Scam Free Internet

Moving and Renovating

KVNPark — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 02:51:26 +0000

The site’s currently under process of moving and renovating. You may see some slowdowns, broken images here and there. It will all be over soon.

I’ll be using a new theme which supports threaded comments – finally~ You can see the demo in the comment section below. hehe~

It’ll be a few days til everything’s all sorted out. Most things will still work fine. Let me know if you still see errors after a few days from today, Aug 27th.

Thanks~

New Live Messenger Virus

KVNPark — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 22:35:07 +0000

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Today, I was logged into Live (formerly MSN) Messenger when I got a message from an old friend. I haven’t talked to him in years. I didn’t even remember who he was for a minute. Here’s the conversation:

(5:57:28 PM) D: hey r you there?
(6:00:19 PM) K: yes.
(6:01:32 PM) K: What’s up?
(6:01:42 PM) D: i just took an IQ quiz
(6:02:49 PM) K: lol this is a weird malware. Hope you can see this. you’re comp’s hacked.
(6:04:28 PM) K: So you took an IQ quiz… and?
(6:04:47 PM) D: i was smarter than i am lol i scored 110
(6:06:20 PM) K: I must be bored. 110
(6:06:29 PM) K: ‘s pretty low. Soooo?
(6:07:00 PM) D: you should see if you can beat me on h**p://iqscoretest5.com/?test=3v5368f16
(6:08:21 PM) K: Finally the link. You’re computer’s really messed up man. You probly don’t even use this account anymore. Ima delete you alright?
(6:08:36 PM) D: i bet you cant lol
(6:09:03 PM) K: What? Let’s see where this goes..
(6:09:19 PM) D: take it now while im in the shower and tell me your score when im back
(6:10:05 PM) K: well deleting now.

The bot actually seems to wait for my response. When it said, “i bet you cant lol”, I actually thought for a second it was responding to me saying, I’m going to delete you. It wasn’t…

Anyways, look out for something like this. On top of the usual precautions, change your passwords once in a while and don’t click the links if you’re on the receiving end of such messages. When your messenger account or email account gets compromised, it’s not only a headache for you but also for all your contacts who are going to receive spam and viruses.

TVShack, Ninjavideo Shut Down

KVNPark — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 01:09:09 +0000

The Feds have shut down video streaming sites including TVShack.net, Movies-Links.TV, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.com, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org and ZML.com

If you try visiting tvshack.net, you will see this image instead.

You can read more about it here.

No worries, most of the sites will pop back up in no time. TVShack for instance has reopened their site within minutes of being shut down with a different domain (tvshack.cc)

Ninjavideo is still down, but you can use Re1ease.net or Icefilms.info in the meantime.

ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is behind this massive quick operation. Why or how the Homeland Securities is dealing with copyright issues is beyond me. They have no legal grounds to do this. Money talks as always.

The Free Places to Watch TV Online article has been semi-updated to reflect the changes.

New List: Online Stores

KVNPark — Sat, 29 May 2010 23:07:32 +0000

I’ve been getting a fair amount of inquiry regarding the legitimacy of some online stores (e-tailer). So, I’ve created a new page dedicated to this subject. Here’s a snippet of the new page.

A while ago someone asked on this site whether xxvtns.com was legit. Ever since then, I’ve noticed more of these fraudulent e-tailers. All the ones I’ve come across have been Chinese.

They appear and disappear fast. Many of them are operated by the same scammer. They are able to get the word out fast with the help of Facebook ads, Craigslist, and spam to name a few. Some fraudsters target people looking for dropshippers.

Visit the new Fraudulent Online Retailers page.

eCommerce Solutions Review Updated

KVNPark — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 01:34:03 +0000

Welcome.

I changed the look of the eCommerce Solutions review page. It’s now got the green theme going like the rest of the site.

If you’re looking for a complete solution to creating an online mall, you’ll find the comparisons useful.

I worked all day on it… phew~~

You can also see other reviews here.

My Firefox Plug-Ins

KVNPark — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 23:08:32 +0000

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Chrome and Opera are the faster browsers, so I tend to open one of those (mostly Opera) when I need a quick visit to a website on my slow laptop.

However, Mozilla Firefox’s strength is in its vast collection of “Add-ons”. I don’t have a ton of extensions like some people. These are the ones I find useful. In block-quotes are the descriptions provided by respective developers.

1. Adblock Plus

The most useful plug-in for Firefox. Not only does it effectively remove most of the ads on a given web page, it also manages to compact unused spaces and frames that were used by the removed ads quite competently. It’s simply to install like most extensions. Simply click the “Add to Firefox” button and continue with the prompts. I do turn it off on sites that I would like to support if the ads are not too intrusive. wink wink ; )

Annoyed by adverts? Troubled by tracking? Bothered by banners? Install Adblock Plus now to regain control of the internet and change the way that you view the web.

2. Cooliris

This one makes image and video searching much more convenient and pleasing to the eye. It’s an eye-candy more than anything. You can scroll through search results continuously instead of clicking on ‘next page’. It works with a vast majority of search engines and even Flickr and Youtube.

