As soon as I finished with my examination, and having nothing big to do, moved outside. The bird flew away. To put in neat words....I went to Andaman and Nicobar islands. To be precise I went to Port Blair, capital of Andaman group of islands. And what was it like... it was very much like heaven on earth which was last year torn by Tsunami...but still holding its beauty close to its chest. There are few things which can not be put in words, and it is one of them. Before Andaman, for which there is no direct flight from Bhopal, I had to move to Kolkata( Calcutta) and from there on I flew to Port Blair.
First few photos of slide show are from Pondycherry which is from my last outing. And after that, from where there is a marble building...its Victoria Memorical in Kolkata.

After watching these pics you will surely pardon me, of not being here. By the way, after returning from Port Blair, I had to urgently go to Pune...and the Reliance wire less internet which my sister left me with at her home was suckingly slow. So no posting from there either. And then I met with a virus which hugged me and I had to take few medicines just to get it off my back.

This is one thing which is on my mind for past few weeks. I recently covered Orkut and Facebook and also compared them on the lighter notes. I recently covered few changes done in Orkut. But none the less, I am doing it once again. This time my source of information is Google Trends. It is really quite interesting. Though it is not something which we didn't expected, but yes it is interesting enough to be here.
First of all, a note on Google trends...
They should make those charts more sharable. I have to follow print screen method which is really cumbersome, and if you know any refined and a free of cost method then feel free to tell me in comments.
Coming back on the topic...
Before any thing else, I would once again make clear that why this topic interest me so much. Orkut is highly popular and have the same cult like following which Facebook enjoys in US varsities. And after the recent news gain by facebook makes it an interesting competitor to orkut. Otherwise I dont have any kind of stake in any company...
Lets first look the trends for the search and news items which are the overall criteria of the Google trends, blue one is for Facebook and red one is for Orkut.
This one is for 2007, and will bring more focuses results for this year.


Inference:
Recently after F8 there is a sudden rise in the news references which Facebook got. Since this is not up to date trend, so we can not tell that what effect F8 caused to the graph . One thing which people can say that Orkut being an old network wont be the hot enough to discuss, and thus this graph does not make any sense. My answer to them is, when you are in social web space and you are not being talked about then there is something wrong, by wrong I meant that you are not innovating enough, and if you are not innovating then you are giving other networks a chance to gain more people. They might not take away your existing members but yes they may reduce the future numbers.
This point is much more solidified by the upper graph. People are not searching about Orkut. Why this must be saddening to Orkut, (beyond ego surfing for Mr. Orkut)? One word answer, NEW USERS. Old users are not going to search much for the network on which they are, but the users which are new will be inquisitive enough to search about the new network. One more probable reason for the searches can be, hacks for the network, but here again since Orkuts api is not open, then umber of mods and hacks are not there in market.
US was never a forte for Orkut. But US certainly have maximum internet users, so a trend analysis of US region makes sense.



Here...aha it was obvious...as previously mentioned...
US cetizens are neither interested nor using writing about it. This analysis as like previous is from history...so we can not tell about the latest hype effect, but I dont think that will be any way in favour of Orkut.

Now comes the other one...which is just the way round...and this time its all Orkut. Orkut in India, is making news and is being used. Though news are not for good reasons, but as it is said that any publicity is good publicity, so it is true for Orkut. In India Orkut is all up, and Facebook fares much poorer than Orkut in US.



People are not at all searching about Facebook, which may be taken as that it is not creating enough buzz. And buzz is all that matter , when it comes to such kind of products.

Below are the international top 10 ratings with Facebook and Orkut as reference respectively.



This is really interensting Facebook is attracting more buzz in Canada than in US...Oh this one is surprising...
Now lets see the Orkut international card, BRAZIL...BRAZIL...yup thats the topper...




One can not tell very much from these trends for the simple reason that they are not up to date. But this certainly can be extrapolated, to get the latest figures. One more thing, Google trends need to improve themselves or else they should buy some other service doing trends, becasue presently they are nothing but healthy Buzz index, which can be used to tell how much buzz one is creating. But none the less it provides some pieces of useful information. And for conclusion...Mr. Orkut...I have only one suggestion for you...think out of the box and innovate.

P Please consider the environment before printing this mail.

This is an interesting thing which I got with a forward. I liked it very much...There are lot of things going on the environment front and about the problems caused by global warming....what say bloggers...what should we do about it.

I think its blogging time for Google. Orkut is up with its very own blog. Because the services which didn't had blog till now are now up with their own blogs. Latest in this series is Orkut. Orkut is the only successful social network under the umbrella of google. There was once the latest news thing in the header of Orkut, and which was never updated and had news dating back to 2005 which was hilarious.

