Orkut App Finally Arrives for iPhone, iPad

Popular Brazilian-based social networking site Orkut has finally gotten its own app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

[More from Mashable: Facebook Announces Tight Integration of 60 Apps to Timeline, More on the Way]

The free app for Orkut – a site launched by Google in 2004 which now has 66 million active members – allows users to post status updates, pictures and chat with others.

However, the app is slightly overdue. In fact, earlier this week it was revealed that Facebook overtook Orkut as Brazil’s most-popular social network in December. Its popularity in Brazil -- where 60% of Orkut’s users are based -- led to it being hosted and managed by Google Brazil from 2008 onwards.

[More from Mashable: Hey Zuckerberg, Take Facebook Down for a Day]

In addition, Google+ is also picking up steam in Brazil. It alone raked in 4.3 million users last month.

But even still, the app has been much-anticipated for awhile now and Orkut users will certainly be glad to finally gain access to the site on the go. The app is now available for download via the Apple App Store.

Phone Facebook: It's Finally Real And Her Name Is Buffy

After years of studying the best way to enter the business phone, Facebook operated Taiwanese manufacturer HTC mobile phones to create a smart phone that has integrated social networks in the heart of his being.

The code name "Buffy" after television Vampire Slayer, the phone is designed to run on a modified version of Android that very strongly twisted Facebook integration services and support HTML5 as a platform for applications, according to sources close the project.

Although it has changed the scope and leadership, Buffy has been a constant concern for the social networking giant in the last two years. Project is now run by Facebook CTO Bret Taylor, several sources said.

A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment directly on Buffy.

But the official added: "Our mobile strategy is simple We believe that every mobile device is better, if it is very social work with the entire mobile industry -.. operators, equipment manufacturers, operating system vendors and application developers. - And to bring a more social experience and more people around the world "

Facebook recently selected by HTC, while also considering at least one other possible hardware partners - Korea's Samsung. This means that the products are still ways to hit the market, probably for as long as 12-18 months.

HTC declined to comment.

Facebook Mobile is vital for the future. And go directly to the business phone, and full of challenges, could be important for the company.

Facebook says it has 350 million mobile phone users and relationships with mobile operators around the world 475. Although it is one of the most popular phones of almost all of what is available, the social network usually plays a supporting role.

In many cases, the Facebook App is just a place where people can watch the feed of friends' and upload photos and status updates. In other cases, Facebook is working to take things a step further, allowing users to upload images directly to the shooting app, or integrate Facebook contacts with the phone book.

But the fiercest fighting for control of mobile only. Google and Apple both major smartphone operating systems, so little to say about Facebook's mobile destination.

Apple has struggled to keep up strict control over payments on your mobile, even if the applications run off the platform of Facebook, and Twitter also has its social partners. Google is a direct competitor, as it works to promote and integrate your own social network, Google +, through all its products.

Buffy The project represents a significant change for Facebook, which has focused much of his work in partnerships with handset manufacturers looking to create light more socially oriented phones.

Join Facebook Fellowship Program

Applications to join Facebook Fellowship Program are open now and this year Ph.D. students studying at international universities can also apply in addition to applications from Ph.D. students studying in the United States.Facebook Fellowship Program.

facebook fellowshipFacebook accepts applications from students interested in several academic topics like Computer Vision, Computer Architecture, Computer Networking, Computer Security, Internet Economics, Machine Learning, Smart Datacenters, Social Computing etc.

The Fellowship Program is now open to all Ph.D students globally, enrolled during the current academic year and studying Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, System Architecture, or a related area and must be nominated by a faculty member.

Each Facebook Fellowship includes several benefits like
* Tuition and fees will be paid for the academic year.

* $30,000K stipend (paid over 9 months).

* $5000 per year for conference attendance / travel.

* $2500 for personal computer.

* Opportunity to apply for a paid summer internship.

Apply here. Applications for Facebook fellowships will close on December 16, 2011. Any student, faculty member or university administrator can submit the application. Meet the 2011 Facebook fellowship winners. This is Facebook’s third annual Fellowship Program and they are doubling the number of awards this year.

Google.com Free Domain Name, Free Hosting to India Businesses

Google India has partnered with Hostgator India to offer free .in domain names and free hosting for business websites in India. Named ‘India Get Your Business Online’, this pioneering program offers free websites, domain and hosting services to small medium businesses (SMBs) in India.

