constantly launch new features and migrate the remaining pages to the new design. Today, we're excited to announce new pages for all the apps on orkut! Take a look at what's new:


A new page for every app
Your apps now have a much nicer and faster page, just like the other pages on the new orkut. This new app page displays all the options at the top where you can check its info or adjust its settings without leaving the page.

New apps directory
The apps directory page has never been so clean and easy to navigate. We rearranged the apps in two columns, making them more visible, and we also created a section called "my applications", where you can easily open or remove your apps. And to add new apps, now you can search for them within the apps categories.

When you click to add an app, a new window will show you the app description and screenshot, as well as which of your orkut friends have also added the same app and anything else you'd like to know. With this new window you can quickly add apps without leaving the apps directory:

A better way to show your apps in your profile
We've also improved the way that apps are displayed on your profile page. We heard from you that it was confusing to display your apps in different tabs at your profile page, so we made things simpler. Now you can chose to show the "about me" description or one of your apps at your profile page.

Your remaining apps will be listed in a new box called "my apps". This new box was added just below the one that displays your communities, and it will show your friends all the cool apps that you have added.


We hope you like these changes, and don't forget to share your feedback with us. And if you're interested in creating your own application for orkut, just visit this page with all the technical information you need.

Posted by Adler Silva, software engineer

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Making orkut cleaner and better looking

You probably noticed a visual change on orkut today. It's the new top bar! We've made some visual improvements not only to make your pages look prettier, but also more cleaner and similar to other Google products:

You'll notice a new link called "scraps", a quick way to access your scrapbook from any page. We also moved the "themes" menu there, so your most important links are now all in one place.

But you'll actually see the major improvements more clearly when you apply a theme to your profile. Any theme now looks nicer on your page, changing the background and colors on the top of the page as well:

We hope that you enjoy this new design, and don't forget to share your feedback with us, we will be glad to improve orkut even more with your help.

Posted by Koji Pereira, Google designer, and Hermes Freitas, software engineer

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Happy Friendship Day

Friendship is the essence of orkut, and what better way to celebrate it than with a doodle for International Friendship Day?

Take a look at your friends list on orkut. Is there anyone you haven't talked to in a while? Send them a quick scrap and let them know you're thinking about them. Or, even better, set up a video chat so that you can hang out with them face-to-face.

Recently, we've launched a bunch of different features that we hope have made it easier for you to make new friends and keep in touch with the people you already know and care about. We're always open to new ideas of ways orkut could be even 'friendlier' (excuse the pun), so if you've got suggestions, be sure to let us know.

Hope you enjoy the day and thanks for being such a good friend to orkut!

Posted by Rodrigo Paiva, orkut operations team

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Private scraps on orkut!

A few weeks ago we launched some changes to scraps on orkut, but we heard your comments and went back to the drawing board. We've finished our homework, and here you can see what we created:


Want to keep something in secret?
Now you can choose to send a private scrap to a friend. On the new orkut, before posting a scrap, just change its visibility to "private", and that scrap will remain visible only to you and the person receiving the scrap, so it stays completely secret.

If you don’t change the default options, your scraps will have exactly the same behavior as before, so there’s nothing to worry about, things only change if that's what you want.


Privacy labels
We take privacy very seriously, and that's why we're making it absolutely clear who else can see the content you’re looking at on orkut. Every scrap (as well as photos, videos, etc) will now have a privacy label, so you can easily tell who else can see it. These are exactly the same as the privacy levels that we already had on photos: private, friends and public.


Still curious? Then visit this page about Private Scraps to learn more! We hope you really enjoy this feature, and don’t forget to share your feedback with us. We have many other cool launches coming out soon, so stay tuned for updates.

Posted by Victor Ribeiro, orkut product management director

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Viljandi Folk Festival

If you happen to find yourself walking through Viljandi, Estonia, don't be surprised if you're overwhelmed by the sound of music pulsing through the air. This just means that you've stumbled onto one of the country's largest music festivals.

Traditionally held at the end of July, Viljandi Folk Festival completely transforms the city: thousands of people, mostly students, fill the streets, checking out parties, concerts, and shows. To celebrate this festival, the orkut team decided to make a special doodle:

If you'd like to learn more about it, join the Viljandi Folk Festival community. You can have your own personal music festival on orkut by adding the "My Music" app to your profile. Don't forget that you can also join the thousands of music communities on orkut and learn more about your favorite artists. Enjoy the celebration!

Posted by Karl Pae, Google AdWords team member and a fellow Estonian

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Share everything you like from the web

We recently introduced the "orkut share" bookmarklet, a cool way for you to share any content on the web that you like. With "orkut share", every time you see an interesting page, photo, video, or virtually any content on the web, all you need to do is click a "share" button and your friends on orkut will see it.

