Moonlight Blog

Top Ten Most-Blocked Websites

William Long — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:06:20 +0000

OpenDNS offers quicker and more reliable Web browsing, but when you sign up for a free OpenDNS account, you can also get other features such as content/domain blocking and access to your DNS usage statistics. With then OpenDNS Domain Tagging tools, OpenDNS issued the following lists of the most-often blocked domains by parents, schools, and small businesses.

1. MySpace.com
2. Facebook.com
3. YouTube.com
4. Playboy.com
5. Ebay.com
6. Meebo.com
7. Friendster.com
8. Orkut.com
9. AdultFriendFinder.com
10. Espn.com

These are currently the ten most-blocked Web sites on home, school, and small business networks. Most of the blocked or blacklisted sites are about social networks, shopping, sex, religion and pop culture. This is not the same as China. In China, websites that talk about Porn, Tibet or Democracy are blocked.

Google Search Results in Warning Entire Internet

William Long — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:44:35 +0000

Today, some searchers found every site in Google’s search results carried the warning that: “This site may harm your computer”. Users who attempted to click through the results saw the “interstitial” warning page that mentions the possibility of badware and refers people to StopBadware.org for more information.

The problem affected internet pages across the whole planet, and lasted for around 40 minutes before engineeers were able to fix it.

“We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file,” Google said in its official blog.

Top Ten Mobile Games in 2008

William Long — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 12:54:45 +0000

Nielsen has released their top 10 mobile games for the U.S. operator market in 2008. Not surprisingly, Tetris is still leading the charts with an overall revenue of 7.0%.

1. 7.0% Tetris
2. 4.0% Bejeweled
3. 3.6% Guitar Hero III
4. 2.6% Wheel of Fortune
5. 2.5% Pac-Man
6. 1.9% The Oregon Trail
7. 1.7% Ms. Pac-Man
8. 1.6% Are You Smarter Then…
9. 1.6% Tetris Mania
10. 1.2% Surviving High School

This chart clearly shows the strong value of brands on the U.S. operators decks. The fact that there are two Tetris and Pac-Man related titles says it all. The U.S. consumer did not change in 2008.

Top Ten Best Java Mobile Games

William Long — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 12:31:09 +0000

Here i have some of Most Interesting and popular java games for your mobiles. Download ten mobile games for your Nokia, sony ericson, Samsung and Motorola mobiles. Here is the list of some of Top Java Mobile games for your mobile.

Tetris is a puzzle video game that descend from the notion of blocks falling down into pits. Some of those, like Puyo Puyo, are hugely influential in their own right. It’s the most-played, most-imitated, most influential puzzler of all time.

Super Bubble Bobble is an arcade game by Taito。 The game features twin Bubble Dragons journey through the Cave of Monsters to rescue their girlfriends. They move over a system of platforms, busting and pushing bubbles, avoiding enemies and collecting a variety of power-ups.

Super Mario Bros is a platform game developed by Nintendo. In Super Mario Bros., the titular character Mario must save Princess Toadstool of the Mushroom Kingdom from the evil King Koopa, king of the Koopas.

Pac-Man is an arcade game developed by Namco. The player controls Pac-Man through a maze, eating pac-dots. When all dots are eaten, Pac-Man is taken to the next stage. Four ghosts (Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde) roam the maze, trying to catch Pac-Man. If a ghost touches Pac-Man, a life is lost. When all lives have been lost, the game ends.

Snake is a video game released during the mid 1970s and has maintained popularity since then, becoming somewhat of a classic. After it became the standard pre-loaded game on Nokia phones in 1998, Snake found a massive audience and soon became the most-played videogame of all time. More than one billion people have played Snake.

Bejeweled is a puzzle game by PopCap Games. The objective of this game is to swap one gem with an adjacent gem to form a horizontal or vertical chain of three or more gems. Bonus points are given when more than three identical gems are formed or forms two lines of identical gems in one swap. Gems disappear when chains are formed and gems fall from the top to fill in gaps. Sometimes chain reactions, called cascades, are triggered, where chains are formed by the falling gems. Cascades are awarded with bonus points.

Zuma is a fast-paced puzzle game developed by PopCap Games. The objective of Zuma is to eliminate all of the balls rolling around the screen along a given path (the path is clearly visible in all of the levels except the last level), before these balls reach the yellow skull structure, which will open to varying degrees as a warning of oncoming balls. As soon as one ball reaches the skull, the rest follow and the player loses a life. To prevent the balls reaching the Skull, the player can eliminate the balls by firing a colored ball from the stone frog idol’s mouth towards the chain of balls that will continue to push forward until the player fills the yellow bar, which is when the balls will stop producing off-screen. When three or more of the same color come in contact, they explode, possibly triggering other explosions as part of a chain reaction. The level is completed when after the bar is filled, the player eliminates all of the balls on the screen.

