The problem of context

In reference to this article "What Orkut really needs", I have only one thing to say, and that in somes ways it reminds of the problem of context. Earlier in the year while mucking around the university of waterloo's website most notedly the Soshin Research group site, where my friend does research for his Masters degree I stumbled upon the idea of pervasive or ubiquitous computing. If you have never heard those terms before, they simply refer to the ability to embed more software into our environment and thus allowing our mobile devices to talk to the environment more effectively. To give an example this, it would be like stepping into a meeting and your phone knowing to change its status to silent or when listening to music answering your phone triggers the stereo system or TV to automatically lower it's volume.

How does this all relate to orkut? Well the problem outlined by the article is that orkut doesn't seem to be catching so well in the US but does much better in countries with other languages, most notably Brazil, which makes sense since allegedly orkut is a portuguese word that means "land of happiness". Should orkut be rebranded? Well in America, yes, but in other countries the name is just fine. Which presents another problem in context that is applications that are country aware or internationalization. You would imagine that your mobile phone should know that when you are in england you use pounds, and certain slang words mean different things and can talk to environment applications in england just as easily as it can talk them in whatever country you are coming from. The same would apply if you traveled to China or Israel. Interesting problem I think!