Subscribe RSS

Posts Tagged ‘server’

OpenDNS – Hack your DNS

August 8th, 2009 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | View Comments | Filed in How Tos, Online

If you ever find that your computer takes forever to load websites, and seems to take forever at the “looking up domain name” stage of browsing, then OpenDNS could be the solution for you.

DNS stands for Domain Name Service, and basically it translates the human names for websites as we know them into IP addresses.

When you type google.com into an address bar, it talks to your ISP’s DNS server and gives you that domain’s IP, which then takes you to that site.

The problem with DNS is that sometimes the DNS server that your ISP uses has some records that are old  For example, if your site switched it’s IP Address, then it might take you to the wrong site.  So that’s when OpenDNS comes into play.

OpenDNS is probably the most reliable DNS service out there, while providing a whole whack of extras and tracking features that you can take advantage of.

Awesome Features:

  • Customizable Content filtering
  • Parental Controls
  • Anti-phishing
  • Caching speeds up load time
  • Typo correction auto-corrects the most common typos in top-level domains
  • OpenDNS Guide provides helpful search results when your users try to visit a Web site that isn’t resolving
  • Browser Shortcuts let your users map a short term to a long URL via the address bar, like typing “mail” to reach www.gmail.com

And all of these amazing features are all off-site, with limited to zero configuration except for changing your router’s or computer’s DNS server.  And this is made easy by on-site tutorials.

Try it now!

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Hotmail unleases POP3 email access

April 4th, 2009 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | View Comments | Filed in How Tos, Online, Tech

Great news Hotmail users, POP3 email access using programs such as Mozilla Thunderbird and Outlook is now available to Hotmail users in:

United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Japan, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. If you don’t see your country or region in this list, never fear, we’ll be rolling POP3 out to more parts of the world later this year.

Quote: Windows Live Wire Blog

Here is the POP info for if you live in one of the above countries and you’d like to try it out (Microsoft reports that POP will soon also be available in the United States):

  • POP server: pop3.live.com
  • POP SSL required? Yes
  • User name: Your Windows Live ID, for example yourname@hotmail.com
  • Password: The password you usually use to sign in to Hotmail or Windows Live
  • SMTP server: smtp.live.com
  • Authentication required? Yes (this matches your POP username and password)
  • TLS/SSL required? Yes.

Enjoy!

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

How to bypass webpages through Firewall using Proxies!

December 4th, 2008 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | View Comments | Filed in How Tos, Offline, Online, Tech

Having trouble viewing your favorite website or posting on a forum
at school when you get a page like this?

Here’s how to bypass it.

Firstly, go to this website – Proxy Server Website.  Choose a server that is near you.  Look in the host:port column, and copy (highlight and press Ctrl+C) one of the servers in that column.  Then use the following steps.

In Firefox

Go to the Tools menu, and click on Options.  Click on the Advanced section (the one with the Gear), and then go to the Network tab.  Under Connection, click on Settings, and in the new window that comes up, click on the Manual Proxy Configuration radio button.

Paste (Ctrl+V) the proxy server address you copied earlier into the “HTTP Proxy” box (or you can just type the one I used).  Also, as you can see in the picture above, you should check the “Use this proxy server for all protocols” box.  Once you’ve pasted it, the last 4 numbers (called the Port Number) you need to copy and then paste into the “Port” box, and when you are done that, delete the colon that is left so it should look like this:

All set?  Great!  Hit OK and keep on browsing!

Internet Explorer

Go to the Start Menu, then click on Control Panel (on older computers it may be in the settings menu), and then set it to classic view and click on Internet Options (you can also do this inside MSIE by going to the Tools menu and clicking on Internet Options).

In Internet Options, click on the Connections tab.  Then, click on Lan Settings (a button near the bottom).  In the dialog box, check “Use a Proxy Server for your LAN”.  Check “Bypass Proxy Server for Local Addresses”. As described in Firefox above, paste the address of the Proxy Server that you copied earlier into the box.  Then copy the last four numbers into the port box to the right of it.

It should look like this when you’re done:

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,