We got approved today on Facebook.

We were unlucky again this time as we were not listed on Facebook’s newest application section due to some issues in Facebook and we were not able to utilize the benefit of it. We wrote to facebook and they replied after 5 days which left us with no option as we did not have any proof to prove it after so long. Many applications were added and we had no option expect to thank them for their reply. Anyways, we know what we can do and nothing can stop us

Here are few of our thoughts on both the social networking sites

Growth from Viral Channels: I must say Facebook has more powerful and effective viral channels than any other social networking site. Applications can grow very fast on Facebook provided that the viral channels are utilized efficiently.

Growth from Application Directory: Orkut has few applications and users on Orkut still have charm in new applications. On the other hand, Facebook has so many applications that people have lost the charm in new application section. We can say this by seeing the number of monthly visitors shown besides each application listed in new application section. Orkut can give you 1200 visitors a day and on the contrary you will only get 50 visitors per day from new application section.

Growth from paid advertising: Facebook provides paid advertising option to promote your application which is not there in Orkut. You can create an effective ad campaign and can get good number visitors by spending about 5 dollars a day.

We will be improving our viral channels further to get its maximum benefit. Only way to do that is to learn from other successful applications on Facebook .

You will soon see this application on myspace. So stay tuned

Do not forget to play Chess 2.0 League on facebook and leave a feedback :)

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Sep 25th 2008, all requests started spoofing which utilized the .NET implementation of oAuth. It not only affected Orkut but all open social containers. So we started to find the problem as we can’t rely on others for the solution as it was affecting our application’s performance and all the data was insecure because we stopped checking the authenticity of the request.

Anyways, we started working on it and within 3 hours we had the solution. The problem was that Opensocial made some changes to their architecture and it started to send value in Token instead of Null and the which affected the base signature because it started adding the value from token to generate the signature. We have already submitted our solution to Google and you will soon find the code in Google Opensocial oAuth wiki page. But for now you can download the code from here:

http://www.xtremeheights.com/oAuth/oauth-net.zip

This is plug & play code. Just add the 2 CS files into your project and copy the code provided in text file in every page which you want to authenticate.

Please feel free to ask any questions you may have. We would be more than happy to help you.

If you don’t know anything about this then please have a look at on Orkut Developer’s forum here:

http://groups.google.com/group/opensocial-orkut/browse_thread/thread/c38fc11c6838f330

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It is 2:00 am now and our application went live on Orkut and the response was tremendous. In the first hour we had 190 people trying to make their life popular. This application utilizes the power of cloud computing so we were not worried about the load. We just want to make sure that our application stays in newest application for at least 3-4 days and our viral channels should be fairly used by our clients.

Everything was so perfect and within 24 hours we got 2200 users using our application. To our amusement 90% of the users were girls. Girls really like to tell about their life and they surely do want to get famous. And this was good for us because our application sends updates to all friends and everybody has a soft corner for girls. Boys want to know what the next door girl is doing and girls always want to know who is doing what.

So why don’t you give it a try and start promoting your life. Be ready to live a glamorous life.

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We are doing great with this application with over 200 new clients registering daily. Below are some basic facts about Chess 2.0 League:

1. New application launched on the same day and we remained on newest addition page for less than 24 hours. Within 24 hours we managed to get approx 1200 new visitors on the first day and got a placement on the third page. If we would have been on the newest section for about 3 days then I am sure we would have made to the first page in Orkut Apps directory.

2. After the application was removed from newest apps we had to use these 1200 visitors to help us spread our word virally. We had very little hope to get new visitors from Orkut app directory as 90% of the people do not browse each page.

3. Good point was that nearly 80% of the people updated their email address which means we could send them emails whenever their opponent would make their move and in this way they would be reminded again of the game they are playing on Orkut. The strategy worked well and every day we execute about 600 games.

4. Our motive is to build an application with consistent traffic and we are glad to say that we are constantly increasing traffic everyday by about 5% by utilizing viral channels effectively.

5. We provide support through community on Orkut and it feels great when chess lovers say that we are the best on Orkut.

It does not need to be on the top to be the best but to get to the top you need to be the best. So lets wait and see in how many days we get to the top. Our fingers are crossed. .

Play Chess 2.0 League on Orkut now.

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Appointy is our first software as service product centered towards social platform to help businesses to grow their business exponentially. On 6th September we executed our first strategy and everything went as we thought. We got about 800 unique visitors on the first day followed by another 850 visitors on the next day. Within 4 days Appointy was seen by 3340 visitors from 96 countries and the conversion ratio was better than we thought. Below is the screen shot of our stats.

These are the websites talking about Appointy.

- www.go2web20.net

- www.killerstartups.com

- www.feedmyapp.com

- www.listio.com

- www.stumbleupon.com

In short everyone believes that this is a great tool to manage and market your business and its free. So why not give it a try and see for yourself.

Appointy.com, Grow your business exponentially.

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As you all know that NEN has nominated us for India’s Hottest startups 2008. Our listing is live now and you can vote for us.

To vote follow the link below:

It would hardly take 2 minutes to register and vote for us. So please vote for us. Thank you in advance for voting.

XtremeHeights Team

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Google has silently released its own browser named Google Chrome. Their logo colors are very googlish and they have incorporated security features that we have only seen so far in the beta releases of IE8.

