How to access blocked sites

Lemme start this post with a note to system / network administrators who blocks internet access only because they can and they themselves surf the sites unblocked : Information is free and you cannot block it .. People will find out ways to bypass in time .. Now another note to people who wants to access blocked sites : If your school has blocked Orkut, then they have done it for your own good .. Orkut is addictive and you should find better ways to utilize your energy .. And if you want to access blocked sites from office .. Try completing whatever your boss asked you to before reading on ..

And now that the sermon is over, lemme write some tricks to bypass evil administrator’s evil policies to access what they think is bad for you .. 😀 :

1: The domain that you want to access is blocked ..? No problem .. most administrators block the domains by their domain names and they forget there is something called IP Address … 😀 .. Find out the IP address of the site that you want to visit and put it in the address bar and viola .. You can access it .. How to find out IP address of a website ..?? Just Whois it .. 😀 . .. You can use services like DomainTools or NetworkSolutions , Robtex… This works for websites which are on a dedicated server .. So sites like ICICIDirect can be accessed like this ..

2: First trick not working for you ..?? Try WorkFriendly .. It will let you surf the website you want in a Microsoft Word like interface to save you from your boss’s peering eyes .. Or try these language tools :

One more site that I may recommend is Google Mobile Search .. This one is useful when you are dying to find out the score and all cricket sites are blocked ..

3: Second tip is useful for static pages but if you want to dynamic websites like Orkut, you need to use a proxy site… : These are proxy sites that I’ve used and liked :

  • KProxy : This is the most famous and most used proxy website .. :D.. Goto KProxy and type in the address that you want to surf and click on Surf .. 😀 ..
     It wont be long before KProxy will be blocked .. So afterwards try their secure connection.. Most cocky administrators do not block secure sites as they do not know how to block them.. 😀 ..

  • Y11: Y11 is another secure proxy which isnt blocked by many filters .. Use it while it lasts .. 😀

  • Fumo2 : Fumo2 is a nice and fast proxy .. And as its url doesnt contain word “proxy” it has less chance of getting blocked .. Fumo2 has some more aliases like BakaAdmin and IpSite.net which you can find on their home page itself ..

  • IceKeeper : IceKeeper is another great proxy that used to help me surfing Blogspot when it was blocked in my office .. Very fast too ..

  • LuckyCRM : Found this one searching for proxies online .. Turned out to be a nice one ….

  • Melap : Recommended by one of my friend .. Nice and fast too ..

  • CountryCodes : Another proxy that has a deceptive name so less prone to be blocked ..

There are many more .. Believe me, I’ll tell you how to find a new proxy .. 😀 .. First check the next tip :

4: Most of these proxy sites have aliases so you can use the alias in case the main domain is blocked.Here are the aliases to KProxy .. So if KProxy is blocked, try any of their aliases such as wpc1964.amenworld.com … To find alias of proxy sites, goto Robtex , type in the web site that you want to search alias for, click on Go .. In the results page, the address that are listed as ‘a’ are aliases to this domain .. So use these aliases ..

5: Actually this is combination of first and third trick .. Find out the IP address of the proxy website and then use it for surfing .. Simple .. 😛

Now the last one .. How did I get all these proxy websites ..?? 😀 .. I used a simple query on Google which does not include any keywords that will make your system administrator think that you are searching for proxy sites .. 😀 .. But you will get a list of proxy sites that are using PHProxy which is the most common proxy software used on web servers .. and do not worry .. this list is huge .. and will keep on increasing .. 😀 ..

.. .. . . ..

Now that I’ve found a way to vent my anger on evil system administrators I feel relaxed .. I dont see logic behind blocking Hotmail or Gmail or Yahoo which are default email address for most people .. To my readers, I’ll like to request .. : If you are benefited by this write up and / or you know some more proxies or tricks that you use, please leave your comment so that others can benefit .. And book mark this page so that you can find out more updated content .. .. And if you are one of those evil administrators whose job I just made a bit more difficult, how about sharing some tips on how you are going to stop users from accessing blocked sites ..? This will improve both of us .. …

Over and all .. !

