orkut

Many thanks to Julian Fitzherbert for his help with today's My Life In A Nutshell strip, inspired by my Blathering about my first dip in the lake this year. Julian is a senior research geophysicist in the UK whom I've never met, but we've exchanged a few e-mails over the years. Hope to meet him eventually. :-) For those in the Toronto area: An interview with my sister will be appearing in the Toronto Star today, in the Saturday Careers section! Played around a bit in Orkut yesterday. The people at Yahoo have got to be sweating buckets. Very cool idea for an online community. Invitation only, linked by friendships and acquaintanceships, and no e-mail harvesting. You can't access ANY of the content without a membership. You can invest as much or as little as time in the community as you'd like and still be able to get enjoyment/use out of its offerings. There's an internal messaging system, but you can opt to get messages directly sent to your regular e-mail if you prefer, or to not get messages at all. No membership fee. I've always been fascinated by the whole online community thing, and Orkut has a ton of potential (and it's only in beta version!) for both business and social networking. You can fill out as much or as little in your profile as you'd like, for example, and there are separate sections for professional info and "info for potential romantic interests", depending on your goals. It all looks pretty benevolent so far; you can give karma ratings to various people on your list, but only positive ratings, no negative. i.e. You can anonymously boost a friend's karma ratings with "cool" or "sexy" points if you'd like, but can't assign "bad" points to someone you don't like. Mini-communities within Orkut range from the very silly to uber-technical to academic. Joining a community doesn't obligate you to anything, so I've joined a bunch to check them out, including online comics, sandwiches, shakuhachi bamboo flutes, filking, freelance writing, bargain travel, copyright reform, collaborative filtering, online communities, Logic users, digital photography, songwriters and singers network, running, tea and social network analysis. It's fun to check out what communities other people have signed up for. If I was still running Inkspot, I'd have a much easier time finding telecommuting help because of Orkut; you can potentially get a ton of info about a person's personality, interests, business contacts and experience by just browsing their profile. I wouldn't be surprised if Orkut eventually added a jobseeker area; the venue seems perfect for this. There are lots of ways that Orkut needs to improve to make it my ideal online community, but IMHO it's already way ahead of Yahoo despite being only a beta version. I wrote to the Orkut support people about a technical problem I was having, and they wrote back within a couple of hours with a solution. Looking forward to seeing how Orkut develops over the next while, and am especially curious about the nature of its association with the people at Google (what links/shared technology will be evident). I was hunting around for a photo to post as a userpic in Orkut, but realized I didn't have any current pics that would be appropriate. One of the disadvantages of always being the one with the camera is that you're never actually IN any photos unless you stick a camera in someone's hand and say, "Here, can you take a picture of me?" Or take one yourself, which is what I did: Me, in the boathouse yesterday. Rained yesterday, but Jeff didn't care...he got his clear night for comet-viewing a few evenings ago. I didn't care, either, and jumped in the lake despite the rain after my afternoon sauna. It seemed a tad warmer, so I tried swimming a bit. Only a bit, though...I abandoned the attempt after about fifteen seconds when the cold verged on actual pain. Leaving the cottage today. :-( An origami hummingbird that Jeff made. The little notch cut into its chest means you can display it on any upstanding edge, like a lampshade. May 2004 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal