The Indian governments Department of Telecom (DOT) recently notified ISPs to block several torrent and video websites such as Pirate Bay, ExtraTorrent, KickAss Torrent, Vimeo, Pastebin and more to curb piracy. ISPs like Reliance and Airtel have already started blocking those websites.

In reply to those blocks, the famous group Anonymous has attacked several Indian government websites and taken them down. While the attacks continue, several users in India are still looking to access the websites but are seeing a message “This site has been blocked as per instructions from Department of Telecom (DOT)”.

If you are someone who is looking to access those torrent and video sites in India, you can still do it through several means. As I had stated earlier you can easily access blocked websites using proxy servers, you will find several proxy servers in our earlier guide on how to access blocked website.

Additionally, you can also access those websites using services like OpenDNS and Google DNS. See our guide on How to use Google Public DNS on Windows 7 and Windows XP or use a Google DNS helper to automatically change to Google DNS. If you are in India, you can use a DNS proxy website like http://dnetproxy.appspot.com/ as well.

If you are still not able to access those torrent websites, you could always try and use the site operator in Google search to directly search those websites and view their cached copies.

If you have any other means to access those websites, please feel free to leave a comment.

I don’t hate Flash like Steve Jobs, but it does slow the browsing experience at times and can get annoying. There are several extensions and tools which allow you to block Flash in browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox but most of the times Flash blocking extensions are heavy on memory usage and can slow down the browser. This is why I  prefer to use a lightweight and versatile extension called FlashBlock for Google Chrome, which does the job very well without using up lot of memory.

One of the problems I have faced with this extension though is the lack of support for whitelisting/blacklisting websites. However, FlashBlock does provide users with an option to do so through a right click option as seen above. The problem is that, though it is easy to unblock websites from FlashBlock, there is no easy way to block them again if you want to change your decision.

However, I did find a way to block unblocked sites in FlashBlock extension by using a simple trick. If you are someone who wants to do it, follow the steps given below.

To block a unblocked website in FlashBlock, open the website in question in Google Chrome and then click on the wrench icon and then select “Developer tools” from under the Tools menu. Alternatively, you can also use the shortcut key “Ctrl + Shift + I”

Doing the above steps will load the Chrome Developer interface. Now click on the “Resources” tab in the interface and expand the “Local Storage” dropdown. Now look for the exact URL of the website under the Local Storage menu and click on it. This will display the “Key-Value” pair of information stored for the website.

To block the website through FlashBlock again, look for the key “ujs_flashblock” and right click on it and select the “Delete” option from the menu. Once you have deleted the key, reload the website again and Flash will be blocked on it.

Though there are several other Flash blocking extensions which provide with an easier interface to manage whitelists and blacklists, the extension is question is one of the best out there and does not hog resources. Blocking a website again is a little hard, but it is a great tradeoff for performance it provides.

Google Chrome has several versions of their browser which includes the stable version, beta version and development version. However, users can only run one instance of them at any given time. Google does provide another cutting-edge version called the Canary build. The Canary build is a nightly build and contains untested code and features which will be introduced in other version of Chrome at a later stage.

I prefer to use Google Canary builds because they usually contain cutting edge technologies and newer features which are not yet available in other versions and gives me a chance to test them out. However, the one thing I have had a problem with the Canary version is that Google does not allow you to set it as the default browser.

The explanation they give for it is that it is a secondary installation of Chrome and cannot be set as the default browser. Well, that is a problem for me because some times the dev version (which I also used) was buggier than the Canary version and was not updated as frequently to address the reported bugs.

So I decided to find a way to set the Google Chrome Canary version as default and found a neat registry hack at this forum. All you have to do is download a simple registry file listed in the forum post and edit it to replace your username in the Registry.reg file. Once you have done that just double click and click on the “Yes” button when prompted to add the entries to your registry.

After you have inserted the registry entry, Chrome Canary will be set as your default browser. If you are looking to reverse that, just head to control panel and change the default application or use your browsers’ preference to set it back as the default browser. The forum in question requires you to register before you download the file as an alternative, you can download the file directly from here.

For Mac users all you need to do is run Safari and then head to preferences and change the “Default web browser” to Canary from the dropdown menu. You can visit this site to find visual instructions for doing that.

Of Late, Twitter has been a target of lot of spam messages, but the most recent ones are pretty dangerous phishing attacks and can allow a spammer to access your Twitter username and password. Most recently Twitter phishing attacks have spread through DM messages like “You Seen What This Person is Saying About You Terrible Things” and “Somebody is Saying Real Bad Rumors About You“.