Bomberman is an arcade-style maze-based video game developed by Hudson Soft. Bomberman, is a robot that wants to be free from his job at an underground bomb factory. He must find his way through a maze while avoiding enemies. Doors leading to further maze rooms are found under rocks, which Bomberman must destroy with bombs. There are items that can help improve Bomberman’s bombs, such as the Fire ability, which improves the blast range of his bombs. Bomberman will turn human when he escapes and reaches the surface. Each game has 50 levels in total.

Prince of Persia is an action-adventure video game franchise that was created by Jordan Mechner. In 2007, Prince of Persia was remade and ported by Gameloft. The remake, titled Prince of Persia Classic. It featured the same level design and general premise and gameplay of the original, but contained 3D-rendered graphics, and more fluid movements. New game modes were also added.

The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. It is a simulation of the daily activities of one or more virtual persons in a suburban household near SimCity.

The pack includes the following games (resolution: 240×320), click here to download.

Best of Moonlight Blog 2008

William Long — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:49:36 +0000

As we move into 2009 I thought it might be fun to look back quickly on the year that was with a top 20 post of the most popular posts published on Moonlight Blog this year (according to page views on Google Analytics). I hope you enjoy this trip back through the year of 2008 at Moonlight Blog.

Youtube Unblocked in China - 7,803 views

SourceForge Blocked In China - 7,720 views

Top Ten Best Wordpress Plugins - 5,043 views

Top Ten Best PlayStation Games - 4,812 views

Top Ten Best PS2 Games - 2,822 views

Top Ten Best Firefox Extensions - 2,645 views

WordPress Mod Rewrite Make Subdirectory 404 Error - 2,431 views

Top Ten WordPress SEO Tips - 2,011 views

Google Translation Gadget - 1,899 views

GoDaddy Blocked in China - 1,434 views

WordPress Excerpt Seo Tips - 1,388 views

Install WordPress MU On IIS With Url Rewrite - 1,225 views

WordPress MU Optimization Script - 1,087 views

Micro-blogging: Chinese Twitter Clone Site - 999 views

SourceForge Unblocked in China - 909 views

Boycott China Product If You Really Love China - 898 views

YouTube Blocked in China Again - 841 views

Custom WordPress Database Error Page - 838 views

DB2ASP - Free Access Database to ASP Converter - 812 views

All in all it was a fairly busy but very satisfying year of blogging here at Moonlight Blog. Thanks to the many readers who have contributed either with guest posts, comments, emails and tip offs. I’m looking forward to yet another great year in 2009.

Security Risks in GoDaddy Total DNS Control

William Long — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 05:22:25 +0000

Web server authentication is an essential element of an organization’s trust strategy for e-business. By reliably authenticating web servers to visiting browsers, SSL server certificates help build that trust.

Until recently, GoDaddy, the world’s largest ICANN-accredited domain registrar, have been found a security risk in there Total DNS Control panel. GoDaddy Total DNS Control allows user to perform advanced DNS functions, such as changing zone records. But the latest revision of TDNS is not safe, because they even the use of http access to the Total DNS Control, This is really terrible. As we know http(Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is extremely unsafe. The others can use Sniffer to intercept, view and analyze all of the HTTP traffic between a web browser or any program that uses the HTTP protocol and the web server. Given these factors, many organizations would prefer to manage web server authentication with the RSA Web Server SSL technology application.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol and a network security protocol.HTTPS has also been known as “Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer”(SSL). An SSL Certificate enables encryption of sensitive information during online transactions. Each SSL Certificate contains unique, authenticated information about the certificate owner. A Certificate Authority verifies the identity of the certificate owner when it is issued.

To fix that security risks in GoDaddy, remember: If you use GoDaddy’s Total DNS Control Panel, do not click on the original link to “Total DNS Control and MX Records”, that link is unsafe http protocol. To invoke HTTPS, replaces “http://” with “https://” in the Web address. The link is such like this:

https://tdns.secureserver.net/?domain=YourDomainName&prog_id=GoDaddy&type=1

Top Ten Best Video Games of 2008

William Long — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:22:05 +0000

In a year when most businesses tried to figure out how to stay alive, the video game industry thrived thanks to two things: great games, and you. So give yourself a pat on the back; your thirst for single-handedly saving the world with magic, guns, and fast thumbs has kept the gaming industry going strong when all else seems to be going wrong.

