] Recently one of our elite operatives, Irina Slutsky, went
] undercover to infiltrate the launch party for Google's
] new friend-network thingy Orkut. Irina has now resurfaced
] with this report:
 . . .
] A giant bouncer in requisite leather and shaved head is
] clutching a handful of printed Orkut profiles in his left
] fist, telling people trying to get into the club that
] they'll have to "get someone from inside to vouch that
] they are on Orkut" before they can go in.
]
] I feel special as Scott and I hand over our profiles and
] the bouncer pulls back the red velvet rope, showing us
] into the inner sanctum of this brave new world. After
] all, the invitation-only site has garnered over 130,000
] very special people as members as of this writing.

This is one of the best reviews of behind-the-scenes orkut that I've seen so far.

Orkut Launch Party

The academic paper writtten by Orkut & co., analyzing the Orkut.com precursor, Club Nexus.

] by Lada A. Adamic, Orkut Buyukkokten, and Eytan Adar
]
] We present an analysis of Club Nexus, an online community
] at Stanford University. Through the Nexus site we were
] able to study a reflection of the real world community
] structure within the student body. We observed and
] measured social network phenomena such as the small world
] effect, clustering, and the strength of weak ties. Using
] the rich profile data provided by the users we were able
] to deduce the attributes contributing to the formation of
] friendships, and to determine how the similarity of users
] decays as the distance between them in the network
] increases. In addition, we found correlations between
] users' personalities and their other attributes, as well
] as interesting correspondences between how users perceive
] themselves and how they are perceived by others.

Academic paper: A social network caught in the Web

] THEY SAY IT'S ALL ABOUT who you know. But for Orkut
] Buyukkokten and Tyler Ziemann, it's actually about
] who you don't know. As a doctoral student in
] computer science, Buyukkokten noticed that his fellow
] graduate students had a hard time meeting people with
] similar interests. In November 2001, he came up with the
] idea of an online social networking forum.
]
] Buyukkokten, PhD, recruited Ziemann, a
] political science major, to manage the creative and
] business aspects of the project. Together they created
] Club Nexus, a free service exclusively for Stanford
] students.
]
] Club Nexus users introduce themselves by filling out
] profiles that can contain anything and everything from
] which dorm they live in to their sexual habits. They then
] link themselves to students they already know, and voilà!

Evidently an earlier version of the orkut service was "Club Nexus" for Stanford Alumni students...

Stanford Magazine: Orkut's Origins

From a January 26, 2004 article:

] The success of social networking site Friendster is spawning
] virtual copycats, among them Eurekster, Tribe.net and MySpace.com.
]
] But the real buzz centers around a new site called Orkut, which
] debuted last Thursday. The name came from its creator, Google
] software engineer Orkut Buyukkokten. Despite its affiliation with
] Google, the search-engine powerhouse is not Orkut's full-time
] buddy yet.

This morning, orkut passed the 100,000 user mark.

Washington Post: Technology News and Views: Orkut

] Established in 1996, the Computer History Museum is a
] public benefit organization dedicated to the preservation
] and celebration of computing history. It is home to one
] of the largest collections of computing artifacts in the
] world, a collection comprising over 4,000 artifacts,
] 10,000 images, 4,000 linear feet of cataloged
] documentation and gigabytes of software.

Looks like folks who were actually involved with the early days of computing helped out with this one.

The Computer History Museum

Interesting visual data of where orkut users are joining from.

Orkut: Map of U.S. Membership

Interesting data-mining here. Someone put together an app that will display a map of any zip code in the U.S., with red dots that indicate by size how many orkut users live in that area. You can type in your own zip code if you want, and then click on "list users" to get it to list all orkut users who live near you.

Orkut by Geographic Region

] Experimenters burst water balloons in the low-gravity environment
] produced aboard a NASA Glenn DC-9 aircraft.

Videos of What It's Like to Pop a Water Balloon in Space

] All the information located on this resource is for
] private use by its developers and must not be used by you
] in any way. If you use this service and disagree with
] these "Conditions of use", administration of the resource
] and/or hosting provider don't bear any responsibility for
] your actions in general or based on the information that
] might be found on this resource. Also, if you do not
] comply with current "Conditions of use" you have no right
] to complain because your actions will be considered as a
] violation of code no. 431.322.12 of the 1995 Internet
] Privacy Act.
]
] This resource does not distribute any commercial
] software, as this would be illegal. Administration of
] this resource would give all the possible help in
] stopping such illegal actions.
]
] KeyGen.us is a well-known resource and it gave a good
] account on itself working successfully for about a year
] and giving efficient and high-quality information on
] computer security.
]
] Administration of this resource is indeed against of
] using the materials found on this resource for cracking
] any commercial software as it is prosecuted by law and is
] called "Computer piracy".
]
] Further to mention that hosting provider of that resource
] hosts only a catalogue of links and does not host any
] executable files. Also we would like to point to that
] independent developers developed all the materials on
] this resource and we have organized an easy search and
] accessible presentation of this information. We do not
] bear any responsbilitis for hte content and/or use of
] these materials.

Interesting site.

Keygen.us

] BALTIMORE - The clamor over a plan to abandon the Hubble
] Space Telescope -- and along with it, the most striking images
] of the universe the world has ever seen -- has been so
] loud that NASA's chief says the decision will be reviewed.

Yay. :)

NASA to Review Decision on Fate of Hubble