You know when you’re asked by an app for permission to do something with your Facebook profile? Maybe it wants to get your Facebook profile picture, or it’s going to automatically Like a page for you — you’re agreeing to these actions, but you probably don’t want to receive emails from the company behind the app right?

Well just do this and you’ll get less spam from Facebook apps. Click the Change link in the popup dialog and change the option to An anonymous email address.

You’re welcome.

Related posts:

1. Reduce spam from Facebook contests
2. How to Hide Tagged Photos on Top of New Facebook Profile
3. Hide status updates from Facebook apps, not your friends

Recently I’ve started using Hover as my main domain registrar, an excellent alternative to the popular GoDaddy which is where many people buy their domain names from. Like many others, I have got tired of GoDaddy’s site and service. Their CEO’s elephant-killing antics didn’t help with their public image too.

Today, we have another reason to ditch GoDaddy – they are a supporter of the Stop Online Piracy Act. While stopping online piracy is a noble cause, this bill being put forward by US lawmakers is really dumb. So dumb that Google, Yahoo!, Twitter, Craigslist and many other internet giants are opposed against the bill. Ars Technica has a great explanation on why SOPA is so bad.

Anyway, back to Hover. Go check out their website and compare them against GoDaddy. They currently have a promotion where transferring domains to Hover only costs USD10.

P.S. Use my affiliate link and get 10% off  http://hover.com/clickstarter

Related posts:

1. 5 mistakes
2. The Star: Online users bypass block
3. Say NO to Malaysia’s three strikes law (ISP Liability Act)

Recently the Malaysian Commission for Multimedia and Communications (MCMC) issued a directive to local ISPs to filter a number of file sharing websites because they violate the Copyright Act. While some of the content may be in violation of the Act, some think the Government is being too heavy handed by issuing a blanket order to block these sites.

I don’t want to debate the Government’s decision, but I believe that sometimes there are legitimate reasons to access websites that your Government / ISP / employer doesn’t want you to. This article will explain what is DNS filtering and show you 3 ways to get around it.

What is DNS blocking?

DNS blocking or filtering is a common method of denying access to certain websites. Let’s have a look at how it works.

Each website is hosted on a web server that has a IP address. For example, the IP address for Facebook is 69.63.189.16. If you type those numbers in your web browser, you will arrive at Facebook’s website. Try it – http://69.63.189.16/.

However, IP addresses are not very user friendly. It’s easier to remember facebook.com than 69.63.189.16 isn’t it? Therefore the inventors of the internet also created a phone book called the Domain Name System, or DNS.

The DNS translates domain names into IP addresses so that you don’t have to remember random strings of numbers. Each ISP (e.g. Streamyx, P1, etc) have their own DNS servers that functions as phone books for their subscribers.

Whenever you type a website address into your browser, your browser first asks the ISP’s phone book what the IP address for that website. Once it’s figured out the IP address it will then load the website for you.

With DNS blocking, the ISP is simply removing the record for the blocked websites from their phone book. So when you try to load one of the blocked websites, all you get is a blank screen in your browser because it doesn’t know what the IP address is.

3 ways to get around DNS blocking

1. Use another DNS server / phone book

What do you do if your phone book doesn’t contain the address you are looking for? You use another phone book!

Besides your ISP, other organizations also offer DNS servers. One such organization is Google. You can manually tell your computer to refer to Google’s DNS servers – 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 – and it should now be able to access the blocked sites again (unless Google also blocks them).

Google has detailed instructions on how to tell your Windows, Mac or Linux computer to use their DNS. For iPhone users, you can go to the Settings app » Wi-Fi Networks » tap the blue arrow for your current Wi-Fi network » type 8.8.8.8 in the DNS field.

Google DNS on iPhone

2. Use a Proxy server

A proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary, relaying your request for connection to a webpage, file, or service on the Internet. It gets you around the DNS block because the proxy server should not rely on our local ISP’s DNS servers (phone books).

