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How to Bypass Websense Twitter block

Posted by admin on Jan 29, 2010 in tips

How to Bypass WebsenseThe company I work for has recently introduced Websense to filter out certain sites which they believe to be non-conducive to a working environment. This is not such a bad this as they block certain sites which are deemed to hold malware and other things.

However Websense is quite bad in that it restricts what users can view and this I disagree with.  It’s more than a Malware site filter it also blocks social networking sites and many blogs. Twitter is not a bad site and I wanted to check a tweet of a user who had posted something interesting regarding testing and website security.

But because we have websense it was blocked all I got was the message .

This Websense category is filtered: Social Networking and Personal Sites.
URL:

http://twitter.com/

The other thing I think is bad regarding the use of Websense is that users will attempt to bypass it. Its in their nature especially if you have a team of Web-testers.

So if you don’t want a bunch of proxies and ssh tunnels installed in your network it’s better to just leave it for users to be responsible enough to decide what is a site worthy of visiting in work time.

So now on to the quick and dirty hack to get your twitter feeds on a network that is using Websense.

You can either load up http://www.twittergadget.com/ which is a IGoogle Plugin – It allows tweeting and reading of other tweets from the your personalised Google Homepage.

TIP: I advise that you turn off the thumbnails in twittergadget or your browser will still attempt to make calls which will be logged by Websense.  Once thumbnails are tuned off Websense never logs any twitter traffic.  so you still can make and receive feeds without Websense being any the wiser.

or you can use the below link which allows reading only

Bypass Websense for all Tweets which have the Term Test

You could just as easilly insert the peoples names who tweets you follow and that will work.

Hope you found it useful :-)

****UpDate – 28th Jan-2010****

Google is running a trial or Twitter Feeds in the main results page on normal searches.

Its only on certain “Hot Topics”

the below link is for the new Ipad from Apple.

Google Apple Ipad results with Twitter Feed

see the screenshot.

Screenshot

 
5

Quick Tip – Finding (*) Stars in Excel

Posted by admin on Jan 8, 2010 in Uncategorized

Excel ImageThis is a really quick post.

Today I was looking to see if I could find a star “*” in excel and everytime I pressed search excel treated it as a wildcard and highlighted every cell in turn one by one.

To find the star I had to use the excel escape character of tilda “~”

so in the end in the search box I typed ~* and it found the star just fine.

Like I said just a quick tip in case its useful to anyone else.

Tags:

 
0

Google’s Clock hits Zero

Posted by admin on Jan 1, 2010 in Today's News
Googles New Year

Google's New Year

Well Its now 2010 and the countdown clock on Google’s I’m Feeling Lucky site is displaying fireworks

Happy New Year Every One.

The URL for I’m feeling lucky is

http://www.google.co.uk/search?&btnI=3564&q=

Just type anything you want at the end of the query (q) parameter to be taken there by Google.

So how could this be used?

Well how about a simple Rick Roll

http://www.google.co.uk/search?&btnI=3564&q=Rick Astley Video

Lets change those words as they look too obvious.

Just a tiny bit of URL Encoding and we’re done :-)

http://www.google.co.uk/search?&btnI=3564&q=%52%69%63%6b%20%41%73%74%6c%65%79%20%56%69%64%65%6f

Yep Looks like a normal Google Link to me. How many people would know that the above URL would get them Rick Rolled?

Well how about I now go out and buy myself I nice IDN Domain which looks exactly like Google.Com but no matter what you type in I return all pay-per-click ads (remeber the site would look exactly like Google.com).

I’m sure you now get the idea that just because someone posts a google link and it could even be a Real Google Link like I used above in my examples, it doesn’t mean that you are not going to get sent to a virus site or a site you did not intend to visit.

BeSafe and Once again Happy New Year

Google Fireworks

Google Fireworks

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