orkut birthday alerts

It is always a troublesome job to keep in your mind the birth day of your pals and family and wish them on time. At least, for me, it was. google calendar is what I use for keeping track of events and get alerts on my cell phone so that I wont miss any.  I’d always searched to find a way I can get alerts of birthdays to cell phone by integrating orkut birthdays with g-calendar, followed up the same request from a lot more in google communities, but never found a way to get this done.

Finally google has come up with a solution to this, you can see a link

“view your friends’ birthdays in Google Calendar”

Just below the ‘upcoming birthday’ section in your prifile page. This takes you to the google calender and will have all the orkut birthdays marked in the calender. Now the most important part - getting alerts of google calander events in your cell phone. go to http://www.google.com/calendar >> login using your gmail username/password >> go to settings >> mobile setups. Start by selecting your country and then enter your phone number and carrier. A verification code would be sent to your mobile prior to activating this facility. Finally enter the verification code sent to your phone. They says there can be charges for incoming message ( google doesnt charge you for this service), but I’ve been using this without spending a single buck over a vodafone India connection. Cheers.

google sms stream

Those who live in India, be happy as you are lucky enough to get a chance to enjoy the google sms stream service!  as its only available for Indian mobile users as of now.sms channels provides you a facility for creating ’sms channels’ of any particular topic, invite people to join the same and get them updated with news. you can group sms the members of your group and  helps you in keeping the members of group updated with happenings.you might need to give a try as this service is free and your service provider is not going to charge you for incoming sms updates.

http://labs.google.co.in/smschannels/browse

google india currently uses a gateway +9198708070. Also you  will need to be careful while chosing channels as these are created by users like you and me, not by google, so there is a possibibility of mobile spams, you dont want to fill in your inox with irrelevemt sms’s, do you?. after all, no basic mobile model has got a spamassassin!!