Windows Live Mail reveiwed

Lately I’ve been beta testing Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta (what’s with Microsoft and long names ..? And DOS didn’t use to support long filenames .. 😛 ) .. It is an email client which is supposed to replace Outlook Express and shouldnt be confused with Windows Live Mail which is now Windows Live Hotmail (phew … ). Last week Microsoft released a new version of WLMD and renamed it Windows Live Mail . Its still in beta and still I am using it as my default email client. Here is a short review of my experience with WLM:

Some great things about Windows Live Mail:

Interface : First impression is the last(ing) impression .. And WLM scores huge here .. Right from its splash screen, the interface rocks. Outlook 2003 like interface combined with a Vista like look and feel makes it look very appealing. It seems like Microsoft have now understood the value of eye candy plus ease of use in their applications. Filters like Unread Mails, Unread Mails from my contacts makes life so easy.

Supports Hotmail: Now you can check Hotmail (ugh .. Windows Live Hotmail ) using Windows Live Mail. If you are like me who lost the email client support on your Hotmail account some years ago, here is a good news for you .. WLM lets you check your Hotmail account without any subscription involved. I think Microsoft has now changed the strategy and allowed httpmail access to WLH because every other email service is offering it. Before using WLM,I was logging into Hotmail account in three or four weeks .. Now I check it daily ..

Lightweight : Although it sports Outlook like looks and Thunderbird like spam catching capabilities, its very light weight on system. It boots in 2 3 seconds and doesnt put any load on memory.

Integrated Feed reader: This is another feature that hooked me onto this proggy .. I usually check my feeds after I check my email and my email client having RSS capabilities stopped me looking for another RSS clients. The feed reader fits seamlessly in the interface and have all the options that I look for : When I click on links, my default browser opens ( I hate those rss readers which show the link in their own integrated browser).

Security features: Microsoft have improved so much on this front. The spam filter works great and catches most of the spam that I receive. It also checks for phishing messages and alerts when a suspect phishing messages is received. WLM is better in catching phishing messages in comparison to Thunderbird which use to think every mail I receive is a phishing scam.

Integrated blogging and contacts : If you have Live Space account, you can directly post entries to your Live Space from inside WLM. The contacts are synchronized with your MSN / Live contacts and you can choose to receive contact updates (great feature) ..

No nagware : One thing I used to hate about Outlook express was it combined Windows Messenger, MSN Messenger with it . .. And whenever I check my mail, I am automatically signed in to messenger service. And you couldnt exit messenger when Outlook Express was running as it would say “Other programs are using it “. Windows Live Messenger is supported in WLM but it doesnt start by itself nor it is needed when you have to check your contacts. There are no advertisements in the client also .. and it wont add any signature in your outgoing mail like other free / adware email clients. It is reported that the final version will also be advertisement free ..

Some not so great things about Windows Live Mail :

Feed Management : Definitely needs improvement. When you click on Add a Feed, it doesnt automatically pastes the link from your clipboard to add link textbox. Another thing is I dont see any option to make this program my default rss reader.

Blogging : I cant change my blogging platform from Live Spaces to any other services .. So this blogging link is practically useless to me as I dont use Live Spaces…

Cant Import Export Contacts : Thats the worst of things I didnt like .. As contacts are stored on Live server, you cannot directly import or export them .. Too bad if you want to import your Outlook contacts to WLM ..

Cant Import Export Message rules : So if you are going to format your system, you are going to lose all your email filters as there is no option to import or export them .. Blah ..

Cant define my own Search Folders : There are some predefined Search Folders and you cannot edit them .. Either you create some filters and redirect your mails to a folder and then use Search Folders with them .. duh .. Improvement needed here too ..

Conclusion :

Windows Live Mails looks like a very promising application to me .. If they take care of some quirks here and there, and include support for other blogging platforms, this is going to become the best free email client over there..

Make the best use of Yahoo!

Are you using Yahoo just for chatting and emailing ..? You are sure missing many nice features provided by Yahoo!. .. This article is an assorted list of tricks I learnt using Yahoo for so many years .. .. Some of them might be known to you, but I’ve found many people who dont know about these features .. This tutorial is for them .. So here it goes . . ..