Free Domain Name Hosting to India SMBs

Their goal is host 500,000 small medium businesses in India in next three years through this program. They offer Indian businesses a free, easy-to-build professional website (within 15 minutes), with free .in domain name and hosting for one year, free email addresses (Google Apps account) and free 365 days support. HostGator will also offer free support in creating, hosting and managing the website for 1 year via its toll free call centers 1800-266-3000. They also offer a free coupon of Rs. 2500 INR for Adwords advertising to promote your site.

What is surprising is that though India has appox 8 million small medium businesses, only about 5% have a website! If you own a small business in India, this is a good offer for SMBs to get their brand online for free. You can always cancel and decide to continue to maintain your brand presence after a year for a fee.

15 Tips to Make Your PC Run Smoother and Faster

Want o make your PC run faster and smoother?

These are some small tips which make great impact on the performance of your computer. Everybody wants a PC which runs the way we want. A newly bought computer just impresses you, with its fast interface, quick reactions, negligible garbage, in short just like what a new computer should.

But after using your computer for about a year or so, like me, you would also face some minor problems with your computer performance e.g. takes more time to boot up, hangs up very frequently, you see a large cluster of useless icons on your desktop, applications run slower, some even refuse to run. Innumerable problems are faced by all of us.

Now all of us won’t buy a new computer just for this reason, so what would you do? Format your hard disk? Probably, but who wants to lose precious data? There are many small things that PC users, don’t know about, or though being aware of them don’t prefer to use them as they require investment of time. And who has free time? Well then, what to do?

I am going to tell you, what I do to my own PC, to achieve the performance level I want from it. This doesn’t require much effort to follow these simple tips, nor do they require much time, but surely they increase our PC performance, your PC would surely run smoother and faster.

Make Computer Faster

1. First of all, don’t ever fill your desktop with shortcut icons or data folders or files. Keep your desktop as clean as possible. If possible, don’t place shortcut of applications on your desktop, just run them from the start menu. This would vastly speed up your startup process.

2. Keep your C: drive; or whichever partition your OS is installed to, as clean and defragmented as possible. I personally prefer not to install most of the programs on my C: drive. Because this is the drive where your important OS files are present, and whatever space is left on the drive is used as virtual memory, so less the garbage on your OS drive, faster your computer would run.

3. Use least visual enhancements on your desktop. That means, to reduce the use of desktop gadgets, which takes loads of memory usage. Also using a simple theme is best. Animated desktop themes, screensavers or wallpapers obviously take more memory usage from your hands. So keeping it simple makes the difference.

4. If you are regular internet user, then consider using the “Clear Cache” function of your browser, to clear temporary offline data saved by the browser – this clears up some considerate amount of temporary data. Also regularly clear browser history and cookies.

5. Update your antivirus regularly, preferably every two or three days. Worms and malwares are a very common reason due to which your computer runs slower than usual, that is because worms duplicate themselves and fill your disk with useless, corrupt data and also occupies a large amount of your available memory.

6. Make it a habit to clear %temp% and %tmp% folders of your PC every day. They contain temporary files which you can freely delete to gain some small but considerable amount of disk space.

7. Use Disk Defragmenter and Disk Cleanup on a regular basis.

8. One piece of advice from me is not to use any disk cleaning utilities available on the net unless they are from trusted owners. Because, it is true that they help you gain some more disk space and gain some speed from your PC but most of their work can be done manually by users, so they just take some useless space on your disk.

9. After installing any program, they take up some space on your disk, also on your registry. I suggest not installing any program which you consider ‘use and throw’ because even after uninstalling them, some of their remains still linger on your PC, which also affects your PC performance.

10. Regularly delete all the contents of your ‘Recent’ folder. This folder contains shortcut to your recently used documents and programs. These shortcuts are just useless garbage which you should clear on daily basis.

11. To speed up the boot time, disable any useless startup programs from MSConfig utility.

12. Delete contents of your recycle bin to gain some more disk space.

13. TeraCopy is one of the best programs to speed up file copying. I personally prefer using this program.

14. Using external DNS servers such as OpenDNS, boosts your internet speed up to some extent.

15. Select “Adjust for best performance” setting on the Performance tab in System Properties.

These are some small tips which I prefer following and I know the results. If you are completely fed up with your PC performance, then you should try reformatting your hard disk partition. That would surely do it. But if you just want to continue with your PC for a long time, then from the very beginning, follow these steps regularly and you’ll see the impact of these minor steps in a major way.