The downside to using a proxy is that all your passwords, cookie information, etc is being relayed though the intermediary. However if trying to access file sharing websites it’s probably not too much of a security concern.

There are many public proxy servers available – just try Googling for ‘free proxy server’. However many of the free ones plaster you with ads in return for their service. I have found a really good one with no ads at http://labnol-proxy-server.appspot.com/.

The proxy server above is created with Google App Engine. The creator even has a tutorial to show you how to make your own proxy server.

3. Use a VPN

A VPN is a secure connection from your computer to another computer or server. It works in pretty much the same way as a proxy sever, but it’s more secure. The TUVPN blog has a post that explains the differences between VPN and proxy servers.

The important thing is that using a VPN will also bypass the DNS block. If you only need to bypass these DNS blocks occasionally, Hotspot Shield is a free VPN service that you can use. It works for both Mac and PC and is a usable solution – just be prepared for the ads.

With great power comes great responsibility

I do not condone piracy. I believe that you should pay the content producers to support their work. The main reason I use VPNs is to get around Amazon.com’s geographic restrictions to buy digital content. Yes, I bypass filtering so that I can pay for content!

My guide here is to empower you with the knowledge to get around censorship from your government, ISP or employer if there are legitimate reasons for it. Use your knowledge wisely and responsibly!

If you found this article helpful, please share with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks!

Update: WirawanWeb.com has a similar article in Bahasa Melayu – Melepasi Sekatan Internet

Last month I made the switch to Site5, away from Media Temple. The reason for doing so was because of terrible response times on Media Temple. This post is a quick follow up to share my experience of the first month on Site5.

First of all, response times have improved tremendously. The difference is like night and day. My average response time is now 750ms, down from 2,946ms in January.

Guess when I switched over to Site5?

Because migrating sites are a pain, I’m not really in a hurry since I still have months left on my Media Temple hosting plan. This means that some of my sites including buzzmedia.com.my are still on Media Temple. Bad decision. In February alone, there were at least 3 outages to the cluster that hosts my website:

1. #1828 – (gs) Grid-Service Cluster.04 Unavailable
2. #1849 – High Load on (gs) Grid-Service Cluster.04
3. #1867 – Intermittent latency on (gs) Grid-Service Cluster.04

The last one is still ongoing and as I’m typing this blog post, here’s what I see on buzzmedia.com.my:

Status as of 6pm on 28 Feb 2011

This is extremely, extremely frustrating since I can’t access my email as well. Needless to say, uptime for this month on Media Temple has been up and down like a yoyo.

I don’t know where Media Temple went wrong, but I’ve gone from being a fan to someone who can’t wait to get all my sites off. If you’ve found this blog post via Google, I hope that I’ll save you some headaches and heartaches by recommending that you forget about Media Temple and come join me at Site5 instead.

Note: For my monitoring methodology, I set the URL of my check to the WordPress login pages for theclickstarter.com (Site5) and buzzmedia.com.my (still on Media Temple). Since both checks are for the same page, the page weight should have been almost exactly the same.

Check out Site5 hosting plans and pricing.

Related posts:

1. Now hosted on Site5, goodbye Media Temple
2. A killer blow to online media
3. Social Media in Plain English

Update 1 March 2011: I’ve posted a follow up to this post – Site5 vs Media Temple, 1 month later

blogjunkie.net (and soon the rest of my sites) is now hosted on Site5. This was a tough decision to make, since it would involve migrating all of my sites but I felt that it was necessary because of the project that I’m launching in a few weeks. I didn’t want my members to have a poor site experience due to my web host, Media Temple.

Media Temple, I really wanted it to work out

I’ve been a customer of Media Temple for 2.5+ years. I was attracted to the benefits of their Grid Service because I had outgrown simple shared hosting but wasn’t smart enough to manage my own VPS. The Grid Service promised better scalability and reliability for USD20/month which I was happy to pay. However the Grid constantly had hiccups. In the beginning I decided to stick with Media Temple because of the hassle to switch web hosts and because of their great customer service.