Of all the games that Time Magazine has reviewed so far this year, 10 games have a tremendous amount of momentum going into the awards.

1. Grand Theft Auto IV

It’s ironic that GTA became a football in the debate over sex and violence in video games, because where it belongs is in the debate over whether video games count as art. No game developers are more radical and more passionate about the storytelling power of their medium than folks at Rockstar North, and GTA IV is the company’s most ambitious work ever. It’s the story of Niko Bellic, an Eastern European soldier-for-hire fighting his way up the organized crime ladder in an archly satirical version of New Yo— I mean, Liberty City. It’s a grade-A shoot-’em-up that doubles as an interactive novel and triples as a sly critique of American consumer culture.

2. Braid

Of all the game genres to make a comeback this year, who would’ve picked the side-scrolling platformer? At first blush Braid looks like a standard old-school Super Mario Bros.-style game. But there’s a twist: on top of standard game mechanics like running and jumping, Braid adds the ability to manipulate time: if you make a mistake you can wind back the clock and try again. It sounds simple, but as Portal proved last year, a simple mechanic in the hands of a brilliant developer can yield near-infinite entertainment.

3. LittleBigPlanet

The hero of LittleBigPlanet is a tiny person made out of some kind of coarse-textured fabric. His name is Sackboy. Like everything else in his world, he is a toy. He runs and jumps and slides through an endlessly inventive landscape made of cushions and weights and ramps and springs and glowing bubbles, all rendered with a gritty, high-res perfection which finally shows you why that PS3 you bought was so expensive. Nobody shoots at anybody. When you’re done with the levels the game comes with — and that takes a long time — you can build and download more. LittleBigPlanet is not an adrenaline game; it’s a restful, chill-out kind of experience. Let Sackboy do all the work. You have all the fun.

4. Rock Band 2

Hands down the best party game ever made, Rock Band 2 does what the first Rock Band did — simulate the experience of singing and playing drums, guitar or bass in an actual rock band — only better, faster, harder and with more songs to choose from. The key is Rock Band 2’s candy-colored interface, which is so clear and intuitive that it feels like there’s nothing standing between you and the music. Boot up, jack in, and rock out.

5. Gears of War 2

After all that time Marcus Fenix spent in Gears of War sawing Locusts in half the long way, you’d think he would have moved on to some less stressful activity like playing LittleBigPlanet. Actually not. Except for some new multiplayer modes, Gears of War 2 is remarkably similar to the first installment: lots of shooting and duck-and-covering and, yes, sawing, plus the usual hard-boiled gravelly-voiced dialogue. Not that this is in any way a problem. The main difference is that the backgrounds all this action happens in front of are now even more spectacular: ruined churches, soaring caverns, jagged mountains, airships made out of giant bugs. Sera never looked so good — maybe when Marcus is done killing Locusts he can finally retire there.

6. Dead Space

The hero of Dead Space obviously never saw Alien, or he’d know not to answer distress signals from remote mining spaceships. Turns out the ship has been taken over by an evil and really gross alien menace that turns human corpses into horrible deformed zombies. Your job is to figure out what happened and fix it and not die while doing so. Dead Space doesn’t break new ground, it’s just bloody, scary survival horror at its finest — cool weapons, amazing environments, fast action, fantastic zero-G combat, no letup, no mercy.

7. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Evil Jedi walks into a room. Room is full of anonymous Stormtroopers, Jawas, rancors, etc. Does he (a) shock them to death with Force Lightning, (b) grab them with the Force and throw them against the walls and each other till they die, (c) kill them with a sweet light saber combo, (d) pull a passing TIE fighter out of the sky and smash it into them…I could go on. This game has flaws, but it’s so unbelievably satisfying to cut loose with the Force, Jedi honor be damned, that the flaws don’t really register. This is Star Wars without any Ewokkish sentimentality, and it’s the best thing to happen to the franchise in years.

8. Hunted Forever

The future is a terrible place, but at least it’s pretty stylin’ — it looks like an animated title sequence from a 1960s movie, all angular graphics and silhouettes and primary colors. You’re a tiny running man sprinting, jumping and sliding through a post-apocalyptic landscape, relentlessly pursued by an enormous hovering robot. This is a free Flash game, and it’s on this list both for its own merits and as a representative of all the beautiful, quirky Flash games that came out this year. Flash developers don’t have $20 million budgets on the line when they make a game, which means they can take risks and try anything.