The user interface is well designed and it gives lot of space to websites. You will feel like you have opened a website in full screen mode yet you will see headers. There is no status bar but still it manages to show the loading message perfectly.

Speed of the browser is faster than Firefox 3.0 and it is indeed next version browser for web2.0 applications. It uses a Skia graphics engine developed by Skia Inc., which Google acquired in 2005. Google is not only planning to capture the desktop market but also mobile market. This vector graphics rendering engine makes high end visual effects possible. It is tiny in size and is capable of delivering very high quality.

Default page is yet another Google break through. It shows you most visited links and you can click it and open the page directly. This is really going to save you lots of keyboard typing. You will definitely love this feature. I wonder why anyone else can’t figure it out.

Cross browser issue is yet another concern for software developers. But the good thing is that Google has thought well on these issues and their engine is based on Webkit engine and to our surprise it rendered all of our applications very smoothly without any changes. This is a great move by Google.

From Developers point of view Google has embed developer console which is definitely not going to replace firebug but at least it will help them to debug codes better than IE. In future version you can be sure to see some great development tools.

And finally browser war will get more intense and this will only make browsers better.

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We have submitted our second social application “It’s My life” to Orkut and waiting for approval.  “Its my life” is all about sharing your life with others. But concept is not so simple as it seems. It not only shares your life but it can help you get famous by spreading your word virally.

It is just like Scraps concept on Orkut but with a difference that as soon as you post something all your friends gets an update. Your friends can comment on your story and whenever they make a comment their friends would get an update about your story. The whole concept is to promote your story to the entire network on Orkut.

So, Join if you …
- need someone to share your emotions.
- want to tell the world about your achievement.
- want to document your life and get famous.
- want to tell people what you think.
- want to help your friends.

Let’s make everyone’s life happy. Share your daily short stories and help your friends learn something from your experiences or read others and learn from their experiences.

I hope you would like this application. Please send us your comments. We love to get admire after so much of the hard work.

Our idea is to build a social network of applications which can be accessed from Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Hi5 etc. By the end of this year we will have 12 applications with more than 1 million users using it and we are trying to develop some meaningful applications which can change your life.

Don’t forget to check “It’s my Life – Let’s make everyone’s life happy”.

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Appointy.com is our first software as a service product is live now.

Appointy, is the first of its kind social network driven, service search engine which not only enables you to search but also allows you to book services in your area or if you own a business and accepts appointment over phone then start accepting appointments online from 200+ million users socializing on web and grow your business exponentially.

The concept is simple.

-First of all, Appointy provides businesses with an advanced appointment management system which helps them to market & manage their clients & appointments. It connects 200+ million users on social platforms like Facebook, Orkut, hi5, MySpace to book appointments with you.

-Secondly, Appointy allows users to search for businesses in their area and allows them to instantly book an appointment with them.

In today’s world starting a business is easy but it takes lot of efforts and money to market, manage and grow your business. Business usually grows over a period of time with the help of word-of-mouth publicity. This is a proven fact but is time consuming. Appointy would just make it easy and helps to speed up your word-of-mouth publicity.

On the other hand, how many times you personally felt that the hair cut your friend got is cool and wanted something similar? Or how many times you wanted to know the best dentist in your area and you called your friend? This is a common problem people face. You have to check reviews, call them, inquire about their rates and if things work you book an appointment with them over phone. You cannot book an appointment instantly with them. Now, Appointy is taking it a step further and allows you to search services, book appointment instantly with few clicks and it will also show you which of your friend visited which business and how was his experience.

We always believe in helping businesses and taking a very small percentage of what we help them to earn. Same concept applies with Appointy.
Appointy is a new concept to promote businesses which accepts appointments over phone through viral channels and we take a small pie of amount in the form of premium services on monthly basis. (About 20 USD per month)

Appointy would increase your business by 100% while reducing 90% of the marketing cost. So give it a try. Appointy.com, Grow your business exponentially.

Update
We are also competing in Facebook fbFund competition and here is the elevator pitching done by Gaby.

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Wednesday, 6^th August 08 at 11:12 PM, I opened my emails and found an email from Orkut.  I knew what was inside that email. And here is what they wrote:

“Hi. Your application has just been approved and should be listed in orkut’s directory within an hour, although it may take a bit longer to show in the ‘newest additions’ panel.”

I knew it’s time to keep awake. I informed the whole team and the excitement got doubled. We started monitoring our servers so that everything goes smoothly.

Here is the complete thrilling experience:

1. Application went live @ 11:15 PM on 6^th Aug 08.
2. Within 1^st minute of launch we had our first player from Brazil.
3. Within an hour we had 42 members playing 20+ games.
4. As it was midnight so only I and Rajesh were in the office. And we feel lucky to experience such a wonderful night.
5. Server was behaving perfectly and to our surprise 1 member was coming every minute.
6. We played lots of games with new members and got some great feedbacks.
7. We reached 100 members within 2 hours of the launch.
8. Got an email from Google to change few things and we were glad to know that Google gives importance to applications even after launch.
9. At about 6:15 AM (7 hours after launch) we had some 500 members and this night would never come again even after we launch many more applications like this.

This is just a small part of strategy we have developed. The main product is different and we are sure that we will be bringing much more users to the parent product.

So keep in touch and let’s bring some excitement in everybody’s life.

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