Orkut Buyukkokten

I kept hearing about Orkut, joined it one day. Found many of my lost contacts, collegues, and friends.

Well, for dummies like me Orkut is a social networking website launched by Google in January, named after Orkut Buyukkokten, a Google engineer who created it. It aims at connectings users to their friends and their friends' friends for talking, dating and business networking. Only people invited by an orkut member can join, create profile, join communities, and check for friends and other people.

I wondered who this Orkut Buyukkokten is.
Browsed www, found his snap. Looks cool isn't it??? Looks pretty young isn't it? Thought will check out more details.
Well, Orkut Buyukkokten was born on 6-Feb-1976, in Konya, Turkey.
Did his high school from Konya Meram Anadolu Lisesi (1986-93), BS Information Engineering from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey (1993-97). Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at Stanford University in the Database Group.

Thought, if he has created Orkut, he should be there. Found his profile there. Sent a friend request, but didn't get a reply. But Amazing number of scrape entries!! 470449 scraps!!!!

Found some funny information on net about Orkut's earnings, but I am sure if this is not right:
Orkut Buyukkokten(the creator of Orkut) gets $12 when every person registers to this website.
He also gets $10 when you add somebody as a friend.
He gets $8 when your friend's friend adds you as a friend & gets $6 if anybody adds you as a friend in the resulting chain.
He gets $5 when you scrap somebody & $4 when somebody scraps you.
He also gets $200 for each photograph you upload on Orkut.
He gets $2.5 when you add your friend in the crush-list or in the hot-list.
He gets $2 when you become somebody's fan.
He gets $1.5 when somebody else becomes your fan.
He even gets $1 every time you logout of Orkut.
He gets $0.5 every time you just change your profile-photograph.
He also gets $0.5 every time you read your friend's scrap-book & $0.5 every time you view your friend's friend-list.
Many Global Financial Consultants think this person might become the richest-person in the world by the end of 2009.
Finally, this is the best fact. This person has 13 assistants to monitor his scrapbook & 8 assistants to monitor his friends-list. He gets around 20,000 friend-requests a day & about 85,000 scraps a day.

As I continued to search about Orkut Buyukkokten, found that there were some court cases against him.

A small social-networking software company has filed suit against Google, claiming that much of the source code behind orkut.com, the search engine's popular social service, was stolen by a former engineer. In its lawsuit, Affinity Engines, based in Palo Alto, California, said engineer Orkut Buyukkokten illegally took the code that he had written for the company -- which he co-founded -- with him when he joined Google.

Affinity Engines also claimed that Buyukkokten promised Affinity Engines that he wouldn't develop a competing social-network service for Google. Affinity Engines, which filed the claim on May 25 in Santa Clara Superior Court, is seeking unspecified damages and royalties.

Links:
His Site: http://www.stanford.edu/~orkut/
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/11/29/BUGU9A0BH441.DTL&type=business
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,64046,00.html
http://www.anthonyhempell.com/papers/orkut/

Ooops !!

My brother-in-law and I keep designing ways of pulling each others legs. Many a time, I would hide his helmet, and he would search for it under the tables, sofa, and bed so on... and on and on :-).

Yesterday, I saw his helmet lying on the sofa unattended.
Wow!! What a chance!!! I scooped the helmet and rushed to the refrigerator and hid it :-). Hmmmmm!! Now, my brother-in-law can never find it!!! I sat watching the television, or rather guarding the refrigerator.

Why is my brother-in-law taking longer than usual to get ready?!! God!! When will he start searching? Finally, he got ready, and walked out with his helmet, and said a bye. Hey wait a minute?! Where did he get the helmet from?! I was around all the time and he never opened the refrigerator. Curious, I opened the refrigerator, helmet was still there. Are my eyes playing tricks?? How is it possible??
Oooops!! It was my helmet!!!

Previous night, I had left my helmet on the sofa, instead of putting it on the rack. Since, our helmets look similar and I was in a hurry, I didn't bother to check whose helmet it was. So my helmet was sitting in the refrigerator all cold :-( :-(.

In News:
Karnataka Mandates Wearing Helmets

Alarm in the lift

When we enter a lift, we notice there are many buttons; some indicate the floor numbers, one to keep the door open, one to close the door so on. But,I always wondered what the button with "Bell" symbol would do.
Where the alarm would be set off? What would be done after that?

Couple of months ago, IBM was stationed in Symphony building in Bangalore. I was working there. Lifts in the building had catchy yellow button with a nice picture of a bell. Very Tempting!!!

One of the days, 2 of my friends and me, took the lift on 3rd floor, to go to the canteen in 8th floor. The button with the bell, was tempting, beckoning me!!

Me: Shall I press that Button??
S: Sure go ahead
Me: Sure !!
S: Sureee!!

My fingers slowly n gently pressed the button. A louddddddddd alarm went off in the entire building!!!!! oh God !!

S: What have u done !!
I was rolling in laughter, while S clasped her palms together and started shivering.

Lift reached 8th floor, doors slowly opened. Security in 8th floor, people who were heading for lunch, had dropped silent, waiting for the lift to arrive and staring as we stepped out.

We gently, turned our identity badges so that our names are not read, hurried out of the lift. Me still giggling, S still shivering, I knew S woundn't spare me for putting her through this ordeal.

Life is Short

Universe is unfathomable,
World is vast,
Mysteries are many,
History is deep,
To explore all, life is short.

So much to learn,
So much to see,
So much to do,
To do all, life is short.

There is so much to see, learn and do in this short life.
I want to master a lot of things - music, TT, dance, technology, sketching, painting, cooking ....... and the list goes on; ofcourse roam a lot of places.
But, life might be just Short !!!!!!