9. Fieldrunners

Fun fact: back in the 1970s, before they founded Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak helped create the original game of Breakout for Atari. But Apple has never really shown much fight when it comes to the gaming market. Now it doesn’t have to. With the opening of the App Store and the release of development tools, third-party developers have converted the iPhone and the iPod Touch into handheld gaming devices that will soon be serious competition for the Nintendo DS and Sony’s PSP. The pick of the first litter is Fieldrunners, a fast and furious tower defense game that looks great on those super-bright, super-crisp screens and seamlessly integrates the famous touchscreen as a game controller.

10. Spore

Sims creator Will Wright spent seven years writing, researching and designing this evolutionary epic, which may well be the most ambitious game ever made. Spore follows the history of a single species, designed by you, from a cute little single cell up through sentience, civilization and finally space exploration. The innovation here doesn’t lie in the gameplay, which is merely entertaining, but in the sophistication of the animations that make your creation walk and move and dance, and in the game’s hubristic, near-infinite scope.

Source: http://www.time.com/

Wordpress 2.7 Released

William Long — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:47:16 +0000

Wordpress 2.7 has been officially released and is available for download. There are many new features added in 2.7 and the first thing you will notice is the re-designed user interface and Dashboard.

Version 2.7 should be a major upgrade into the WordPress software. Here are some of the changes that it brings:

new interface to make it easier to perform the admin tasks
customization options on the admin screens
the ability to reply to comments from the dashboard
embed support for comments threading
drag and drop support on some sections

The most exciting stuff is the automatic upgrade. From now when new versions get released all you will have to do is one click, and the software will take care of the rest. I am sure this will make WordPress a much more secure software, too.

Pownce is Shutting Down

William Long — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 09:43:32 +0000

Microblogging service Pownce, is closing down on December 15. As of today, Pownce will no longer be accepting new users or new pro accounts. The Pownce team has joined SixApart.

Pownce have built an export tool so users can save the content. Users can find the export tool at Settings > Export. Please export content by December 15, 2008, as the site will not be accessible after this date.

Top Ten Wordpress Security Tips

William Long — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 09:29:16 +0000

Below are 10 security tips that you can easily implement on your WordPress blog. Please share one or more life-savers you use permanently to help protect yourself from WordPress security issues.

1. Upgrade Wordpress - In general, keeping your Wordpress installation up to date is a great way to avoid known problems. Do note that the lastest version, especially in the case of major upgrades, may cause more problems then it resolves.

2. WordPress Version - The tag in your header.php that displays your current version of wordpress. Since everyone knows your wordpress version this way, your blog is prone to hackers if you have not upgraded to the new version.

3. WordPress Username - Every hacker knows Wordpress has a user “admin” with god-like administration privileges. Slow the hackers down by removing the “admin” user. Create a Wordpress user with admin privileges using the administration interface. Log out of Wordpress and log back in with the new user. Delete the admin user. The new admin user should be different than your normal post author.

4. WordPress Password - Are you still logging into your wp-admin page with the same default password that was emailed to you? If so, CHANGE IT! That password is only 6 characters and just numbers and letters. Make it complex and more than 10 characters if you can. Also, try not to use words, make it a nice jumble of letters, numbers, and symbols.

5. Prevent Directory Listing - In many Wordpress installations it is possible to view a list of installed plugins by navigating to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory. This is not a good idea as known plugin vulnerabilities can than be easily exploited. Add an empty default index file, such as index.html, to the directory. You can also protect it using an .htaccess file assuming you’re using Apache.

6. Protect Your WP-Admin Folder - You can protect your Wordpress admin folder by allowing access to it from a defined set of IP addresses. Everything else will bring up a Forbidden error message. So if you only access your blog from one or two places routinely, it’s worth implementing. Also, you’re supposed to create a new .htaccess file inside your wp-admin folder, not replace the one at the root of your blog.

7. Protect From Search Engines - There is no need to have all of your filesWordpress files indexed by Google, so it’s best to block them in your robots.txt file. Add the following line to your list:Disallow: /wp-*

8. Install Login Lockdown WordPress Plugin - This plugin records the IP address and timestamp of every failed WordPress login attempt. If more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that range.

9. Install WordPress Database Backup Plugin - You always have to take regular backups of your file directories as well as the database. WordPress Database Backup plugin creates backups of your core WordPress tables as well as other tables of your choice in the same database.

10. Install Wordpress Security Scan Plugin - The WP Security Scan plugin attempts to both to audit your blog security and to implement many of the suggestions mentioned above.

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