1: Multiple Profiles:
Did you know you can create as many as 6 profiles of your Yahoo Id ..? This is like having 6 aliases of your one Yahoo Id.. So, for different people, you can use different profiles for communication and nobody can find out your Yahoo email address if you use a different profile.
So, to create a new profile, you have to goto this link…Sign in if you arent already Signed in to Yahoo. ..Now click on Create New Public Proflie link and you’ll be taken to a profile creation page where you can enter the details .. You can create profiles of different genders too .. So if you wanna fool your friend, you can create a girl’s id and chat with him .. 😀 .. When you sign in to Yahoo Messenger, You’ll see a drop down list of your profiles with which you can send the messege ..
Yahoo Messenger Send as
You can login with any of these profiles with your Yahoo password.. (helpful when using a webinterface like Ebuddy or Meebo ) .. Cool na .. ?

2: Extra Mail address:
You can add another email address to your default Yahoo email address.. Consider this case : you created a profile say shahrukh_khan and now if someone sends email to this profile, the email will bounce because there is no Inbox of that address. So if you want to receive email on this address, you can just create another email address within your default Yahoo email address. (You can create only one extra email address on one Yahoo ID) .. To do this, Click on this link
Or
-> Sign in to Yahoo Mail, Click on Options on the top right.
-> Under the Mail Management header, Click on Mail Addresses.
-> Now in the next screen, Click on Get Started link under Extra Email Address header.
-> Choose whatever address you want and click on Check availabilty.
-> If its available, you’ll be taken to an Image verification and then you will have another email address to your Yahoo Id.

You can send emails from this address… Whenever you compose a mail, you’ll get a dropdown list from where you can select the From address. .
Yahoo Mail Compose

3: AddressGuard:
Now this is one feature I love .. ! AddressGuard is a disposable email feature for you to combat spams .. Earlier I used Mailinator for this purpose but Mailinator can be checked by anyone so I stopped using it .. With AddressGuard you can create upto 500 disposable email addresses which you can use for signing up at sites that you consider suspicious .. When you start getting spam on a disposable email address,just delete it and thats the end of it .. 🙂 .. You can even send messages through this disposable email address .. !
To create disposable address, login to Yahoo Mail and click on Options. Under the Spam header, click on AddressGuard link and then follow the simple procedure to create disposable email address ..
(!) AddressGuard feature isnt there in US version of Yahoo mail … so if you want to use this feature, change your Preferred Content to Yahoo India .. To do so:
Yahoo Mail > Options > Account Information { Enter password } > Under the Member Information header, click on Edit and select the Preferred Content to Yahoo India.. Sign out and then sign in again .. .. You should see AddressGuard in the mail options now .. so start using it .. !!

4: Yahoo Search:
Before Google, Yahoo was considered the best search engine .. (well . . atleast I considered it .. but anyways .. ) .. Although overshadowed by Google, Yahoo still provides some great searching options .. Apart from regular Yahoo Search, there is this Yahoo Mindset which is quite inituitive ..
The concept behind Yahoo Mindset is that it will show you results according to your mindset (cant find another word :P) .. It will categorize the search results in two types: Shopping and Researching.. So if you search for Nokia and move the slider to Shopping, you’ll find links where you can buy Nokia cellphones .. and if you move the slider to Researching, you’ll get Wikipedia page on Nokia . .. If you move the slider to the center, you’ll get the normal Yahoo search result … Very innovative .. !
And when we are at it, There is another search utility by Yahoo .. Its AllTheWeb LiveSearch .. It will show search results as you type … very cool indeed .. !
Then there is MyWeb .. You can save your search and share it with your contacts .. I dont feel very comfortable using it .. But you might wanna try … 😀 ..

5: Flickr
Now this is for those who dont know what Flickr is .. Those using it must be knowing that you can login to Flickr with your Yahoo Id … Now to the others .. Flickr is one of the best photo sharing websites and it was taken over by Yahoo a while ago .. So now you can sign in to Flickr using your Yahoo Id and merge your Flickr account with your Yahoo id … Those who havent ever used Flickr should try it .. You’ll love it …

Now I am really tired writing all the stuff .. I hope it will be usefull to you ……. .. Keep visiting . !

[HowTo] Restore your lost broadband password ..