The new phishing attack is spreading on Twitter through messages like:

Hey this user is posting very bad rumors about you…

Hi someone is posting horrible rumors about you…

The messages above are accompanied with a link which takes you to a phishing website that looks very similar to Twitter. The websites’ URL is also made to look very similar to that of Twitter.

Once you are on the website, you will be asked to sign in to your Twitter account because your session has timed out. If you enter your username and password into the phishing page, the scammers will redirect you to Twitter and ask permission to install an app which will then send out the rogue message as a direct message to all your followers and continue spreading the phishing attack.

Please DO NOT enter you username and password since the scammers will then gain access to your account username and password. If you already have done so, make sure to change your Twitter password IMMEDIATELY. Also follow our guide to remove apps from Twitter to revoke permissions to the rogue app that you granted access to.

Please do share this page with your Twitter friends so that they are aware of this phishing attack.

I have been using Gmail for a few years now and have come to love their spam filtering and security among other things. Gmail was probably one of the first free email provider to allow users to see where they logged in from and also provide an additional security layer with 2-step verification logins.

Some of the most interesting features in Gmail have been the ability to detect suspicious emails from your contacts, ability to alert you whenever any suspicious activity takes place in your account and the feature which alerts you whenever any filters have been setup to forward emails to another account.

However, there is a chance that most of the users do not access their accounts through the web interface and instead prefer using IMAP, notifying such types of accounts is harder. To overcome that problem Gmail has now started sending out emails to users saying that they have detected and prevented a suspicious login from an unknown location.

The email which arrived in my inbox earlier today can be seen in the image above. The message reads:

Keith,

Someone recently tried to use an application to sign in to your Google Account, [redacted]. We prevented the sign-in attempt in case this was a hijacker trying to access your account. Please review the details of the sign-in attempt:

May 8, 2012 8:37am GMT
IP Address: 204.15.240.72
Location: Sunnyvale, California, United States

If you do not recognize this sign-in attempt, someone else might be trying to access your account. You should sign in to your account and reset your password immediately. Find out how at http://support.google.com/accounts?p=reset_pw

If this was you, and you want to give this application access to your account, complete the troubleshooting steps listed at http://support.google.com/mail?p=client_login

Sincerely,
The Google Accounts Team

This email approach from Gmail seems to be new and will allow users who don’t access the web interface to find out if their account is being compromised. It is not clear though whether the user was able to login successfully or not. Nevertheless, you should definitely change your password if you receive it.

If you need help generating strong passwords, you can check out 4 unique apps to generate strong passwords.

Also Read: How to find if your Gmail account is hacked and what to do

Update: For all those asking I had already confirmed that this is a legit email and a Gmail community manager has also confirmed this it is legitimate in a stack exchange thread:

I am the Gmail Community Manager, and I can confirm that we do send email notifications in certain cases such as described here.

Always carefully check the URL and never enter your Google password on a page that is not hosted at google.com. For example, it is OK to enter your password at https://accounts.google.com or https://mail.google.com, but not gooogle.com, g00gle.com, etc.

Update 2: Turns out that Google is now actively blocking login attempts from services like Plaxo and Dropbox. A thread on Dropbox reports similar emails being sent out to users.

I have been a big fan of note-taking software which allow me to quickly jot down notes for later. In the past  I have covered several note-taking and sticky notes software and even extensions for Google Chrome. However, Evernote has always been one of the best software I have used for my desktop and mobile devices.

One of the things I usually miss while using Evernote is the lack of ability to post sticky notes on my desktop and a desktop widget which would allow me to quickly jot down notes without having to open up the app itself.

While searching for a Sticky notes application which would work with Evernote, I came across the "Sticky Notes" app in the Evernote Trunk, where external developers create apps based on the Evernote API.

Also Check Out Some Similar Software:

• Note Taking and Sticky Notes Apps for Chrome
• 11 Useful and Free Sticky Notes Software for your Desktop
• Create a Hyperlinked Notes Database with Tomboy
• 5 Must Have Back to School Apps for Mac
• wikidPad: Wikipedia Like Note Taking Application

Sticky Notes for Evernote has looks and feels like any sticky notes app for desktop out there. However, the advantage of using this app is that it automatically synchronizes your notes to Evernote making it available on multiple devices. Additionally, you can also setup the app on multiple desktops and it will automatically synchronize notes on them, provided you link it with your Evernote account.

Google is one of the companies which have hidden "Easter eggs" in their search results and website alike. They have so many of them that we had to compile a list of Best Hidden Easter Eggs by Google.

