Tuesday, September 05, 2006

What !! Acroot ? ohhh Orkut !!

I think the title would summarize my introduction to this new online 'thing'. For those of you wondering what an "Acroot" means: a walnut is known as acroot in Hindi (north Indian language). The picture shows a bunch of them and is taken from Wikipedia.

So officially now I am an 'orkutian' which adds Orkut to the ever growing list of internet 'things' ..... mail id, chat id, some people have multiple ids!!!, website, blog, forum, photo viewer webpages etc. This effectively means more time on the computer which will surely lead to increased chances of back sore, neck problem, carpal tunnel syndrome, straining your eyes and other health problems that are summed up nicely (and ominously ) in this link.

And the best part is how fast the social relevance of such things change over a short period of time; 6 months ago I heard, "Did u hear about orkut?", which soon became, "Everyone is joining orkut" and the last straw which pushed me into panic mode and subsequent signup was, "WHAT !! You are not in orkut ?" - It sure sounded like "What !! You are not vaccinated ?". Sure, peer pressure is real.

In the end Orkut or acroot looked like a mix of chat, networking, matrimonial / dating service, forum / blog, mail, communication service and yeah a fortune cookie !! My first day's fortune: "Your present plans are going to succeed". Cha.... I wish I had a good one ready :(

It is funny how there are so many sites which claim to merge all the needs in site and ultimately we end up having accounts in so many sites. I wonder, is it the power of consumerism or too much time on the internet !?

PS: While filling out my profile I realized one interesting point; The field where one needs to fill in a website takes a maximum of 60 characters. This makes me think, what is the limit of the http name for a website ?