This tutorial has its origin on a thread at Digit forum where a member asked if we can restore lost password from router. I decided to put my CCNA skills to use. And indeed after some adventures with ATMOS commands, I figured it out. So here it goes.

The problem this guy had was this: He had an Airtel connection and Huawei MT880 Adsl router. His ISP username and password is saved on the router and it gets connected when he turn on the router. Now he forgot his password and wanted to change it. And couldn’t because it was saved in the router. Using those asterisk removing utilities didn’t work too. So he was stuck there. Now if you have the same story, you could try this too :

You will need your router password to reset your ISP password. This is different from your ISP acount’s password. On most routers, the default username / password combination is admin/admin or admin/1234 . If you have changed your router password and forgot it too, then I cant help you. You can though reset router password with Reset slot in your router.
I’ll be using HyperTerminal for Telnet as it has got some nice functions. You can use other telnet utils too… So lets start:

  • Run HyperTerminal by Start > Programs > Accesories> Communications > HyperTerminal.
  • Enter any name for the Connection. Click on OK.
  • In the Connect Using combo box, select TCP/IP (WinSock) and enter 192.168.1.1 as Host address. (192.168.1.1 is usually your router’s address ). If you have customized your router’s ip address then enter the customized address. The Port Number 23 is fine, no need to change it. Click on Connect.
  • You will get a login prompt. Enter your router username and password here. If all goes allright you will get a prompt saying “Login Successful”.
  • Now on the console, type this:
  •       console enable {Press Enter}
  • You’ll get a prompt like this:
  •       Quantum>
  • Now on the prompt, type this:
  •       Quantum> fm {Press Enter}
  • The prompt will change to Quantum fm>.
  • Now in HyperTerminal, click on Transfer > Capture Text. Enter a location to save the settings file. For example My Documents\mysettings.txt .
  • Click on Start. You will be back to the router prompt.
  • Now type this:
  •       Quantum fm> cat im.conf {Press Enter}
  • This is quite a big file and it will take a while to list. Just wait until the listing is complete and you get back to the prompt.
  •       Click on Transfer > Capture Text > Stop.
  • Now the tough part is over.
  • Type these commands on the console to quit telnet:
  •       Quantum fm>home {Press Enter}
  •       Quantum>exit {Press Enter}
  •       >user logout {Press Enter}
  • Now you can quit HyperTerminal .

Now open the file we saved in Notepad and press Ctrl F.
Enter weLogin in the string to find.
And here you can see your ISP login details in clear text. 😛 …

I have tested this on Huawei MT880 and MT 882 routers. I cannot guarantee that they work on other routers too. But Atmos commands are usually same on all devices so they should work on other routers too.. And finally, you shouldn’t try it if you aren’t comfortable with command line usage. Don’t hold me accountable if you screwup doing things you shouldn’t be doing. Hope this helped… !

Yahoo Emoticons for MSN Messenger..

This is a long overdue post 😛 .. I was busy with CCNA and some other things so I could post it earlier.. Anyways, Here it is.

Being a Yahoo Messenger user for years, I am used to Yahoo Messenger emoticons. And after some of my friends decided to shift to MSN messenger, I had to become a regular on MSN Messenger too .. But I missed Yahoo’s emoticons. And add to it that MSN Messenger’s emoticon looks ugly to me. So I decided to utilize MSN Messenger’s Custom Emoticon feature to add Yahoo emoticons to MSN Messenger.
I have released it as a custom emoticon pack, and if you want to import Yahoo emoticons to MSN Messenger, you have two choices. The first is to manually copy and paste custom emoticons to your messenger folder OR Use MSN BackitUp. I’ll explain both methods one by one:

  • Method 1: Manual Copy Paste:
    1. Download and extract the archive. You will get a folder called CustomEmoticons with around 80 .dat files. Right Click on the folder and select Copy.
    2. Now in your Windows drive ( C: on most systems), navigate to Application Data folder. For ex: C:\Document & Settings \ YourUsernameOnTheComputer \Application Data\ Microsoft\ MSN Messenger\ ARandomNumberString\.
    3. There may be more than one folders in your MSN Messenger directory if you have multiple MSN IDs on the same computer. You have to open the folder which corresponds to the ID that you wanna have Yahoo Emoticons.
    4. Paste the CustomEmoticons folder here that you downloaded.
    5. Run MSN Messenger .. 😛 .. You have YMSN Emoticons as your custom emoticons.
  • Do NOT use this method if you already have many custom emoticons as this may overwrite your existing Custom emoticons.

