For the longest time, to access Facebook, just changing my dns to use either google or opendns worked for me. However that trick doesn’t work anymore because all the IP Addresses that facebook.com normally resolves to have been blocked by the ISPs in Vietnam. I had resorted to using sshuttle – which creates a tunnel between my laptop and my server in the US. It worked, but it was slow. However yesterday one of my friends gave me a list of IP Addresses for Facebook which haven’t been blocked yet. These can be added to your hosts file and you should be able to access Facebook again!Continue reading

There are lots of plugins in the wordpress plugin repository which can be used to integrate Facebook Like, Google buzz, TweetMeme Retweet etc with wordpress. However none of them provided all three functionalities at the same time or were flexible enough to integrate seamlessly with the theme. Hence I wrote a small php function which can be used to integrate the aforementioned services with any wordpress theme. You can see a live preview at the bottom of this post. Here’s the code:Continue reading

If you came here looking for a way to unblock facebook, look at this post instead

Isn’t it an open secret that everybody uses proxies or OpenDNS to access Facebook in Vietnam? The government of Vietnam has blocked Facebook but a quick Google search will give you at least 10 different ways to feed your FB addiction (don’t deny it.. ha). Most people take the easy way and use one of the innumerable proxies. The techier of the lot harp on the advantages of Open DNS.

But have any of you tried Google Public DNS yet? If you haven’t, please do, pronto.Continue reading