Now blog in Orkut

I don’t know why but I spend very little time on Orkut. Not that I repent or lament but this is the fact. However, once in a while I do check out the Orkut page. Today I got excited on seeing that Orkut has introduced something new. Although, the concept is an old one (more in the line of Facebook) but hey there is alsways a start.

Almost everyday there’s something that I’d like to spread to all of my orkut friends, whether that be a hilarious YouTube video, a new orkut community I just discovered or a quote that happens to fit my mood. That’s why I’m so happy to announce the release of a new orkut feature: ‘promote’.

orkut promote is a free tool that allows you to create announcements and automatically send them to all of your orkut friends with a single click. Promote makes it easy to show text, your original photos from your orkut photo albums and your original YouTube videos to your orkut friends– just give your promotion a catchy title and a short description and you’ll be all set to go.

With this new promote tool, you get:

• the ability to easily create promotions using text, photos from your orkut albums, and your original YouTube videos
• built-in ’spread’ and ‘trash’ features that let you pass on the promotions you like to all of your friends and delete the ones you don’t so that they never show up for you again
• the ‘my promotions’ tool that shows you how many users have viewed, clicked on, or deleted your promotions, as well as how far they’ve spread
• the ability to stop or delete a promotion that you’ve created at any time

We’ve done our best to make promotions not just easy to use, but also easy to find. That’s why we’ve placed them in the upper right corner of your friends’ home and profile pages, in the same place where advertisements typically appear.

http://en.blog.orkut.com/2009/08/orkut-promote-free-tool-to-help-you.html

Do you still love your wife?

This is one hell of an inspiring story I found tucked in my inbox. This story is all about a newly married couple who wants to start their journey into the unknown conjugal life. Read on.

After reading through the whole story I felt that everybody in his or her life needs some inspiration all the time. No matter how small it is but we all do need a light in the dark. Doesn’t matter whether it is the light from a match-stick or a lighthouse. A light will always reduce the darkness from your life.

Monica married Nick this day. At the end of the wedding party, Monica’s mother gave her a newly opened bank saving passbook with Rs.1000 deposit amount.

Mother: ‘Monica, take this passbook. Keep it as a record of your marriage life. When there’s something happy and memorable happened in your new life, put some money in. Write down what it’s about next to the line. The more memorable the event is, the more money you can put in. I’ve done the first one for you today. Do the others with Nick.

When you look back after years, you can know how much happiness you’ve had.’

Monica shared this with Nick when getting home. They both thought it was a great idea and were anxious to know when the second deposit can be made. This was what they did after certain time:

* 7 Feb: Rs.100, first birthday celebration for Nick after marriage
* 1 Mar: Rs.300, salary raise for Monica
* 20 Mar: Rs.200, vacation trip to Bali
* 15 Apr: Rs.2000, Monica got pregnant
* 1 Jun: Rs.1000, Nick got promoted
* ….. And so on…

However, after years, they started fighting and arguing for trivial things. They didn’t talk much. They regretted that they had married the nastiest people in the world…. No more love…Kind of typical nowadays, huh?

One day Monica talked to her Mother: ‘Mom, we can’t stand it anymore. We agree to divorce. I can’t imagine how I decided to marry this guy!!!”

Mother: ‘Sure, girl, that’s no big deal. Just do whatever you want if you really can’t stand it. But before that, do one thing first.

Remember the saving passbook I gave you on your wedding day? Take out all money and spend it first. You shouldn’t keep any record of such a poor marriage.’

Monica thought it was true. So she went to the bank, waiting at the queue and planning to cancel the account. While she was waiting, she took a look at the passbook record. She looked, and looked, and looked. Then the memory of all the previous joy and happiness just came up her mind. Her eyes were then filled with tears. She left and went home.

When she was home, she handed the passbook to Nick, asked him to spend the money before getting divorce.

The next day, Nick gave the passbook back to Monica. She found a new deposit of Rs.5000. And a line next to the record: ‘This is the day I notice how much I’ve loved you thru out all these years. How much happiness you’ve brought me.’

They hugged and cried, putting the passbook back to the safe. Do you know how much money they had saved when they retired? I did not ask. I believe the money did not matter any more after they had gone thru all the good years in their life.

“When you fall in any way, don’t see the place where you fell instead see the place from where you slipped. Life is about correcting mistakes.”

Now import all your other mails into Gmail

Gmail

Gmail team has come upp with a new idea – to import mails from your other account(s). Being a google fanboy (sorry like most of their ideas), I find this idea too cool to resist. Think of this, all your Yahoo, Hotmail or AOL mails will now be permanently imported in Gmail, and you can safely discard your earlier mail. Yesterday only, I read that although Yahoo mail is still number 1 but Gmail is almost breathing on its neck. With this idea, I think the distance between first and second will further be reduced, if not surpassed!

A few months ago, we added the ability to import your old mail and contacts to Gmail. We made this feature available for all newly-created Gmail accounts first, since people new to Gmail benefit most from being able to move their stuff with them. Friends who wanted to use Gmail but kept telling us how painful it would be finally made the switch!

But many old time Gmail users (including us) also have old accounts lurking. Often, these accounts predate Gmail, and occasionally we have to log into them to look at some old confirmation email or find the email address for someone with whom we’ve lost touch.

Now, with just a few clicks anyone can copy all of that to your Gmail account. It’s easy — just go to the Settings > Accounts & Import page and click “Import mail and contacts.” A window will pop out to lead you through the short import process. If you want us to continue to forward any new mail your other account gets for 30 days, we can do that too.

Copying mail over usually takes a couple days, occasionally up to a week — but eventually it all arrives. And once it’s done, you can forget your old account and enjoy having everything in one place.

Official Source: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/mail-and-contact-import-for-everyone.html