  • Method 2: Use MSN BackUp:
    1. Download and extract the archive. Note that this one is different from the archive above.
    2. Download and install MSN Backup. Its a great program to backup your MSN Messenger settings. We’ll use it to import custom emoticons.
    3. Run the program and enter your MSN Id in the textbox given. You will need to be running MSN Messenger too.
    4. In the right hand pane, navigate to the folder where you extracted the downloaded archive.
    5. It will take a while to load all the custom emoticons. After they have loaded, Enable the checkbox next to Emoticons in the right side pane.
    6. Click on the Install Objects button. The custom emoticons will be imported within in a minute.
    7. You may get one or two errors and two or three emoticons out of total 82 wont be imported. (I have no idea why some of them does not get imported..)
  • Most emoticans use the same format as Yahoo Messenger but for some emoticons you will need to put an extra : to make them work. For example use ::| for 😐 .

    I’ve tested it with Windows Live Messenger and I hope they work with previous version of MSN Messenger too. I hope you will like it. 🙂 …

    And yeah .. These emoticons are copyrighted by Yahoo. So you should agree to their terms of use if you wanna use these emoticans. ….

[HowTo] Make Spymac mail work again.

      Beginning February, Spymac decided to withdraw support for Pop3 for free users. It came as a blow for unsuspecting users like me as I was using Spymac as my default email for more than two years. And they were giving a good service indeed. I checked all their support forums and found that so many users have decided to quit Spymac against this move.

      Anyways .. To come to the point, there is still a way to make Pop3 working with Spymac again. This is an old trick, but very handy. Fortunately, Spymac have provided Mail Forward feature to all free users. So, you can forward all your Spymac mails to an account which does have Pop3 feature. The best service for this purpose, I believe, is Gmail all because with Gmail you can send emails as different “From: ” addresses. So the idea is to enable Pop3 on your Gmail account, Forward all your Spymac emails to your Gmail account. And with Gmail, you can send emails with your Spymac Address as “From :” field. So, to make it all work, do this :

      First login to your Gmail account (If you don’t have a Gmail account, you may post a request here).
      –>Now click on Settings.
      –>Click on Accounts.
      –>Click on Add another email address.
      –>In the Name field, put Spymac, and in Email Address field, type your Spymac mail address.
      –>Click on Next Step.
      –> In the next screen, click on Send Verification.

      Now login to your Spymac webmail. You should’ve got a confirmation email from Gmail. Complete the verification by clicking on the link provided in the mail. Now you can send messages from Gmail as your Spymac address. Now to enable Pop forwarding in Spymac:
      –>Click on Preferences > Account Preferences in Spymac’s webmail interface.
      –>Click on Mail Settings tab.
      –>Type in your Gmail address in the Forward To Address field.
      –> Click on Save Settings.

       With this, all your mails to your Spymac account will be forwarded to your Gmail address to which you can have Pop3 access. To configure Pop3 access to your Gmail account, check this. And to send emails from your Spymac account, you will need to use Gmail’s web interface (I tried all settings to make it work with email clients but it doesn’t work ). To send from a Spymac address, just click on Compose and select your Spymac address in From: address field. You should also tweak some settings in Gmail for better usage:
      –> Click on Settings.
      –> Click on Accounts.
      –> Under the When I receive a message sent to one of my addresses: field, select the option that says Reply from the same address the message was sent to.

       All this pain is necessary if you were using Spymac as your default email address and / or have more than one Spymac addresses (Just like I have ) .. So forward your emails from all your accounts to a Gmail address and use the Pop3 feature of Gmail to check your mails. However to send emails, you’d still need to login to web interface of Gmail (or you can login directly to Spymac too, but as I am writing this, webmail of Spymac is down and is doing this like for a week now). I hope Gmail will release some feature for users so that they can send mails from their email clients using different From addresses.