The Cooliris 3D Wall — Simply the fastest and most stunning way to browse photos and videos from the Web or your desktop. Effortlessly scroll an infinite “3D Wall” of your content from Facebook, Google Images, YouTube, Flickr, and hundreds more.

3. Download Helper

Ever wanted to download a flash video you found. This add-on will help you with exactly that. When on a page with embedded flash video, Download Helper will detect the video and all you have to do is click the animated button on your toolbar.

The easy way to download and convert Web videos from hundreds of YouTube-like sites.
This works also for audio and picture galleries.

4. DownThemAll!

DownThemAll! (Exclamation point included) is a download manager and accelerator. It can help you download all the files of a certain type (ie. all the images from a webpage). It will allow you to pause and continue downloads and open up multiple connections to speed up the download.

The first and only download manager/accelerator built inside Firefox!

5. Firebug

Web developers will all want to have this add-on. It makes debugging and analyzing a web page so much easier. By the way, Opera has a debugger built in called, “Dragonfly”, and so does Chrome and IE. In a way Firefox is missing this feature by default.

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page…

6. FireGestures

If you still haven’t tried mouse gestures, you have been missing out big time. In case you don’t know what it is. You use mouse gestures (ie. hold right-click and drag left and let go to go ‘back’) to make your browsing faster. You can go back, forward, open a new tab, and open a link in a new window. You can do just about anything. I find FireGestures to be one of the best ones available.

A customizable mouse gestures extension which enables you to execute various commands and user scripts with five types of gestures.

7. Greasemonkey

This one runs auto scripts to change / enhance the way you experience a webpage. You can get scripts at Userscripts.org. You’ll see what Greasemonkey does once you take a look at that website. You’ll see scripts that change the way Facebook or Gmail looks and so on. The reason I use it is mostly because of Icefilms.

Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript.
Hundreds of scripts, for a wide variety of popular sites, are already available at http://userscripts.org.
You can write your own scripts, too. Check out http://wiki.greasespot.net/ to get started.

8. Screen Capture Elite

Capture screenshots of the entire webpage or just a selection. You can save the screenshot or copy to clipboard. Plenty of options, at least for me. I tried a bunch to see which one was the best. Some have more features than Screen Capture Elite, but I chose this one for its simplicity and efficacy.

Screen Capture Elite lets you copy or save any visible, complete or selected region or a webpage and save it as a jpeg or png image file.

9. Tab Wheel Scroll

This one is the simplest add-on that I have. All it does is it let you scroll through tabs with the mouse scroll wheel. I don’t know when it started, but I developed a habit of scrolling through tabs with the wheel. I can’t live without it now.

Switch tabs by scrolling with the mouse wheel in the tab bar.

10. Xmarks

Save your bookmarks online for easy synchronization. I tend not to use things that require me to create yet another account, but this one was worth it. You can synchronize bookmarks on you computer with the one saved on your Xmarks profile. This way, you can easily retrieve your bookmarks and synchronize among multiple computers. I reformat my computer more often than most people, and it’s easier to have an auto-backup instead of making backup files manually.

Xmarks is the #1 bookmarking add-on. Install it on all your computers to keep your bookmarks and (optionally) passwords backed up and synchronized. Xmarks also helps you uncover the best of the web based on what millions of people are bookmarking.

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Hmm… I somehow created a list of exactly 10 add-ons. It could be my minor-OCD subconsciously in the works, hehe. I do also have Google Toolbar, but didn’t think that was worth mentioning. Plus, it’s currently turned off.

Hopefully, I managed to introduce you to some Firefox plug-ins you haven’t tried before.

I recommend you to visit the Add-ons for Firefox page for other interesting extensions. There’s a lot out there from weather forecasts to music players.

Watching Sports Online Article Updated

KVNPark — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:07:32 +0000

I updated the sports article with a list of most of the sites I know. That should probably cover all possibilities on any given night. If you still can’t find a stream you’re looking for, there likely isn’t any.

Enjoy~~!

Top Search Engines for Uploading Sites

KVNPark — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:45:57 +0000

Online Storage services like Megaupload, Mediafire, and Rapidshare provide a medium for users to store and share their files. However with the exception of a few services, they lack the search capability.

The good news is that there are search sites that crawl for files hosted on online HDDs. I’ll introduce some of the top search sites that do a good job of searching through various uploading sites.

There’s ton of such sites by the way. I’m only listing ones that are user-friendly, responsive, and good at what they do (w/ little junk files). The list is in no particular order.

1. General Search

General Search asked me to review their site. When I visited, I was pleasantly surprised. I haven’t heard of it before, but I found it to be fast and very user-friendly. General-Search is capable of Rapidshare search, Uploading search, and Megaupload search. One of the problems with many of these sites is that the search results are very messy and hard to read; General Search doesn’t have that problem. They feature rating, comment and related files system, which are all nice additions. You can also specify your search by file types, which many sites have.

2. MegaDownload.net

Megadownload.net is one of my favourites. It has a super simple Google-like interface and search results are very well organized and easy on the eyes. It only searches Megaupload and Rapidshare and can’t search for specific file types. Another negative is that I found the site to be unresponsive sometimes (may be all fixed now). But overall, I give it thumbs up due to its clean and thorough search results.