However, a new Easter Egg spotted by Search Engine Land definitely takes the cake. This Google Search Easter Egg kicks in when you search Google for the keywords "zerg rush". Once you enter the keywords and hit the Search button, Google will enact the popular strategy game StarCraft and destroy all the search results. At the end of it all, you will see a popular gaming jargon called "GG"; short for Good Game displayed (see screenshot above).

This is definitely one of the best Easter Eggs I have seen from Google. Have you seen better one’s? Do let me know about them. In the meanwhile go ahead and enjoy the treat by searching for "zerg rush" at Google.com.

Google has been playing around with its search results and the lives of several webmasters as well with their updates dubbed “Google Panda”. However, it looks like the reign of Google Panda is now over and it has been taken over by a new bird – “Google Penguin“.

Google Penguin will attempt to clean up some more spam in Google search results, but it has been bad at best with them messing up several high paying keywords like “make money online” among others.

Read more About Google Panda

• Google Panda Completes 1 Year: A Timeline, Analysis and Suggestions
• Trying To Recover From Google’s Panda Algorithm? Some Mistakes You Should Avoid
• The Biggest Problem Of Google Search Post Panda Algorithmic Update
• Google Confirms Panda 3.3 Update, Changes How Link Popularity Influences Search Results
• Reverse Engineering Google’s Panda Slap, Hubpages Seeing Improvements After Offloading Content To Subdomains

The Panda update has definitely caused a lot of webmasters to lose sleep because of dropping traffic and removal from lucrative search engine positioning. Google Penguin is set to compound things further. However, unlike the earlier update, users affected by the Google Penguin update will be able to voice their concerns directly to Google through a Google Docs form.

If you think that you have been affected by the Google Penguin updates, you can visit this form (which was tweeted by Head of webspam at Google; Matt Cutts) and voice your concern about being demoted or removed from Google search results. The form says;

If your site was affected by the “Penguin” webspam algorithm update on April 24th, 2012, and you don’t think it should have been affected, please give us more details below:

This seems to be the first time that Google is actually accepting direct requests from webmasters about issues regarding search engine penalties. In the past, webmasters could only use forums and webmaster tools to voice their displeasure. However, don’t expect them to go through each and every request, because they might get millions of them from users and it would definitely not be possible to go through them all.

Image credit Matt Cutts via Instagram

It looks like one of the largest banks in United States; Bank of America is facing a massive outage on its online website. The outage is causing its customer to freak out as it is not allowing them to log in.

Loads of users on Twitter are complaining about the outage. Users are shown a splash screen when they visit the website http://www.bankofamerica.com and clicking on the Login button displays the following message;

Online Banking is experiencing temporary slowed system response. While we are resolving the situation, we want to help you get to where you are going:

Clicking on the "Continue to Online Banking" link takes you to a website which is down. It is not clear as to whether the outage is a system problem or whether they are under a mysterious attack. Bank of America has seen outages in the past which were not an attempted DDoS by the Anonymous group.

We will update the story once we have more information.

Instagram is one of the hottest apps for iOS and Android with more than 35 million users combined. The app which did not have any revenue was so popular that Facebook went ahead and purchased it for more than $1 billion. However, the purchase by Facebook has left many users wondering as to whether they should continue using the app or not?

If  you are one of those disgruntled users and are looking to stop using the app, here is a easy way to export and download all the Instagram photos you have uploaded till now and back them up to your computer. You can also download and move them to a free online storage service of your choice as well.

Export and Download Instagram Photos to Desktop PC

Instaport is a web service which allows you to export all your Instagram photos and download them to your local PC (they are working on social export soon). To download all your Instagram photos, visit the website at http://instaport.me/ and connect it to your Instagram account.

Once you have done that, you will be able to export and download all your Instagram photos to your computer. You can also select from to only download a smaller number of photos or select photos you have uploaded between certain dates. Additionally, you could also download photos which you have liked and photos with certain tags.

Export, Download or Backup Instagram Photos to Dropbox, Facebook or Flickr

If you are looking to download your Instagram photos to Dropbox, Facebook (ironic ) or Flickr, you can use a very useful service called If This Then That or ifttt for short, which provides you with recipes to automatically perform tasks based on certain triggers or action.

ifttt is a very simple service and users can find recipes which will allow them to backup their Instagram photos to Flickr or save them to Dropbox or upload them to Flickr or Tumblr among other places.

To setup a backup for your Instagram photos, sign up for the ifttt service and visit the recipe page for Instagram at http://ifttt.com/instagram. Once there,  you can select the recipe you want to use and setup the required parameters. Once you have done that, just click the “Create task” button to create it. ifttt will then periodically run the task and backup your Instagram photos to your selected service.

Please note: While using ifttt, your older photos may not be backed up. You might have to use the first method to download all your photos and then upload it to  your choice of service.