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How to remove ads from Orkut pages

Nikhil George — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 06:01:29 +0000

You must have noticed that Orkut has now shifted the position of ads to the top of Orkut pages. Doesn’t that make Orkut look dirty? I will show you how you can remove those ads from Orkut pages. This trick has been there for quite some time, but now that Orkut is showing them right at top of pages, I think it would be good to remove them.

This works with Mozilla Firefox only.
Install Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox (if you haven’t)
Install the remove Orkut ads script

Why Orkut is showing ads ?

The Official Orkut blog explains that in this post as

One of the great things about social networks is their ability to supply you with information that’s relevant to you….On the Orkut team, we believe that advertisements should be no different

So the Orkut team thinks that these ads may provide additional information relevant to you.

But that might not be the only reason. There were rumors that Google might be shutting down Orkut. Running Orkut is a very expensive task for Google and they might want to earn at least some part of the expenses through these ads.

In fact they have created a micro site for advertising on Orkut that says Orkut is the best way to reach Indians online.

Manage emails from twitter using multiple inboxes feature of Gmail

Nikhil George — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:56:00 +0000

Social networking sites like Twitter sends you a lot of email daily and if you don’t use separate emails it might be difficult to manage your inbox. In this post I will explain how I use the Multiple inboxes feature of Gmail to over come this with the example of managing emails from Twitter.

1. Create a filter for emails from Twitter :

Go to Gmail Settings > Filters > Create a new filter

In the From text box use Twitter . Then just click Test search to find if that is really working and click Next Step >>

In the next window check the options Skip the inbox (Archive it) and Apply the label and create a new label from the drop down box. I used the label Twitter

NB: Checking the Skip the inbox option is important, otherwise you will see the email in both your actual inbox and new inbox

2. Using the Multiple inboxes feature

Multiple Inboxes is a Gmail labs feature so you have to enable that first. Goto Settings > Labs and find the Multiple Inboxes feature .enable it using the enable radio button and Save your changes.

You can add a number of inboxes. For adding a new inbox for your Twitter emails use label:Twitter in the first text box. (since I used Twitter as the label name).

You can choose the number of emails to be shown and also the position of the new inbox.

That’s it now when ever you open your Gmail you see a multiple inboxes. Filters are a power feature of Gmail. You can used them along with some Gmail labs features such as Canned Responses to create amazing results. So do experiment with them. You can use the same idea to manage your newsletter and rss subscriptions and lots more.

Thank God I’m not a Chinese

Nikhil George — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:05:23 +0000

Twitter, WordPress,Blogger,YouTube, Flickr, Hotmail and even Bing is blocked in China. Ahead of the 20th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre the Chinese government is doing everything to quiet down the social media. I don’t know how many of my Twitter friends would survive without access to Twitter here in India

It’s your life and you should have the right to choose how to live. Why on Earth would someone want to control you unnecessarily as long as you don’t cause trouble for others.

Internet giants are doing no good. According to this blog post at Digital Inspiration companies like Yahoo, Google and Microsoft co-operate wholeheartedly with the Chinese government in implementing internet censorship there. Even Google shows a separate set of search results for China.

WordPress is different That would be the good news to all those WP fans including me. Matt said a big NO to the Communist government on blocking some topics in WordPress or giving out details about WordPress users. Big Kudos to Matt and WordPress.

Thank God the Communists are losing grounds in India and their anti media activities are limited to calling the main stream media “a syndicate against the communists”.

Image: Xanga-TaiwanIndependent

Vodafone Zoozoo smileys for Orkut

Nikhil George — Fri, 15 May 2009 07:12:23 +0000

One thing I loved the most about this years IPL apart from the on field action was the Vodafone Zoozoo ads. I was really surprised to know that they were real humans in masks and not animation. Now you can get Vodafone Zoozoo smileys for Orkut.

This works with Mozilla Firefox only.
Install Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox (if you haven’t)
Install the Vodafone Orkut smileys (via OrkutPlus)

[ via OrkutPlus ]

Get a free domain name and 2 year unlimited for free

Nikhil George — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:42:36 +0000

Update: This offer has expired but I would recommend you to follow the Dreamhost blog. They come up with similar kind of offers often

You can get a 2 year web hosting and a top level domain (.com,.info or .org) absolutely free .But only if you are an existing Geocities user (Note that Geocites do not accept any new registration).Yahoo! is shutting down GeoCities. But Dreamhost is providing 2 years of hosting with a free domain name to those customers.

All you have to do is verify you are an existing GeoCities customer by creating a page on your GeoCities account (or editing an existing page) to have the phrase “I’m off to DreamHost!” on it!

Then when you signup for us, simply put the full url to that page as your “promotional code” and you’ll get a 2 year plan (normally $214.80) free!

And we promise to never shut down.

Read this post in DreamHost blog.

DreamHost Rocks. I’ve registered a new domain name http://nikhilgeo.com absolutely FREE. So guys hurry up. It says for the first 1000 customers. And don’t forget to sahre this news with all your friends. Here is a link http://tinyurl.com/cccxhm

My first vote

Nikhil George — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 08:06:01 +0000

Finally I can decide who should rule me !I voted for the first time in my life. The first phase of polling to the Parliament started today and would end on May 13th in 5 phases. The results would be out on 16th.

Why should you vote ?

Earlier I thought I would never vote. Why should I vote for these corrupt politicians? I know many have this same question. Then I changed my mind. After all something is always better than nothing. As far as there is no option of “NO VOTE” somebody would be elected even if you don’t vote. So vote for better one ( I believe the better party).

Political party or the candidte?

Our constituency Kottayam had the largest number of candidates contesting form the state (20). But the contest was primarily between two contestants and I had to choose one among them. I preferred one candidate over the other as a person. Unfortunately as a political party I preferred the party of the other candidate. I was really confused whom to vote.

