HackersRepublic

        Gone are the days when all we used to have about a TV show is a feedback address or at the most a website the TV channel and off-late the website of the TV show. As the web has advanced so has the interaction between the television and the world wide web. These days there are communities and groups on social networking sites of almost all popular TV shows; where in apart from information about a show or characters of a show you will be able to post comments and discuss with other group members.

The best example of this phenomenon is the MTV Roadies TV show shown on MTV on Saturdays between 7 PM and 8:30 PM. The show is so popular that there is an official community of the show which is administered by MTV on Orkut; a very popular social networking site in India.

Another example being the love or hate communities of various characters of a TV show. The best example is a TV show called Dil mil gaye which is another popular tv show among teens has about 214 communities on Orkut about the show. These communities are about the lead pair on the show, about the lead male actor, about the lead female actor and hate communities relating to the villain of the show as well.

I am very happy about this phenomenon. I am happy to see that so many people in India have access to cable Television as well as the internet; although the internet penetration in India is less that 10%. But that is understandable keeping in mind the large population of the country.

So lets hope that this trend continues and let the be more interaction of the internet and the television media.

Cheers!!

It is a ever-lasting debate. Weather its Orkut or Facebook. I know as of now the current leader is MySpace with more users that both Orkut and Facebook which has 67 million users each. However, with in contest of this article we will keep MySpace out of the league because it is not very popular in the country that I come from which is India and hence I havent used myspace to the extend of blogging about it. So, in this article we will concentrate on Orkut or Facebook– Which one is better today and which one will be more beneficial in the future?

I know this question is like predicting the future but listed below are a few things which i think will make a big difference on how these two social networking giants shape up.

1. Financial Backing: Orkut has the great “Google” by its side and is completely owned by Google. Facebook on the other hand has got a lot of trust from technology biggies including Microsoft which recently evaluated the Facebook to around $15 Billion. This is an estimate based on what Microsoft paid for a percentage at Facebook. So, in terms of financial backing both the companies are on par with each other.
2. Social Networking Structure: Orkut is more open in nature and for many years anyone could read anyones scraps and had several security and privacy features missing. But these flaws have been repaired to somewhat extend but as far as i am concerned Facebook has a better social networking environment. It is closed in nature with ample amount of control given to the user on what can be viewed from his profile. Facebook has an excellent feature called as “Limited Profile” which gets facebook brownie points on the social networking structure.
3. Platform: Orkut is still working on an application platform where as the application platform for facebook is quite advanced and extremely popular. In fact the facebook application platform has given rise to a new breed of programmers who are efficient on programming API’s and frameworks like that of Facebook. Google has still not completely released the openSocial API but when it comes to API’s Google is really good. So, right now Facebook is ahead when it comes to user made applications which drive most of its traffic but Orkut will definitely follow suit.
4. Ad serving: This is one thing in which Facebook fails miserably despite having an advantage. The major advantage that Facebook posses is the closed platform; hence the ads can be specifically and more accurately targeted. However, I don’t know why facebook has failed and I hope they rectify it. On the other hand Google uses its “legendary” Ad serving platform to serve ads on Orkut. Google’s Ad serving platform(Google Adsense and Google Adwords) is ofcourse tried and tested and are way ahead of Facebook in this regard. So, Orkut scores ahead of facebook in the adserving platform.
5. SPAM: New type of websites like Social networking brings in new type of SPAM. Orkut is a clutter with SPAM messages in Orkut Communities and “Send a message to all” messages that get appended to scraps. Facebook on the other hand is a clutter of application invitations and application requests. Almost all applications on Facebook ask their users to invite other members to the application. So, when it comes to SPAM, both facebook and orkut are evenly placed. Thank god that Facebook now introduced a “ignore all” feature otherwise it was a big trouble ignoring every single invitation.

So, listed above is the difference between Orkut and Facebook and i think both of thema re evenly poised for a competition of sorts. I am sure it will be a great story to follow and see how these social networking giants evolve.

       ibibo.com has a lot of advertising these days coming on TV with some of the advertisements being very innovative ones. I for all these years have been on Orkut and Facebook recently that too because of Facebook applications and was quite contented with my social networking activities. However, after all these advertisements  on TV  i must say i was tempted to visit ibibo and  have an account there.  So, I finally registered myself for ibibo and will be there for sometime. Lets see if the system turns out what it claims to be or is the system itself a “baldi” as it has branded itself as “Dont be a baldi” touchline.

Lets see how ibibo turns out for me and hence there will be a ibibo review coming soon!

