I'm a fan of this app!

As I'm sure you all know by now, orkut is jam packed with fun and quirky OpenSocial apps that allow you to do just about anything you can imagine. From time to time, we stumble across an app that everybody in the office can't seem to get enough of. Whenever this happens, our first move is always to pass it on to you guys. In that spirit, I'm excited to share with you the newest app to take over my personal life: iFan.

iFan lets you to choose your favorite celebrities and access the latest videos, news and blog postings about them in one central place, making it easy for you to talk to and share with other fans. You can also find out which celebs your friends are into by looking at who they've labeled as their favorites (I discovered that Rahul, one of the Product Managers on the orkut team, loves the Beatles even more than I do. Who knew?).

Check out a screenshot of some of my favorite celebs here:



For all of you who are as celebrity crazed as I am, you'll be happy to know that iFan also lets you jazz up your profile by displaying the pictures of your favorite celebrities for everyone who visits to see.

Here's a page dedicated to one of my favorite musical artists, Justin Timberlake, full of up-to-date info, news articles, and videos from YouTube:




Not only does iFan make it easy for you to find information about your favorite stars, it also keeps a running tab on each celeb's popularity based on the number of users who've added him/her to their favorites list. These celebrity rankings are updated every 5 minutes, helping you stay "in the know" about whether your idols are in or out.

Is there an app that you love and think should be featured on the orkut blog? Send us a note and let us know what it is and why you love it so much.

Use orkut to spread awareness on World Cancer Day

Today is the official World Cancer Day, a day meant to help inspire people around the world to come together and fight against all different forms of cancer.

We thought we'd use today as an opportunity to let you know about all of the different resources on orkut both for people affected by cancer and for those who are looking for ways to prevent it and find a cure.

With a number of communities related to different forms of cancer, orkut is a great place to come for information and support. There's even a Cancer Research community where you can discuss the science and politics of cancer research.

If you have ideas about other ways to use orkut to help in the battle against cancer, please just send us a quick note and let us know.

New orkut Help Forum

The orkut Help Forum has long served as a hub for all of you who want to share your opinions, experiences and challenges. We've always counted on the help of those of you who have been vocal about orkut and willing to share your "orkutise". People like the orkuteers helped shape our forum into a one-stop shop for questions, suggestions, bug reporting, tips and tricks.

To improve this channel and streamline communication, the orkut Help Forum has been recently converted into a new platform that shortens the trail between questions and answers and rewards useful and helpful participation.

Here are some of the features you'll find in the new orkut Help Forum:

* The option to add references to your answers, such as Help Center articles, web pages, pictures or YouTube videos
* Seamless access to Help Center pages
* Improved search results, including posts from the old and the new forum
* Recognition of helpful members as "Top Contributors"
* An automated reputation and ranking system
* The ability to mark questions as answered

You're welcome to stop by our forum anytime. Google employees will continue to check in from time to time, but first and foremost, this is the place for you all to help one another.

We hope you enjoy it!

Never miss a birthday again with orkut birthdays on Google Calendar

Upcoming Birthdays is one of the most popular features we've added to orkut, but we recognize that it doesn't always give you all the information you need. It's great to know about birthdays coming up in the next couple weeks, but sometimes it's also important to see the birthdays that have already passed and the ones coming further down the line.

Now, in conjunction with google calendar, you can see all of your orkut friend's birthdays for the whole year.

If you've already used Google Calendar before, you will shortly see a link (right below the "upcoming birthdays" section) where you can add your orkut friends' birthdays to your Google calendar.




Once you've added your orkut birthday calendar to Google Calendar, you can navigate forward and backwards through time to see whose birthday is coming up and any birthdays you might have missed.




Just be sure to pay extra attention to your friends with birthdays on holidays on weekends- they tend not to get as many 'happy birthday' scraps as everyone else :-(.

Not using Google Calendar yet? Check out the Google Calendar website to learn more about what it offers and to get started.