Unfortunately things have deteriorated to the point where I can’t see the situation improving so I’m cutting my losses. In particular, the response times for the Grid Service is absolutely horrible. And lately their customer service ain’t that great either. I did my homework when planning where to move to and used Pingdom to monitor Media Temple’s uptime and response time. The Grid’s response time was consistently more than 2,000 ms, and regularly over 3,000 ms. Here’s the response time report for Jan 2011:

Media Temple Response Time Jan 2011

If you’re curious, you can see the previous 3 month history at this link.

Site5

Site5 was one of the shortlisted web hosts while I was researching alternatives. I also monitored the uptime and response times of a site hosted on Site5 as a benchmark. The average response time for Site5 was only 730 ms – 4 times as fast as Media Temple!

Aside: For my monitoring methodology, I set the URL of my check to the WordPress login pages for theclickstarter.com and blog.blackshtef.org, a random site I found that was hosted on Site5. Since both checks are for the same page, the page weight should have been almost exactly the same.

So far, Site5 has been a worthy successor to Media Temple. I got the HostPro + Turbo plan, which has technology that separates each site into their own container, called MultiSite. Each site even has a separate control panel so if I ever host client sites on my hosting package, they will never have to share control panel access with me. My plan also comes with a dedicated IP which is nice.

Customer support has been awesome as well. I ran into trouble signing up but I just started a live chat and they resolved the issue in under 10 minutes. And.. they provide site migration for free, which will be handy for me to move all my sites over from Media Temple.

(I will be updating this post in a month with the uptime and response time report.)

Here’s hoping for the best

I’m pretty disappointed with Media Temple and I tried really hard to like them. They had loads of features that I really liked, but in the end it didn’t make sense when I was paying USD20/month for a site that was slow to load.

Since I started hosting my own websites, I’ve bounced around too many web hosts to remember – UltraUnix (wonder if they’re even still around), Exabytes, Dreamhost, Hostgator, Exabytes again and then Media Temple. I’m quite resigned to the fact that I will need to switch web hosts every few years once they begin to decline. Here’s hoping that Site5 will buck the trend.

Check out Site5 hosting plans and pricing.

Related posts:

1. A killer blow to online media
2. Social Media in Plain English

Are you unwittingly being recruited as a phising mule?

Here’s an email that I received today.

Seems like an amazing opportunity to make free money right? Wrong.

This is an attempt to recruit you as a phishing mule, or in plain English, an international money launderer.

Clueless email recipients are enticed by the prospect of an easy way to make money online and some will actually respond and apply to be the representative of ENFOSOFT. In actual fact they are being recruited as mules.

What happens next is that the phisher / hacker logs into the account of phishing victims and then transfers their money out to the mule. The mule then transfers 80% of the funds back to ‘ENFOSOFT’ through an untraceable bank account and happily keeps his 20% of the share. Later when the police investigates the phishing victim’s bank account, the mule becomes an accessory to international money laundering.

I’m not making this up. More details on how this works at BankSafeOnline.org.uk.

Doing some Googling around, I found that you can report these phishing mule recruitment activities to the FBI in the US or BankSafe in the UK. I don’t know how to report it here in Malaysia though. If you know how, please let me know in the comments.

Also, please help spread the word so that your relatives–think of your blur blur auntie–and friends do not fall into this trap. Please tweet this post or share it on Facebook.

Since the last time I checked out Cuil, its results have improved. Still not enough to move people away from their favourite search engines though.

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1. Cuil

Apple Geek on Flickr, by ExtraLife

Suffian pointed me to the 56 Geeks project on Flickr. The closest I come to is the Apple Geek, although I would consider myself a bigger Internet Geek

Related posts:

1. blogjunkie

New search engine Cuil is going head to head with the big G. Unfortunately the results aren’t too great at the moment. Above is a screenshot of some of the results for the search term ‘blogjunkie’. I’m sticking to Google for the time being..

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Advertlets keeps on getting bad press.