Flood Machine

First of all I am making an entry to the blogging world after more than a month! Hopefully I will be regular from now on. But these days, I have developed quite a good number of apps for Orkut mainly. I will explain them to you one by one. My first post will be on Flood Machine - a fast scrapbook flooder which is a java based program which just virtually blasts your scrapbook. But follow the instructions carefully - there is no hurry; if you follow the steps depicted below, you will be mostly successful in getting the Flooder to work.

There are two ways to install the Flood Machine. One way is to download the exe and run it on computer; the other is to download the class files and run on your computer. I will explain the two ways one by one.

First of all you need a java runtime environment to run the files. You will mostly have it installed on your system. See if there is a directory called C:/Program Files/Java. If not, just download it from http://www.java.com/en/download/windows_ie.jsp?begindownload=true.

1. Running from floodmachine.exe

Follow these steps:

i) Download the file floodmachine.exe from http://www.vbonline.net/Orkut/floodmachine.exe into some directory, say D:/Orkut.

ii) Download the file asciitable.dat from http://www.vbonline.net/Orkut/asciitable.dat in the same directory where you downloaded floodmachine.exe, i.e. D:/Orkut.

iii) Create a file called input.txt in the same directory where you downloaded the above two files. Here is the format of input.txt:

On the first line, type the User id of the person you want flood. You can find the user id of the person from the profile URL. i.e., if you want to flood http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=13056026006056986007, you have to write 13056026006056986007 on the first line.

From the next line onwards, you can write the login details of as many user-ids (fake profiles) as you like along with the scrap text in the following format:

L user-id1@yahoo.com:password1 Hi How are you
L user-id2@gmail.com:password2 How was the weekend
L user-id3@hotmail.com:password3 Great how do you flood so many scraps!
... and so on.

Make sure that the scrap text is different for each id so that orkut doesn't stop the flooder due to same text being flooded by different ids.

You can see a screenshot of how the file is created here:
http://i16.tinypic.com/4dpfh4h.jpg

Finally, your directory should look like this: http://i13.tinypic.com/2j14pzt.jpg

iv) Now, all that you need to do is to click on floodmachine.exe! If it says that it is not a valid Win 32 application, some bad news for you, and somewhat good as well - you will learn a bit more about java. Just skip to "2. Running from class files".

Now you will have to give some inputs to the program.

The first input is for file name which needs to be used. This is the same file you just created earlier: input.txt . So just write input.txt .

The second input is for start counter. This is the counter with which flooding starts - like 1,2,3 or 4999501,499502,499503 etc. Give any number you wish as input.

The third input is for the number of scraps. Give a number less than or equal to 500 to keep the IDs from getting banned.

The fourth input is for the time interval. I normally use 1050 milliseconds. You can give any number according to your wish but just make sure that it's above 1000 because if it's not above 1000, orkut bans ids!(Again that's not a hard and fast rule.)

The fifth input is the maximum number of ids you want to allow to flood at a single isntance. This is to keep the continuity in flooding. Hence if you have 50 ids, you can give 10 here, and 10 each ids will flood in first five rounds and the first 10 ids will start again from the sixth round. This keeps the flooding continous and also takes care that ids are not banned.

Here is a screen shot of the inputs that I entered: http://i13.tinypic.com/2r3yskx.jpg

2. Running from class files

Follow these steps:

1. Download Orkut.zip from http://www.orkut.com/Orkut/Orkut.zip.

2. Extract the contents of Orkut.zip into a directory, it's better if you use the earlier one (D:/Orkut) since it already contains input.txt! So your directory should look like this now: http://i10.tinypic.com/2wdnl8n.jpg.

3. Go to My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Environment Variables. There you may find a variable called 'PATH' or 'Path' just add ;C:/Program Files/Java/jdk1.5.0_09/bin to it. See the screen shot for clarification: http://i13.tinypic.com/2ue1e04.jpg. Do the changes and press OK.

4. Now go to command prompt, by clicking on Start > Run > then typing cmd. Now execute the following commands:

C:\Documents and Settings\...>D:
D:\>cd Orkut
D:\Orkut>java FloodScrapBook

And the program should start! Just checkout another screenshot over here for this: http://i11.tinypic.com/43rbdpd.jpg

If you have any queries, comment here!! I will be updating you in this post about any changes or more information. So enjoy flooding!