This new strategy of having more and more interaction points might just prove fruitful for orkut, the other interaction vents included a Google group, and a help center. Even Orkut feels that it is late to come up with blog now, but that said they also feel it is better late than never.
To mention one more thing, as it is with every other Google blog, it does not have a comments section, so you can not interact, butthere is a link else where which is aksing you to write down what you expect from the blog. I think that latest Facebook lava has touched them in some good way, (hope s0).
I was having problems to update my photo in the new orkut format which was recently changed. It has turned up more advanced, and web2istic. It was solved only the last night. Here is an example of the change made in orkut.
Quite azaxified....

Recently Blogger is also giving me troubles with adding photo, and is quite bugging.

Could not hold my self to write about it. Lech Johansen aka DVD John have created a hack to free iPhone for iTunes activation and freedom from AT&T. So now if you wish to have one then you can.

If you are reading news papers or remain connected to web then you must be knowing that Mr. Bill Gates is not the richest person now. Its now tagged to Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico. So does this inspired me to write this post...no..it is series of events which have inspired me to do so:

• Launch and all the positive hype which iPhone got, and respect which apple does.
• Though people have respect for the software behemoth, but still it does not command love, or create fear in its competitors.
• Rise of Google, and other web based services which are trying to eat into MS territory.
  

Microsoft is every where, the place you think, they are there. But still you can not bet on every thing they will do. They did few things which were nice, but they are not successful, by that I mean Zune. Vista is wonderful but it does not make you sit and say, 'Hey I want this any how' the way iPhone did, or Leopard may do. I like search interface of Live search but I am not using it, I dont know why but there is some thing stopping me to do that. Might be they need to work on the Feng Shui or Vaastu of their websites. Amount of research which goes behind the doors must be impeccable, though we don't know when it is going to show up.
Beyond the tech stuff I think it is the time when they put some money in intelligent advertising not people ready advertising.
One example of intelligent advertising which I would like to share with you readers will be one from advertisements archives. The Humara Bajaj campaign by Bajaj Auto. To the readers who dont know about it; Bajaj is two wheeler manufacturer from India. Initially when India was a nation without motorized vehicle, a nation with rising middle class without personal mode of transportation. During that time, Baja came up with Vespa type scooters, from technological transfer from Vespa. But they could not match the its competitors, and was in dearth need of some magic. And that magic was provided by this advertisement...




Humara Bajaj : Our BAJAJ
I wont go on literal translation of this ad and the song, because this ad cuts down the need of translation. You can see that Bajaj scooter is being used by every one, for nearly every thing and then it tells 'New image of new India, our Bajaj.' Youth, aged, women, men, everyone is shown using it. Its not about path breaking technology its about touching users emotionally, and with the right note. And the rest was history, Bajaj became biggest two wheeler manufacturer of nation and remain on the top spot for years. It became a nation success. There is not substitute to technology, no substitute to innovation, there is none. But one thing which a company should strive is to make that technology more digestible. Microsoft presently needs some thing similar to cut across the masses. Be there is everyones mind.

This can be one of the least important post if you are already reading these blogs, but should be very important if havent. They are among few of the top notch blogs. I love to read them because amount of brain matter spent on writing those post is purely fantastic. Another reason why I am posting this post is that I am in no position to write something big, because my body is paining terribly after getting wet in rain for two consecutive days and I have some real large books to study for my exam on coming Wednesday. So when you dont have time and you feel like blogging then blog about blogs.

Read/Write web: Very solid approach when comparing two services, and nice way of writing which really makes the post a very interesting read.

Mashable: I wouldnt have wrote this name few months back because back then it was not that extensive in comparing but recently they are doing a great job. And the number of post from the Queens land is making new records daily, this sometimes do irritates me, as whenever I go to my reader I see new posts, and if I miss it for even a day there are posts in 2 digits. But still I go there to read them all.

Now have a view of the books which are not letting me post extensively.
One more thing while posting this image I could not do it using the inbuilt photograph adder, and neither I was able to upload it directly to my Picasaweb account...some times services from Google irritates a lot. And there is also some problem going on with Orkut, I am not being able to edit my profile, the screen just go blank after taking lots of time.

I am putting it straight and simple. There are few things which I hate to do when I am on some blog...

• Click on to read full entry. An idiotic thing to do, why should I click to read full article, cant you just make it easier for me. Lesser the clicks more easy the interface will become.
• Wait for my comments to appear. I know you can shout SPAM, but hey I am not here to spend my time spamming. And it is a killjoy practice.