Orkut Blog Reads as follows ::

Back in November, Orkut announced that orkut was open to developers. Developers have been building exciting new social applications over the last few months that will make the orkut experience even better. This is why we’re excited to announce that apps will be available to a subset of orkut users starting in a couple weeks, and to all orkut users several weeks after that.

In the meantime, here on the orkut blog, we will be inviting guest posts from developers as a sneak peak into some of the apps developers have built, so stay tuned!

If you’re a developer and want to have your app available to orkuteers the last week of February, you can find out more on how to submit your app here. If you need more info on how to build an app, check out http://code.google.com/apis/orkut/.

The latest versions of APIs are available, and developers can build and test their apps at sandbox.orkut.com. We are going to be accepting applications into the directory manually in order to ensure apps are high quality. To get the latest news on the orkut sandbox, check out the new orkut developer blog.

Have an orkut app that you would like featured here? After you’ve submitted your app to us , send us an email (orkut-app-submissions@google.com) with a description (250 words or less), screenshots, and/or a video walkthrough.

We’ve seen people recreate the M from the Gmail logo out of dominoes and even sand, but until our colleagues in Google’s Moscow office created this video, we’re pretty sure no one had ever made a giant Gmail interface with:

– 162 meters of gray tape
– 45 lego pieces
– 32 sticks of plasticine
– 18 brushes
– 18 square meters of batten
– 12 cans of spray paint
– 10 liters of white paint
– 4 reams of paper
– 2 kilograms of millet porridge
– 1 printer
– 1 hair dryer
– 1 mop
– 1 saw

And the actual M at the end of the video? That’s 3 sweaters, 3 balls, 3 pillows, 2 dumbbells, 2 pair of gloves, a set of child’s plates, a hockey stick, a scarf, a paper folder, hats and slippers. All in red of course.

Sometimes you need to chat with someone about an urgent project, but can’t be bothered by anyone else. And going “busy” just isn’t enough — you might still get that unwanted ping. So, as some people have already noticed, we rolled out invisible mode for the latest version of Gmail chat last Friday. With this feature, you can appear offline, and still send and receive messages. If you’re using AIM in Gmail, invisible mode also makes you appear signed out on the AIM network. Invisible mode is one of the most requested chat features and so we’re happy to add this option, starting in Gmail Chat, and in the future all Talk clients.

As some of you have already noted, chat could be less useful if lots of people go invisible. We’ll keep an eye on it and look for your feedback to be sure we’re doing what’s best for the community.

Petko Petkov of “ethical hacking” group GNUCitizen has developed a proof-of-concept program to steal contacts and incoming e-mails from Google Gmail users.
“This can be used to forward all your incoming e-mail,” Pure Hacking security researcher Chris Gatford said. “It’s just a proof of concept at the moment, but what they’re demonstrating is the potential to use this vulnerability for malicious purposes.”

According to Gatford, attackers could compromise a Gmail account–using a cross-site scripting vulnerability–if the victim is logged in and clicks on a malicious link. From that moment, the attacker can take over the session cookies for Gmail and subsequently forward all the account’s messages to a POP account.

“If someone picks up on this before Google fixes it–or if someone knew of the vulnerability before this guy published it–this could be very damaging to Gmail users,” he added.

The problem is potentially compounded by Google’s policy of retaining cookies for two years.

“Once you’ve managed to snarf a cookie, you can access (a user’s) Gmail account without the password for the next two years,” he said.

Read Complete Hack @ Zdnet.com

This post is about a Firefox extension that allows you to manage multiple Gmail accounts and receive new mail notifications. Displays account details including unread messages, saved drafts, spam messages, labels with new mail, space used, and new mail snippets.

Get the Firefox addon @ Longfocus.com

Features

* Manage multiple Gmail accounts
* Receive new mail notifications
* Support for Gmail hosted accounts
* Ability to import/export account preferences
* Tooltip with account details and new mail snippets
* One-click access for loading your Gmail account
* Mailto: links detection
* Quick mail compose for Gmail accounts
* Customizable icon placement in the toolbar/statusbar

Tony Ruscoe ..the Genius states as follows

“if you’re interested in the full list of Google subdomains which I found using script (ASP and the MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP object) – and I know there are others – the list is available @ Tony Ruscoe’s Blog”

Please note: The list below is far from complete and some of the subdomains may no longer be active.

Google states as follows ….

We want our users to feel safe when they search the web, and we’re continuously working to identify dangerous sites and increase protection for our users. This warning message appears with search results we’ve identified as sites that may install malicious software on your computer:

Read More @ Google Help

With about a hundred million stars and two hundred million galaxies, Sky in Google Earth lets you explore the heavens like never before.

http://earth.google.com/sky/index.html