Using OpenDNS with StarHub MaxMobile

There are interesting benefits to using OpenDNS, like content filtering, if you have young children at home.
So I decided to give it a try and ditch my Starhub DNS which i found to be pretty slow when DNS changes are being propagated to.

Take a look at http://www.opendns.com for the full details.


This is the reply from Starhub helpdesk:
1. Open you dashboard
2. Click on "Tools" and select "Options".
3. Click on "Profile Management" and select "New".
4. Input the Profile Name.
5. Under APN, select "Static" and input "shinternet".
6. Click on "Advanced".
7. Under DNS settings", change it to "Static".
8. Input the DNS number.
9. Click ok.

Please note that by changing the DNS number, you might not be able to
surf.

Getting a domain name

After holding on for so long, I have finally bought my own domain name.

Once I've registered the name, I found that I could do more than just park it.

So here what I did:

Register the name with Dreamhost. But I did not host the domain with them, too confusing for me. They are just my registrar.

First thing I wanted to do was to point my new shiny domain name to my blog in Blogger. I simply follow the instructions on http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55373, but got stuck on the "Update the DNS Settings" part.

Since I did not host my domain name with Dreamhost, I could not change the DNS records using Dreamhost. I asked the helpdesk and they said that I could use everydns.net. So I did, following the instructions on http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=58317&ctx=sibling#everydns

Now, my domain name (blog.mydomainname.com) points to this blog. What's next? Email and website!

I registered a new Google Apps account (free for standard edition) and proceeded to follow all the instructions to point mail.mydomainname.com to my Google Apps gmail account, and www.mydomainname.com to my page Google Sites.

Trying out Amazon EC2 and S3

Registered an account and downloaded ElasticFox and S3Fox for Firefox and off I went into Amazon's offering in cloud computing...

By following some screencasts and sites I was able to start an instance of a Windows AMI and connected to it using Remote Desktop. Since it's a virtual machine, it feels no different from a real Windows machine. I could use the IE to connect to other sites, which means networking is ok. After 10 mins, I terminated the instance. Happy with the fact that now I have potentially more virtual machines at my disposal for whatever I want to do than ever. Provided I pay for them, that is...

I also tried S3. Using S3Fox, it was trivial to upload stuffs to it and access it from the web later.

Cloud computing is looking promising!