3. FileCrop

I think Filcrop is one of the older ones. Its unique feature is the ability to search by file size. You can give it a range from 0KB to 1 GB. I’m not sure why it’s capped at 1GB though. Filecrop stands out because not only is the search result well organized, but it also lists the blog/forum page where the link was crawled from (this is how most sites do it btw) so that you can visit the page and read more info on the file. Filecrop is definitely one of the best.

4. Gappon

*Gappon’s been down for a while. If anyone has information on why, please comment.

Gappon is an interesting site. Its indexing ability seems to be inferior to others, but it has categorized indexed files into Audio, Video, Games, etc. On top of that it has a page dedicated to TV shows which is simply another category. Gappon gives its users the ability to browse files instead of just searching. Personally, I’d rather use EZTV.IT if I was to download a TV show or NinjaVideo or IceFilms to stream ‘em.

5. FilesTube

FilesTube, at the time of writing, has almost 50 million files indexed. Plus, it indexes just about every uploading site. You can use the the advanced search function to narrow down your search. You can specify uploading site, size, date, and extension. FilesTube doesn’t bother to categorize files into titles like “Audio” and “Video”. Instead, you’ll have to specify the file’s extension, which is better in some ways. But if you want to search for all the audio files including ogg, flac, and mp3 etc or all the archives (rar and zip), it is a bit of a hassle.

FilesTube also has some side projects which include video (like Youtube), flash games, discussion groups, lyrics, and software sections. FilesTube is a huge site, so there are tons of information and people there.

UPDATE: Megadownload.com (not .net) seems to have gone offline for good. It’s off the list now.

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With ever-improving download speeds for even non-registered free users, they’ve become great tools to download what you want. In a way, online storage service has become a viable alternative to P2P softwares such as eMule and BitTorrent.

Thanks for reading all the way down here. ^^ I’ll reward you with a useful tip — well only if you are into foreign music.

The tip is… 4shared.com. It’s another online storage site, but this one has its own search engine, and is generally full of music files — especially Asian music (ie. Korean). Its search engine also understands Asian search terms. General-Search, for example, gives a 503 error when I try to search something in Korean or Chinese. Other search engines listed here all seem to fail, too.

If you know of a search engine capable of searching in Asian characters, please do share. Thanks.

Featured Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/david_a_lea/3219027991/in/photostream/

How I Watch Sports Online

KVNPark — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:51:32 +0000

There are a lot of “watch sports” online scams. You see them everywhere from Google ads to promotional pages disguised as blogs.

Here’s a simple rule, if a site asks for money or your personal information, it’s almost a guaranteed scam.

I don’t have cable nor satellite, and I’m a big NBA fan. I would rather watch games on TV comfortably rather than clicking here and there, but I don’t want to pay for all the channels I’m not going to watch — at least that’s how it works here in Canada. Also, if you live outside North America, the Internet may be your only option.

Update: Mar. 2, 2010:

Well, I decided to simply list all the sports streaming sites I know.

There’s a few more, but I didn’t think there were worth listing. I only surf between the first three. Only if there’s absolutely nothing, I’ll look elsewhere.

Update: Feb. 22, 2010:

Atdhe.net was the first site I found and used, but didn’t list here because I felt the other sites were better. But unlike some websites, Atdhe.net has kept things simple. I find myself juggling between sites on a bad night; so, it’s good to know of a backup site.

Update: Jan. 28, 2010:

I used to go to p2p4u.net instead of myp2pforums.eu, and I haven’t gone there in a month or so. Recently, I noticed that p2p4u.net has improved. They have their own streaming or something using a generic flash player (which is better), and the quality is amazing. So, check out P2P4U.NET

You just press the refresh button on the top-right of links if a link goes down.

Here’s what I do on a game night, step by step.

Go to http://www.myp2pforum.eu/nba-basketball/ and click on the thread named, “Basketball Today ”.
Click on one of the links under the game you want to watch.
That’s it.

They do a great job at myp2p.eu of updating links as they are available.

But there’s a catch. Most links won’t give you high quality streams. Sometimes you won’t be able to tell the score or whether a basket is made or not. Plus, the channel will get shut down once in a while. It’s the worst thing when the channel shuts down at a critical moment in the game.

I’m most pleased when I see a Veetle link for my game. It’s usually uninterrupted and very high quality. I covered Veetle in a previous article.

When a channel does go offline, I have to refresh the page in step one to see the updated links (if any). Then, I try one of the other links. If none are available or all of them are offline, I just wait for the channel to come back online. You just have to refresh the page until it comes back online.

I know… it’s a pain in the ass sometimes.

Well, there you have it. That’s how I do it. If you have better ways, please do share.

You can also watch other sports through that forum. Just go to the respective sub-forums to get the links.

I’d like to thank the broadcasters and these sites that share links. ^^

Online TV Article Updated!

KVNPark — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:41:42 +0000

Free Places to Watch TV Online has been updated!

I’ve listed some new sites that I use everyday for my TV needs.

Go take a look…

Also, expect an article on how to watch sports online.