Thought orkut have not opened this channel of customized theme but people have found a way around of changing the themes of the orkut pages. But this change hardly makes any difference, firstly you can change the theme to the one you like but that theme will only be viewable to you only and not your friends.

Still if you want you can change the theme and a get a new look you would need:

1. Mozilla Firefox ( a free web browser)
2. GreaseMonkey or Stylish (firefox plugins)

If you don’t want to use Mozilla Firefox you can change the orkut theme with Internet Explorer as well just install

1. Internet Explorer 7
2. Trixie Plugin for IE

Once you have installed the plugins restart you browser, and then either go to [orkutplus] or go to userscripts install the scripts and start enjoying the themes. Though previously orkut experimented by releasing a theme for Holi an Indian holiday for Indian users only so very soon orkut will be officially launching the ability to chose your own theme.

Adobe Labs have released beta version of there upcoming Adobe Dreamweaver, Fireworks & soundbooth. The beta releases are available for download from the adobe labs page.

So whats new & what we can expect from the upcoming releases

Upcoming Adobe Dreamweaver
The new release of Dreamweaver comes with many exciting surprises some of which my most favorite are :

• Live View which included integration of the famous webkit enhancing dreamweaver with a new rendering engine that will help you view your web pages under real-world browser conditions.
• The Related Files feature displays all the documents associated with your current page, whether CSS, JavaScript, PHP, or XML, in a bar along the top of your document thus adding more flexibility to your work environment.
• A Code Navigator pop-up window has been added which will displays CSS rules, server-side includes, external JavaScript functions. Seems like Adobe understands the MVC and interlinked code structures and have enhanced more support to it.
• Code hinting for Ajax and JavaScript frameworks means support for popular JavaScript frameworks including jQuery, Prototype, and Spry.
• Photoshop Integration Drag and drop an Adobe Photoshop® PSD file into a Dreamweaver page to create an image Smart Object.
• Subversion in Dreamweaver: integrates Subversion software for a more robust check-in/check-out experience with file versioning, rollback, and more
• Adobe® AIR™ authoring support Create multiplatform desktop applications from your Dreamweaver HTML and JavaScript sites with new Adobe AIR™ authoring support.

Upcoming Adobe Fireworks

Fireworks used for rapidly prototype websites, application interfaces, and other interactive designs. Create, edit, and optimize web graphics more accurately and faster than ever with the enhanced toolset. Demo your design live for your client, or e-mail an interactive PDF file. This version comes with

• New user interface > similar to photo shop / illustrator and easy switch between them
• CSS and Images Export > one click export of design into css
• PDF export >> finally pdf support arrives
• Adobe type engine >> Adobe True Type font support yaiii

For More [http://labs.adobe.com/]

A web designer is always off to look for quality web2.0 icons, and thanks to so many nice people a huge vault of free icons libraries are easily available to download but of course finding them on Google is quite tough as you have to sort a huge list of unwanted results so here we are going to list you top 5 locations to find quality, stylish, web2.0 and of course sexy icons to make your websites look more sexy.

1- IconsFinder
This one is on my top list reason being its easy, not cluttered with ads and offers good quality open source icons to download. Previously iconfinder was known as iconfinder.com but they guy forgot to renew his domain and some one stole it from him so now its( updated – its always iconfinder.net ) iconfinder.net a great resource to find quality free icons.
http://www.iconfinder.net

2- IconLook
IconLook is a sort of clone of Iconfinder but yet another great resource for finding individual icons files, though as compared to iconfinder the iconlook has more libraries of icons thus adding more variety but in some cases the design of the icons are not that exciting as they should be. But still they got a huge library and you can easily find icons that you need using there tagged search engine.
http://www.iconlook.com

3- Iconspedia
As they say “Your source of free icons”, Iconspedia is a huge collection / catalog of free icons to download, they have a well organized collection of icons placed in categories to choose from, you can even download there icons in the form of packs. The icons are new and more of a web2.0, iconspedia has collected icons from the community and submitting icons is quite easy does not require any kind of registration.

The sizes are good and the file format they provide is PNG and ico. All the icons have there licenses listed are are mostly free to download.
http://www.iconspedia.com

4- Icon Archive
IconArchive is a categorized collection of more then 18 000 icons in 656 sets from 155 icon artists. There files are for windows / linux / osx in PNG and .ico file formats. Take care of the used license. You’ll find this information on each icon set page. If you want to use icons commercially, ask the author of the icons you want to use.
http://www.iconarchive.com/

5- FreeIconsWeb
Over 15,000 high quality Free Icons for Windows, Macintosh and Linux Systems. (Desktop Icons,Windows Icons,Windows XP and Vista Icons,Mac OS X Icons, Linux, PNG Transparent Icons,Gif Icons,Pixels Icons) Some are free and some belong to the company still great libraries of free icons.
http://www.freeiconsweb.com/

Previously
wikipedia of free web2.O icons

After a while i received a notification email from orkut, though thinking the orkut community is dead so the email did get my attention as it stated that a friend of mine poked me! For a moment i though “WHAT” this kind of emails are suppose to come from facebook but to my reconfirmation it was from orkut and it did say that a friend of mine poked me.

So i logged on to orkut to see what really happened and how could some one from orkut poke me! Once i entered the orkut word allot had changed and made me immediately comfortable as there was allot of similarity of what the new orkut had offered with an application that i had been using before. So i decided to write a review on how the orkut has improved and brought in BRAND new services to its social networking site.