Microsoft recently has cut Vista prices for the home and the ultimate edition and the price cuts for different countries will be different based on their economies. The price cuts in the united states for the home edition will bring the price of the Vista home edition down to US $ 129 and that of the Vista Ultimate edition to US $ 299.

There is also a Service Pack of Vista coming up in the mid week of march; so all of you who havent bought vista until now due to the excessive price can do it now because i think $129 is a value for money price. However, it is still very important to check for the compatibility of your hardware with Vista before you buy the Operating system because Vista is know to have compatibility issues.

Nothingbutsoftware.com/bargainstation.com offers excellent offers on Software products. They have got excellent offers on Microsoft Vista as well.

Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Full Version Windows Vista Ultimate offers all of the features found in Windows Vista Home Premium, including Windows Media Center, Windows Movie Maker with high-definition support, and Windows DVD Maker. It also offers all of the features found in Windows Vista Business, including business networking, centralized management tools, and advanced system backup features. And Windows Vista Ultimate has all of the new security and data protection features that help take Windows Vista to a whole new level of dependability.

Social Networking Website: Orkut

Orkut is a social networking website which allows users to interact as well as make new friends on the Internet. It is very popular in my part of the world(read: India) as well as in brazil and claims to have more than 67 Million users worldwide. Orkut was founded by Orkut Buyukkokten; a Turkish software engineer while working at Google as a personal project. Orkut was later bought by Google.

Orkut offers several features which are very effective and has helped me a lot to find old friends with whom I had lost contact as well as make new friends. The scrapbook feature of Orkut has proved to be the most beneficial one for me as it is the most effective and the easiest way of communication between Orkut friends. Some of the other most effective and efficient features of Orkut are as mentioned below.

1)      Scrapbooks: Scrapbook is one of the most used feature on Orkut. People can send scarps to other users. Earlier people were able to send scraps to just about anyone who has an account with Orkut but Orkut recently introduced new security features which allow users to decide who posts scraps and to whom.  

2)      Friends: Users can add friends either by searching for them or by looking up in their email contacts. Currently you can search your email contacts on Gmail, Hotmail and AOL. You can also browse different Orkut profiles and send requests to other users to add you as a friend. You can also alternatively invite others to join Orkut.

3)      Communities: Communities in Orkut are according to me a little primitive; although very helpful. These communities have helped me a lot when I needed to search for universities in the US for my Masters as well as helped me a lot while giving my GRE and TOEFL exams. These communities create a forum like environment where in people can create threads to post questions, comments or any information. Orkut communities also have a feature to create polls to get public opinion. Although these communities are very helpful they are often subjected to abuse by create hate communities related to a particular country or race or religion. There are several legal cases on Google(owners of Orkut) in this regard.

4)      Photos and Videos: Users on Orkut can post photos and videos. These feature was also quite primitive for a long time but recently the developers at Orkut has realized this feature and hence has improved the photo sharing abilities to a greater extend. Now users can upload photos and organize them in the form of albums. The video functionality on Orkut is still primitive and users can only share videos either uploaded on Youtube or Google Video and still cant upload video from their Orkut account. So, according to me, interoperatibility with respect to videos on Orkut and google’s video sharing site needs to be improved.

5)      Other features: Orkut has several other fun features where in people can post testimonial of their friends, people can rate their friends as sexy, cool and hot as well as people can add their feeds or feeds of sites that they very often read.

So, here is what I like about Orkut and in the weeks to follow I will cover more tutorials on Orkut for the absolute beginner!

Introduction to Social Networking

Social networking is quite BIG. There are all kinds of social networking sites coming up these days. Some of them the usual stereotype social networking sites while others catering to a specific niche. That’s why I decided that it is very essential to talk about and write about Social networking in a big way; hence this category.

In this series we plan to cover various social networking sites, big and small and discuss their features and the pros and cons of each one of them. We also plan to cover the various aspects that need to be covered with respect to security when it comes to social networking. We will also discuss the next generation in the world of social networking which includes features like social networking applications (read: Facebook apps) .

 So, lets hope that you all have a great time and I am certainly hoping to hear comments from all of you.

HackersRepublic.com is a new website that I have launched to help people know about various aspects of computers and the internet. This website will cover various aspect of computers ranging from Windows XP where we will cover various topics related to windows XP from the basics to pretty advanced ones. We will also include tutorials and articles about Windows Vista, Linux and Windows Server systems. We also plan to include articles for Search engine optimization, search engine marketing, programming, software projects and many more. So be rest assured that there is going to be something for everyone here.

So, as they sty stay tuned and have a great time reading this site. Here’s hoping that this site will be of great help to the readers and visitors.

So, cheers on a new beginning!