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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Let the games begin

After four long years, it's finally the day the whole world has been waiting for- the beginning of the biggest football event in the world! The 32 national teams have already been selected and are all primed for a fierce competition. No matter who wins in the end, it's guaranteed to be an incredible spectacle to watch.

So join in the fun, slap on your country's jersey and organize a football party to cheer on your team during their key games. If you really want to make sure that all of your friends know who you're rooting for, try using orkut's promote feature to get your message out there. If you get really creative, you can also add photos and videos.

Since there's no way the orkut team could ever agree on a single team to support, we put together a doodle that we hope everyone can enjoy:

We've decorated our sign-in page, but don't forget that you can decorate your home page as well. Use new themes and post new photos to make it clear who you'll be cheering for this football season.

May the best team win (and may the rest of us enjoying watching)!

Posted by Ariel, on behalf of the entire orkut team

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New on orkut: Conversations and Private scraps!

Since we launched orkut in 2004, scraps have been one of our top features. In some countries, the word "scrap" has even became part of the Internet language. Because they're so important, we've been working to evolve them into something even more fun and interesting. Now your scraps can turn into conversations with your friends and you can send private scraps for a completely private conversation.

Scraps become conversations
From now on, all scraps you send to your friends will also show up in your profile, making it easy to start new conversations. You can join a conversation already going on by simply adding a comment to it, and the entire conversation will start showing up on your profile too, so you won't miss a thing.

If you start a new conversation by sending a public scrap to a friend, it will show up both on your profile page and on your friend's, so both of you won't miss any replies. This also lets your friends leave comments and join the conversation as well.

Once a third person joins your conversation by posting a comment, the entire conversation will also show up on his profile, so others can get the conversation going too. The same will happen if you comment on a friend's video or public photo, for example. This way even more people can join in and comment!

Of course, you can also click the "scraps to me" link to see only scraps sent to you.

Private scraps
We take privacy very seriously on orkut, and we want to make it really easy for everyone. Today we're launching private scraps, so you don't have to use testimonials for personal messages anymore. To keep something secret, just send a private scrap to your friends, and just those people selected will see it. Yep, just them! Recipients can also reply, creating a completely private conversation.

Privacy matters
Every piece of content on orkut (a scrap, photo, video, etc) will be labeled with a privacy level, so you know who else is seeing it or not. Before sending a scrap or publishing an album you can select the privacy level you want for that specific content.

You can also edit or add more privacy to your overall experience visiting the new privacy settings window, designed to make your life much easier. You can open it at anytime by clicking the “settings” link on the top of any page. It will be faster than ever to select privacy levels the way you really want!

We hope you and your friends really enjoy these new features. And don't forget to let us know what you think.

Posted by Ariel, orkut operations team


UPDATE: Back to the drawing board. we hear you!

Our team works hard to bring new features to you. Make orkut easier and more private has been our biggest priorities. For example, we recently revamped and simplified our privacy settings page, in order to make it very easy and straightforward to control what and with whom you want to share your information, photos or scraps. We know that maintaining a safe and simple communication with friends is important, so, after nearly a year of launching the new orkut interface, we introduced the two innovations announced above, to turn scraps into something even more fun and interesting for you.

Despite our care to bring a good experience for users, the changes were not fully welcomed. Orkut scraps were already open and visible to all, it was just a matter of tracking your friends' profiles forth and back to follow a conversation. In fact what was missing was a feature to make the conversation private, and that was what we did. But we understand your concerns, so we withdrew these two new features and will go back to the drawing board. We will bring new privacy features as soon as we take in considerations some of the contributions you shared with us.

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Auto-share your YouTube activities on orkut

Did you know that more than 10 days' worth of YouTube videos are watched on orkut every single day? Because so many orkut users also love YouTube, we're excited to launch a new auto-share option that lets you effortlessly share what you're watching on YouTube with your friends on orkut.

Auto-share is an easy way to tell your friends in real-time about the videos you're liking, saving as favorites or commenting on; the channels you're subscribing to; or even new videos you're uploading to your own channel. More than 4 million users are already auto-sharing to at least one network, and you can choose which social networks you want to connect.

To start auto-sharing with orkut today, simply visit the YouTube Activity Sharing tab, under the YouTube account settings page, and click to connect with orkut.

Have fun, and don't forget to tell us about other integrations you'd like to see between orkut and your favorite sites.

Posted by Tobias Magnusson, software engineer, and Eduardo Thuler, product manager

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