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Posts Tagged ‘Button Style’

Badges on orkut! Can you collect them all?

Posted by A Googler on November 30th, 2010

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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Posted in Email, Google, Social Networks

Tags: Badges, Blog, Blogspot, Bp, Button Style, Cananea, Different Ways, Express, Google, googlenew, Html Button, Icons, Imagination, Kunal, Long Time, Orkut, Png, Profile Pages, Promoter, Software Engineers, Thumbnail

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What are you thankful for?

Posted by A Googler on November 24th, 2010

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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Posted in Email, Google, Social Networks

Tags: Blog, Blogspot, Bp, Button Style, Experience Team, Google, Happiness, Happy Thanksgiving, Holiday Check, Lot, Loving Parents, Motivation, Orkut, Png, Siblings Spouses, Thanksgiving, Thumbnail, Today Is Thanksgiving, User Experience

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Orkut hears a bump in the night

Posted by A Googler on October 30th, 2010

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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Posted in Email, Google, Social Networks

Tags: Background Color Black, Bat Sightings, Black And Orange, Bump In The Night, Button Style, Costume Party, Countries Around The World, Free Online Photo Editor, Ghosts, Google, Online Photo Editor, Operations Team, Orkut, Picnik, S1600, Strange Reports, Thin Air, Today Is Halloween, Wolves, Zombies

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Finer control for Groups of Friends

Posted by A Googler on October 8th, 2010

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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Posted in Email, Google, Social Networks

Tags: Blog, Blogspot, Bp, Button Style, Control, Friends, Google, googlenew, Groups, Improvements, Operations Team, Orkut, Paiva, Png, Rodrigo, S320, Thumbnail

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There’s a world of posts out there!

Posted by A Googler on September 20th, 2010

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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Posted in Email, Google, Social Networks

Tags: Blog, Blogspot, Bp, Button Style, Different Languages, Facebook, Friends Around The World, Google, Language Barriers, Modes, Nav, Orkut, Png, S320, Software Engineers, Swerdlow, Thumbnail, Translate, Translation

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Kicking off Oktoberfest on orkut

Posted by A Googler on September 18th, 2010

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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Posted in Email, Google, Social Networks

Tags: Ariel, Blog, Blogspot, Bp, Button Style, Celebrations, Doodle, Google, Munich Germany, Music Dance, Oktoberfest Celebration, Operations Team, Orkut, Png, S1600, Spirit, Thumbnail

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Video chat in high-resolution

Posted by A Googler on September 17th, 2010

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 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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Posted in Email, Google, Social Networks

Tags: Bp, Button Style, Chat Forum, Chat Friends, Click Options, Google, High Resolution, Linux Users, Linux Version, Microphone, New Feature, Orkut, Png, S320, Settings Window, Software Engineer, Thumbnail, Video Chat, Video Option, Www Google

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A new page for your promotions

Posted by A Googler on September 14th, 2010

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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Posted in Google, Social Networks

Tags: Blog, Blogspot, Bp, Button Style, Drop Down Menu, Experience Team, Fly, Google, Koji, Message To The World, New Year, Orkut, Pereira, Png, Promotions, S320, Text Image, Thumbnail, User Experience

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What’s your fortune today?

Posted by A Googler on September 8th, 2010

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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Posted in Google, Social Networks

Tags: Blog, Blogspot, Bp, Button Style, Ferreira, Fortune, Fortunes, Google, Guilherme, Orkut, Png, S320, Second Thoughts, Settings Window, Software Engineer, Thumbnail

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New themes for a new orkut

Posted by A Googler on September 3rd, 2010

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!