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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