Today crankup.net is celebrating one year. I thank all my visitors, readers and subscribers for supporting me. Special thanks to following bloggers who helped me a lot.

1. TheAnand
2. Kenney Jacob
3. I am a techie
4. SajithMr

Thanks to bloggers like thewindowsfix , householdhacker who have linked to my articles.

Here are some of my popular posts in case you have missed any

1. Change Sonyericsson default menu icons
2. Add background music to your orkut scrapbook
3. Access blocked gmail in office/school
4. Funny Windows Vista Errors
5. 5 email addresses that convert documents
6. Download high defenition wallpapers

Once again thank you for all the support

I am planning to give away 2 free .com domains for 2 of our readers. If you ask why? the simple answer is “Just to thank my readers “.

On September 15th I will be giving away the domain names(you can choose the domain name). Interested in participating? Just leave a comment on this post and you will get a chance to win. Digg/stumble or bookmark any of my popular posts shown below and you will get an extra chance ;-). Don’t forget to add the link to your account, with the url, as a comment.

1. Change Sonyericsson default menu icons
2. Add background music to your orkut scrapbook
3. Multiple yahoo messenger login…
4. Top 10 mobile apps[java] for your phone
5. 25 useful portable applications
6. Add more themes to ubuntu
7. Firefox : Make it better/faster
8. Ubuntu transformation pack

And finally dont forget to subscribe to my RSS feeds to keep you updated.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you can click on your friends photo and visit their profile? Now its possible with orkut tags. Below is a screen shot of a photo with a tag.

Here is how you can add tags to your photos and link them to another profile.

1. Login to your orkut profile

2. Select the photo which you want to add tags.

3. Click add tag

4. Select the area in the photo which you want to tag

5. Now type in the name. Don’t worry if you dont remember their display name orkut will show you suggestions (see below screen-shot)

6. Click save and have fun playing with your photos . See below for the final output

Checkout this photo in my album?

One of the best features in GMAIL is its spam filter. I dont know what their algorithm is but its the best spam filter I have ever seen.

Now ORKUT has added SPAM filter. Here is what google says about SPAM in ORKTU.

“Individual report spam buttons are also available for profile owners and community owners or moderators who want to report spam on their scrapbook or community forum.”

Here is how you can report an unwanted scrap as SPAM.

1. Select the scrap

2. Click Report SPAM

Now you can see the list of SPAMMERS when you select spam in your side bar. If you want to remove some one from the SPAMMERS list folow the following simple steps.

1. Select the users

2. Click Not spam

Thanks to orkut for adding this feature!! I am sure you will be lot of scraps….. no craps. Now you can safely block them

Want to read orkut scraps on the move?

Orut has just launched a new mobile site for this. Goto http://m.orkut.com in your mobile phone to see your latest scraps. This site not only shows your scraps, it also lets you see upcoming birthdays and updates from your friends.

Now take orkut whereever you go

One of the top posts in my blog is "Add background music to your orkut scrapbook". One visitor even called me to clear his doubts Here is another simple trick to add real time map of your visitors in orkut scrap book.

Go to http://maps.amung.us/customize and customise your map. Once you are done, copy the code and paste it in your orkut scrap book.

Example: http://www.orkut.com/Scrapbook.aspx?uid=6447488085740613212

Update 1 : One of the difficult step in this tutorial is converting the song to swf format. Admiyn suggested an easy way of doing it. Check out his sugestion here.

Update 2 : I get loads of scraps from visitors complaining that this is not working for them. This is because of one reason. Please note this script will not work if your scrap book is locked by you.Anyway what is the point in adding BG music if others cant listen to it

Here is a simple trick to greet your scrap book visitors with a back ground music of your own. To do this you need two things

1. mp3 to swf converter : Download any of the free mp3 to swf converts available in the Internet. Convert any music of your choice to swf format. Make sure that you choose a small clip so that visitors don’t have to wait long to listen to your music.
2. A free storage space in the Internet : Sign up to any of the free sstogare space service and upload your swf file to a folder which is accessible to everyone. I have used google pages : http://www.pages.google.comin my example.

Now lets start adding the code to do this trick in your scrapbook. Login to your orkut account and go to your “Scrapbook” Page. Simply copy and paste the below code in you scrapbook (add a new scrap to your profile). Make sure you change the path(marked in red) of the music file before you scrap.

Update: Many visitors complained that the code did not work. I have uploaded a text file with the code. http://www.crankup.net/wp-content/uploads/orkutscrap.txt .Please open this file and copy the contents to orkut scrap book.

To see a live demo, check out my orkut scrapbook.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could give ORKUT a new look? Well you can!!  (Click the screen-shot to enlarge)

The above trick will work only with Mozilla Firefox. If you don’t have one download it from here. Next install STYLISH Add-on for Firefox. You can download it from  here.

Please note that STYLISH Add-on will not work with Firefox 3 Beta version.

Now download cool ORKUT themes from here and enjoy!

Note: Some themes requires Firefox to be restarted.

What is your favourite theme??

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Welcome! I am Shoban. I am a 22 year old computer techie currently residing in Trivandrum, India. I work as as a software engineer for an MNC in Technopark. I also blog at www.codegeeks.net

Want to know more about me? check out the following links.

Orkut Profile : http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=6447488085740613212

Twitter Profile : http://twitter.com/shobankr

Email : shobankr[at]gmail.com

Few  weeks back lot of GMAIL users were greeted with the message Sorry, your account has been disabled. For more information about Google Accounts, please consult our Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/accounts/ when they tried to log into their account. Infact their Google accounts were disabled preventing them from logging into other Google services like Google Page creator, Google analytics etc. and this is what google responded.

“Our goal has always been to keep Gmail free of people who abuse the service and to keep Gmail inboxes free of spam. We’ve been targeting a large network of spammers to keep them out of the Gmail system and accidentally disabled access to some other accounts. We’ve restored access to these accounts. We know how important Gmail is to our users, so we encourage them to report any issues to the Gmail Help Center so we can investigate and assist them.”

Now hackers have started playing with GMAIL’s security. Read the story of a blogger who lost his domain address to a hacker because of GMAIL’s security failure. A site attracting more than 2000 visitors per day is now reset to zero. A site which topped search results is now no where to be found.

Click here to know how a hacker can install a backdoor within your gmail account. Emails from your mailbox can be forwarded to the hacker without yor knowledge. If you have a GMAIL account it is important that you check your filter settings NOW! (GMAIL -> Setting -> Filters).  It seems that Google has fixed this security issue but existing filters will not be removed.

Read the news about the Worm which hit Google’s ORKUT. Always Think before you run any scripts from your web browser’s address bar.

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