Orkut OpenSocial applications – beta stage

It has been little over a month since Google launched OpenSocial APIs. There are many applications running on orkut, but only for those with the sandbox access. I am one such fortunate dude. :)

I’d give the outside world a brief about what to expect once this is open to everyone. Though the applications are not running very well, the basic structure and idea are enough to give you the glimpse. Bug fixing and testing are happening amongst developers with sandbox access. If you are also on facebook then you might not find anything exceptional about it, but for others it sure is something new and exciting. I am not writing about the typical applications one might find on facebook, and so this might be interesting for the ones on facebook as well.

OpenSocial APIs have some problem working with IE, but they just work fine on Firefox, which Google engineers must be working on to get it fixed.

First impressive application i found was to Chat online on Orkut called ‘Orkut Global Chat‘. Lokesh and others at Xlratech Software Solutions have come up with this very impressive application. I see it having the potential to kill gtalk and yahoo messenger. Now that he plans to integrate with other social networking sites, you can chat with your friend in any other network. How cool is this!
There is competition for this as there are many developers coming up with gtalk integration on orkut. Google would be happy with such a development. The contest would be interesting to see, and i hope Xlratech comes up with better UI.

There is ‘Adsense for profiles‘ application. With this users can put up advertisements using Google’s Adsense on their profile, and depending on the hits make some money, the usual way Adsense works. Something for users to cheer about, still not sure if Google would appreciate such an application.

There are few other simple game applications, like color junction which is very appealing to me. Also one to ‘tag friends‘ which would brand them with adjectives you want to describe. There is a ‘Bioinformatics‘ application, with which you can have news, jobs and other feeds.’Who has been here‘ gives the date and time of your last 10 profile visitors.

Then there are few geeky applications like online C/C++ compiler, the screenshot of that can be seen below. There are website feed applications like Google maps, iLike music streaming, live cricket scores from cricinfo.com, few games from games2win.com, and doodle environment by iwiddit.com.

I saw many Indians coming up with the applications for orkut, a good feeling. There are many Brazilians as well. Though these applications are fun to use, they tend to make the site slower. Obviously not all third party developers are as smart as Google engineers to keep the application running/loading very fast. Orkut had removed the image on their login page to load that faster. Now with these third party applications the site becomes really slow, just like facebook. I hate to see this happen to the simple and beautiful orkut. But others don’t i guess, why would otherwise people throng to facebook?

P.S.: ‘It has been little over a month since Google launched OpenSocial APIs’
I started writing this two weeks back, so this line goes off fine.

UPDATE: Official orkut blog has started showcasing few applications developed, and soon to be part of orkut. Check them out here.