Orkut: Google and Social Networking

Orkut, Google's social networking site, is not news, but I just joined and had a few comments.

First, it has an interesting feel and a good clean user interface as we'd expect of a Google product.

Second, they have demographics for their users available and I was surprised to find out that over 2/3 of the users are from Brazil.

Finally, it is invitation only. It's intended to be a system where friends are linked through friends. There are people selling or giving away invitations to anyway, but I quickly found an actual friend who was a member and joined that way. Of course, if you're a friend of mine (or become a friend through this blog), I'll invite you.

Google Group

Your group has been created. The following information has been sent to you in email:
Homepage:		http://groups-beta.google.com/group/googleholism
Group email:		googleholism@googlegroups.com
Description:		Discussion of Google for Google addicts. Not a 12-step program and not anonymous.

Unread label on Gmail

Gmail Tools reports this tidbit from the Gmail Wiki :

Create a label called "Unread", Gmail will automatically add all unread items to it!

If you don't have Gmail, this won't mean much. If you get a Gmail account, this is just one of many great tips you can use.

Update: Although I've checked this with several other people, I can't get it to work on my account. I have several hundred unread messages though (I follow the Gmail marketing hype that there is no need to delete anything ever). It's possible that you need to set this up at the beginning or at least before you have a large number of unreads to overload things.

Gmail

Between myself and a few people I know, we have a couple of hundred Gmail invitations available.
No charge, though a link to this blog or other gratuity is great.

Email me at tomhanna at gmail dot com if you would like an invitation.

For those not familiar with Gmail - Google's Free 2+Gigabyte email service, here is some info:

Gmail is an experiment in a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that you should never have to delete mail and you should always be able to find the message you want. The key features are:

• Search, don't sort.
  Use Google search to find the exact message you want, no matter when it was sent or received.

• Don't throw anything away.
  2220.175112 megabytes (and counting) of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message.

• Keep it all in context.
  Each message is grouped with all its replies and displayed as a conversation.

• No pop-up ads. No untargeted banners.
  You see only relevant text ads and links to related web pages of interest.