Friday, October 13, 2006

Orkut Community Topic Searcher Beta

Friends, now there is another orkut searcher at your disposal. You can now search a specific text within a community topic as well. Thanks to the suggestion given by Darnell Clayton, the author of 'Inside Orkut'. Just like the scrapbook searcher, it is a beta release, and please take the pain of reporting any errors if you find them.

This searcher tries to search for a specific text in a community topic, by traversing through the various posts in the page. If the searcher finds the text in any of the posts, it highlights the text in red, wherever it occurs in the page. Else it proceeds to the next page by following the 'Next >' link. If you want to search more after the text is found, just click the 'Next >' link on the top or bottom right. The searcher will automatically start searching the remaining pages, until it find the same text again. Hope you enjoy this script!

Download the script from: http://www.myjavaserver.com/~topcoder/topicsearch.user.js

Notes

1) Requirements:

Mozilla Firefox with Greasemonkey Addon OR
*Internet Explorer with Turnabout Addon OR
*Opera, runs as a UserJS

2) If you want to reset the community topic searcher, just go to orkut home. You may need to reset your community topic searcher if you have entered some rare text and it is not present in your community topic at all.. in that case, the searcher may keep on searching the community topic till the end is reached.. so to stop searching in that case, especially if it is a long topic, just go to Orkut home(Home.aspx)

Some more updates

1) I am trying to make some enchancements to the scrap searcher and community searcher as well. The first thing is to merge both of them into a simgle script, so you need not install two different scripts. Ofcourse you would be able to dowload the specific script if you only need one of them.

2) I will try to modify the searchers so that they are not case sensitive by default, but the user will be able make the searcher case sensitive if he wishes to do so.

3) I will try to make a searcher to search for searching for topics within a community. Users will be able to search just the title of community topics, or the name of the thread starter. That means the script will not dig into community topics, as it will make the script too slow.

More to come, just keep watching. And yeah, suggestions are most welcome!

* I have not tested the script under IE with Turnabout addon or Opera as UserJS. Those are based on a comment by 'M A K A C O'(identity not known) on my blog.

Why Google needs Orkut ??

In all the discussion of Orkut I've seen so far, most folks are busy comparing Orkut to every other social networking web site around, typically they mention Friendster ("it's so much faster!"), but as we all know these sites are a dime a dozen these days. At least it seems that way.

What surprises me is that nobody has looked at it the other way around: What problems might Orkut solve that Google would otherwise find significantly more challenging?

Those that do seem to speculate about "applying your social network to search" and other exotic stuff, but I'm thinking of something far more basic than that: users.

That's right, users.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "Google has millions of users!" Of course they do. How much do they really know about those users? Do they really have a user database from which they can mine interesting data? If they have one, it must pale in comparison to what Yahoo, AOL, and MSN have.

Rather than try to convince users to start "registering" for Google, why not piggyback on one of the most viral fads going around: a social network application? And, for added effect, make it an invite only system so that you feel special once you're invited.

Just think about it for a few minutes. If you've been thru the Orkut registration process, you know that it attempts to collect a ton of data about you. The kind of demographic data that marketing folks drool over. And right now there are lots of folks dying to get that special invite and begin the sign-up process.

Still with me? Good.

Let's assume that Google internationalizes Orkut and lets it run to the point that it has millions of users registered and active. That's not an unreasonable thing to expect. Then, one day down the road, they quietly decide to "better integrate" Orkut with Google and start redirecting all Orkut requests to orkut.google.com.

Bingo!

Suddenly they're able to set a *.google.com cookie that contains a bit of identifying data (such as your Orkut id) and that would greatly enhance their ability to mine useful and profitable data from the combination of your profile and daily searches.

Of course, we know that the "big three" already do this sort of thing to some degree or another. But Google's lack of intimate knowledge of their users is surely holding them back from doing some of the things they'd love to do. Many folks think it's just a matter of time before they try to get "real" users signed up.

Could this be the start of that?