To enjoy this feature, just add the bookmarklet to your browser visiting www.orkut.com/share


Check out this video to see how it works:

Want people to share your webpage or blog on orkut? You can do that too! To add “orkut share” buttons on your pages (like the one below), just visit www.orkut.com/howtoshare

Happy sharing, folks!

Posted by Sagari Venkata, orkut operations team

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Making it easier to see photos in full-screen

Some time ago we announced an improved photo viewing experience on orkut. We heard from you that the ability to look at photos full-screen was the most exciting feature, so we decided to make it even easier to use.

When you see an update on your homepage saying that a friend has uploaded some photos, just click the "view in full-screen" button, and an automated full-screen view of the album will begin.

Then just sit back and enjoy the slideshow. You can hover over the thumbnail strip at the bottom to enlarge a particular image at anytime:

While you're still in full-screen view, try playing around with some of the keyboard controls (like Home, End, left and right arrows, Spacebar, and Escape), to see what happens.

Excited? Don't forget to share your photos too, so you and your friends can enjoy them together.

Posted by Ariel, orkut operations team

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Happy Obon Festival

Wondering why the orkut logo is floating on a series of paper lanterns today? Hint: it's not because we wanted to improve the sign-in page's ambiance.

Today's doodle is inspired by the Obon Festival, a highly traditional event (over 500 years old!) in Japan and around the world honoring one's ancestors. Each year, throngs of people gather to witness and participate in the Bon Odori folk dance and launch paper lanterns on rivers– hoping to light the return path of their ancestor's souls.

It's a pretty incredible festival to experience, but you don't have to be in Japan to participate. Join the Japan community on orkut and find out if there's an Obon Festival celebration taking place near you.

Posted by Koji Pereira, Google designer

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Happy Festival of San Fermin!

If you're in Pamplona, Spain between July 6 and 14, you'll be able to watch one of the world's more interesting events, the Festival of San Fermin.

Commonly referred to as the Running of the Bulls, it attracts thousands of people from all the world. The highlight is the "encierro," a half a mile route through the historical streets of Pamplona where people do all they can to escape from the bulls.

This year, we decided the orkut logo should participate in the festivities:

To learn more about the San Fermin Festival, join the Spain community. If you're actually participating this year, be sure to upload your photos so that your orkut friends can see all of your outtakes!

Posted by Barbara Veloso, Google designer

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What's new on orkut?

Since we launched the new version of orkut, back in 2009, so much has changed around here! Because the new orkut was built on top of cutting edge technologies, we were able to add cool new features and improvements to orkut like never before.

With launches happening every month, we don't want you to miss out on any action! That's why we created a one-stop link for all the monthly updates on what's new on orkut: www.orkut.com/whatsnew

This link was added to the right column of this blog, and will also be added to the orkut footer itself, so you can keep watching that space to see what's been keeping us busy.

You can also follow all the updates on that page by subscribing to it on Google Reader. Stay tuned!

Posted by Sagari Venkata, orkut operations team

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Happy 4th of July!

Roll out the barbecue and grab the fireworks because it's Independence Day in the United States. The 4th of July is one of the most cherished holidays in the US, a time to celebrate the country's history, light fireworks, eat great food and relax with family and friends.

There's no way the Americans on the orkut team would let this date slip by, so we put together this special doodle to join the fun:

If you're also having a barbecue or lighting fireworks today, don't forget to share those photos with your family and friends!

Posted by Virginia Roman, Google editorial team

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Le Tour de France has started

Think riding a bike is easy? Try riding one for 2240 miles with only 2 days of rest. Sound crazy? Well if you’re competing in this year’s Tour de France, that’s exactly what you’ll be doing.

This year, the Tour de France is celebrating its 97th anniversary, and is certain to continue its tradition of bringing together some of the world’s top cyclists for a fierce and grueling competition.

It’s a sight to behold, so the orkut team thought we’d create a doodle to pay tribute to all of the athletes and their fans:

Join the Tour de France community to get to know the others like you who are excited about the race. And don't leave your bike in the garage, include it in your routine and forget about that traffic!

Posted by Carlos Aranha, Googler and bike commuter


UPDATE: Experience the Tour de France like never before! Follow Team HTC - Columbia in real-time as they make their way through the 3,642 kilometers of the Tour de France. The nine riders on Team HTC - Columbia are carrying HTC Legend phones that use My Tracks to capture their location along with their power, heart rate, cadence and speed. Visit www.google.com/mytrackstour and see a Google Map showing the riders' location and their telemetry data.

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Happy Birthday Canada!

It's Canada's birthday today, and there are more presents than we can count. Throughout the country, city's are hosting open-air concerts, fireworks shows, parades, and lively ceremonies to celebrate another year of the existence of a single country (Canada turns 143 this year).