1- Support for Applications >
Add applications and customize your profile with music, games, and more! a new feature by Orkut. Facebook allows its users to ad and customize applications along with privacy settings for the applications.

2- Notifications >
Facebook sends notifications when ever actions are taken …… Orkut sends you notifications via eMail, message ….

3- News Feed – Updates from Friends
Now orkut offers updates from friends see which of your friends added new applications, updated there image gallery and with facebook you get all the notices in the form of mini feeds on your landing page.

4- Privacy Features >
Orkut has now introduced privacy settings,that allows you to be as public or private with your information as you wish. With facebook’s privacy you Control who can see your profile and related information.

A new service by Microsoft “search via Microsoft Search engine Live and Microsoft will pay you for it”. Okai its not like that they haven’t gone that desperate yet but Microsoft has launched a new service called Live Search Cash back.

The Microsoft cash back offers users to search products using only Microsoft live to look for cash back deals. Each product will list its price along with the cash back offer on that product. Once you purchase that product Microsoft will add the cash back to you account & once it goes above $5 you can get your money back.

Cash Back deals is common in US stores but i guess Microsoft seems to be the first to bring it along to the web. Microsoft is working hard to put a dominant role on the web where so far Google is the king and this step might help out store owners and users to develop a new stream of business.

[http://search.live.com/cashback]

Too many passwords are quite difficult to remeber though if you do but still who wants to type the same user name / password every day so generally a good way is to ask Firefox to save the passwords. But what to do if you really need to know what password you save would you prefer going throught the long password recovery process by all websites or you need some help in there.

Well here is the catch nodoubt its easy to recover passwords but its unsafe as well so firstly. So lets how unsafe they can be. To see which passwords you have saved into Firefox simply go to :
Tools >> options >> security >> Show Password
There you will find the URL’s and usernames of all the sites who’s password you have saved in Firefox now to reveal the password simply click on “Show Passwords” and firefox will show you all the passwords. This is good way of recovering your passwords but very unsecure as well as any one using your computer can easily steal all your passwords and you can’t do anything thing about it. But there is a way.. (more…)

As the globe is turning into a single marketplace regional clocks and keeping an eye on the time in different locations has become an important habit. What if you are working on a project where your designer is in Paris your programmers are in Germany & your Marketing team is in India with completely opposite timezones and remembering he no of hours of difference is quite difficult. So to solve this problem there are two way a Google way or the Firefox way.

Google has been a great help in that regard and i have been using it for a while, with google you can check the current time of any location around the globe by just typing location of the city or country in the Google search bar e.g. ( time : Paris ) and the result page will come up with the exact time of that location.

Another option for global time check could be with the help of Firefox Plugin, though if you want to keep a very strict eye on the clocks around different regions you can simply install FoxClocks , which lets you keep an eye on clocks around the world by putting up small clocks in your statusbar. You can set you own time formats, color code different clocks move them to toolbar or switch icons for it. FoxClock also comes packed with Zone Picker tree to browse virtually the world’s time zone by country / region or city.

Check out more on FoxClocks or download it

Google has come up with a very ambitious project named ‘Friend Connect‘. The Google Friend Connect lets you add social network features to your website with snippets of code from different websites into your own website. Seems more like web widgets which Google have named at ‘Friend Connect’.

(more…)

Microsoft “Live Mesh” a data storage Web software system was announced by Microsoft of Tuesday. Live Mesh is a Microsoft’s entry to a rapidly growing market called cloud computing, where software applications & services from PC’s are send to a centralized data centers where they are made available via internet.

(more…)

Flickr Add Video to its Popular Photo-Sharing Community, Flickr, a Yahoo Inc. company and one of the world’s fastest growing online photo-sharing communities, today launched video sharing.

Flickr stepping into video sharing is a definite positive step unlike many video sharing sites like YouTube, one thing flickr is tough about is moderated video content, that means the videos posted at flickr will be moderated, should be created by individuals only and should follow content policy by flickr. Apart from that flickr will only allow 90seconds of playback for the videos posted.

The video uploading is only available for Flickr pro members who can upload personal video clips and share them with friends, family
and the world.Flickr – which has grown from 27 million to 42 million monthly visitors worldwide in the past year(1) – serves as the ‘eyes of the world’ for its members globally, and with the addition of video, is giving people more ways to share what they see and experience in their everyday lives. The new enhancement is helping to advance Yahoo!’s goal to become the leading starting point on the Web by offering an even more engaging and relevant service for sharing, exploring and discovering digital imagery.

As pro members around the world upload personal video clips on Flickr, people can see, share, and experience the world in motion through the eyes of the Flickr community. Video on Flickr will be available in eight languages including English, French, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and traditional Chinese. This new feature provides:

Features of Flickr Video Sharing

• Video uploading for Flickr pro members
• The ability for free and pro members to view public video clips
• Video limits up to 90 seconds long and 150MB maximum in size
• Controls to make videos private, visible to friends and/or family, or public
• Seamless integration of videos into the photostream, along with photos
• The ability to share video clips individually, as part of a set, or embed on third-party Web sites
• Tagging and geotagging capabilities for videos
• The ability to search videos by tags and descriptions
• The ability to upload videos directly from camera phones
• The option to view videos on a full screen
• Licensing options to mark a video as ‘All Rights Reserved’ or designate a license through Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/)
• Application programming interface (API) for third party developers to create programs or services using authorized video submitted to Flickr

Ref : Yahoo Press Release, Flickr Blog,