Finally I decided to choose the political party. After all the policies of the political party matters more than an individual. Forget about regional development. That won’t be a lot different. They know very well that they have to face the people at least in every 5 years. Only a stable government with less number of parties can take the country forward. ( I hate this coalition government and the associated political bargaining).

Should there be a a no-vote option ?

Personally I don’t think this can make any difference. And I’m sure at least for this state of Kerala number of people who would choose that option if available would be very less.

My advice to all those who haven’t voted and are yet to vote would be to go out and vote.

Image: rediff.com

The road is not so smooth for Shashi Tharoor

Nikhil George — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:47:12 +0000

Former UN Under Secretary General Shashi Tharoor is contesting in the current Lok Sabha Elections from the Thiruvananthapuram constituency as a candidate of the Indian National Congress. Unlike many other constituencies in the state where the contest is primarily between the Left Front (lead by the CPI-M) and the United Democratic Front (lead by the Congress) candidates, he faces tough challenge from BJP candidate P K Krishnadas and BSP candidate A Neelalohithadasan Nadar apart from the Left Front candidate Ramachandran Nair.

I think he is in many ways the most different candidate contesting from the state for many reasons. For many ordinary voters he is still alien in spite of the heavy campaigning done for Mr Tahroor. Some one who doesn’t speak Malayalam well, some one who was never seen in any of the political activities in the state before. But there are some serious issues about Mr Tharoors candidature.

Mr Tharoor in his election website http://www.shashitharoor.in make his intentions and view about his constituency and politics clear. He has also explained ‘Why UPA ?’. Really I liked his website very much.

But there are some serious issues regarding Mr Tharoor, especially because of his involvement in many controversies because of his view about Israel and Coca Cola. Many others believe he is an opportunist. The are still others who campaigns for him.

This makes it clear why the road is not that smooth for Shashi Tharoor. He has to face opposition from even within his party. Anyhow the result of the Thiruvananthapuram constituency will be a landmark in many regards.

Create your own handwriting font

Nikhil George — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:09:07 +0000

YourFonts is a free online font generator that lets you create fonts from your own handwriting.All you need to do is to download a template page, print it , write all the letters and upload it back. You font is ready within seconds! Don’t worry if you don’t have a printer or scanner because still you can do that as I did that. All you need is to download the template page, edit using any editors like Photoshop or even MS Paint and upload. Cool

Election campaigns goes online in India

Nikhil George — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:09:22 +0000

The US elections and the Obama campaign was closely followed here in India also and the way Obama reached the youth and common people inspired many. Now it seems that the political parties are experimenting with similar campaigning tactics here also in the coming Assembly elections. The youth forms 2/3rd of the total population and the political parties are trying to reach them through the new age media’s including the internet and mobile phones. While the Indian National Congress has produced some promotional videos (link) that are widely promoted over the internet the BJP goes much beyond that through official websites and forums. Through this BJP hopes to reach individual voters.

BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate LK Advani has recently launched his official website ( http://lkadvani.in). The site has an audio introduction by Mr Advani. It also includes a forum which has members close to 1K and covers a variety of topics. BJP’s Delhi Chief Ministerial candidate VK Malhotra has also opened his official website(http://vkmalhotra.in) hoping to prevent Mrs Sheela Dixit becoming the CM for the 3rd consecutive time.

Advani plans to go obama way -NDTV news

All the parties have special internet units along with their media group that leads their campaigns over the internet. Both the Congress and BJP has their unofficial Orkut communities. While the BJP has almost 18.5K members the Congress has just over 10K members. Interestingly while searching for Congress or BJP at Orkut the communities ‘We hate congress’ and ‘We hate BJP’ also comes among the first few results.

In India these online sentiments can never be taken as that of the aam aadmi. These political parties still has to depend lot on traditional road shows and door to door campaigning to get their support. Hopefully these online promos might bring more youth to the polling station. And who know in the coming Parliament elections we might see some Google ads of these political parties.

Orkut get sms notification for new scraps for free

Nikhil George — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 09:15:19 +0000

Orkut has introduced Orkut SMS in India also so you can receive new scrap notification and sen scraps via your mobile. But this is a premium feature and you are charged by your operator (Rs 2/-) per sms. But here is how you can get SMS notifications for new scraps absolutely free. This is similar to my post about getting email notification via sms but this one doesn’t use FreeMyFeed service.

First Step: Getting the feed URL of your scrapbook

Goto OrkutFeeds and give your scrapbook URL (something like http://www.orkut.com/Scrapbook.aspx?uid=1559222230473877..) and they will give you the feed for your scrap book.

You get you feed URL http://www.orkutfeeds.com/feed.php?uid=15592….

How to get your scrapbook URL

Here is how you can get your scrapbook URL, it is like http://www.orkut.com/Scrapbook.aspx?uid=xxxxxxxxxxx You can find your uid by clicking on the profile link on your Orkut home page, you will be directed to the profile page and you can find uid from the address bar.

Second Step: Creating SMS channel

In this step we will create an SMS channel for our feed. Goto Google SMS channel and sign in using your Google account. If you are using this for the first time you have to get your mobile verified by getting an SMS with activation code. Once that is done click on try it now section at the right side of it home page to create your own channel.

You will have to fill a long form like the one below now where you have to give the feed URL obtained in the previous step.

You have to be very careful about two things.

1. You have to select RSS/Feed Atom as Source and give the feed URL obtained in the previous step. (Without http:// as that is already given there)

2. Change Allow publishing by to Only me and Who can subscribe to By invitation only. This makes your feed private so that only you can view them.

Almost done , now click create channel.

From now onwards whenever someone scraps you ,you get an sms notification with your friends name.