To show some love to all of our Canadian friends out there, and to help everyone join in the fun, we've put together a doodle to mark the occasion:

You can get into the spirit in your own way by joining the Canada community and sending your congratulations on there. You may even wind up with some new friends.

Whether you're Canadian or not, I hope you enjoy the day!

Posted by Ariel, orkut operations team

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Fire, dancing and fun: it's St. John's Day!

It's St. John's Day in Estonia and Brazil, and the party is already underway. Between June 23rd and 24th, practically the whole estonian population gets together for a lively outdoor party on a night when dusk meets dawn.

The most famous tradition of the day is the number of large bonfires that people light to celebrate the values of freedom, independence, and the destruction of all of the negative things that have cropped up of the course of the year. Legend has it that the larger the fire, the greater the prosperity the family who lit it will have. Another tradition is jumping over the fire, which you might not want to try at home.

In Brazil, beside bonfires, it's also very common to light up fire balloons. This is a Portuguese tradition, originally introduced to let everyone know that the party was about to begin.

We wanted to be sure that the coming year was a good one for all orkut members, so we lit a special bonfire on our sign-in page as well:

If you'd like to participate further, why not start by joining the Estonia community and making some Estonian friends? If you happen to celebrate St. John's Day at home, make sure all your orkut friends see your photos from the bonfire!

Posted by Karl Pae, Google AdWords team

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Bring the Festival of Music to your computer

It’s the longest day of the year, and time to prepare your ears. Not quite sure what I’m talking about? Allow me to explain: in countries all over the world, today is the World Music Day.

Created in France in 1982, the World Music Day (or “Fête de la Musique”) was envisioned as a way to encourage the people to pick up their abandoned instruments and start playing music again. The festival has taken place on the summer solstice of each year since then, and has spread to a number of different countries.

Never ones to be the left out of the fun, we created a special doodle to commemorate:

Concerts, shows, musicians jamming in the streets– all of these are core elements of what the Fête de la Musique is all about. While orkut may not be able to fly you to France so that you can join in the fun in person, we can certainly help you create your own personal music day at home:

• Join a music community and talk with other enthusiasts about your favorite genres, artists and songs
• Check out the Music iLike app and show off your favorite songs and artists
• If you play an instrument, join a related community (here are a few popular ones: guitar, piano, violin) to get advice and support from other musicians
• Use orkut promote to share videos that highlight your musical prowess with the orkut community. Just be sure to thank us when you get famous ;-)

Hope you enjoy the celebrations!

Posted by Marco Domingues, orkut operations team

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Happy Fathers' Day!

Today, in many countries all over the world, it's Father's Day. We all know how special fathers are, so it's great to be able to take a day just to celebrate them. There are tons of great ways to show the fathers in your life how much you care about them, from letters and home-cooked meals, to something as simple as a phone call. Orkut's also got a great set of tools for recognizing all that dads do:

• Send your dad a "Happy Fathers' Day" scrap
• Join the Dad I Love You community to show your dad how much you appreciate him
• Create a photo album with all of your favorite memories of dad, and share it with your family

This Father's Day is extra special for the orkut team as one of our own, Eduardo Thuler, just became a dad! We've already had the chance to congratulate him, but we wanted to be sure that we found a way to congratulate all of the rest of the dads, both new and veteran, out there. To do so, we created a special doodle for our homepage:

To all the fathers, congratulations and Happy Fathers' Day!

Posted by Karen Callahan, orkut operations team

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Football fever? Now you'll never miss a game!

We hope you guys have been enjoying watching football this past week as much as we have – just one week in, and there's already been some incredible games! With another week of group play left, all the teams' schedules can be tough to keep track of, especially when you're trying to schedule meetings or meals around important games.

Our friends on the Google Calendar team recently released some cool calendars to help keep track of all the games. All you need is a Google Calendar account (it can be under the same username and password you use to sign-in to orkut), and you're all set! Then just check out each of the 32 team's calendars and add the ones you're following, so you don't miss any games.

Once group play is over, if your team makes the next round, the calendar will automatically update with the new games as they're announced. Once each game ends, the score will also show up in the event details.

And if you want to show all your orkut friends which team you're cheering for, check out the new football themes on orkut. We have a theme for all 32 countries playing this year:

We wish your team the best of luck. Enjoy the rest of the tournament!

Posted by Igor Cananea and Ranveer Kunal, software engineers, and Charlie Kubal, Google Calendar team

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Follow your football team!

For all you football fans out there, you can follow your team on Google search and Google Chrome, and use iGoogle to show your team pride with your national team's theme. You can also see the stadiums in 3D and go right inside with Street View.

Just visit www.google.com.br/intl/en/worldcup to see how cheer for your team with Google!

Posted by Flavia Simon, Google marketing manager

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