There is nothing worse than cannot login to your own WordPress blog… By login I mean logging into the wp-admin control panel where you can manage your posts. You have so many interesting articles you want to post, but all of a sudden your own blog denies your entry! How can, you are the Admin, the boss of the blog, remember??? As much frustrated as it can be, that’s exactly what happened to me today!

The error message was:

Error 403

We’re sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for /wp-login.php on this server.

Your Internet Protocol address is listed on a blacklist of addresses involved in malicious or illegal activity. See the listing below for more details on specific blacklists and removal procedures.

Your technical support key is: 3c31-b82c-1288-62ac

You can use this key to fix this problem yourself.

After Googling it only I know the culprit was Bad Behavior – a very popular WordPress plugin which prevents spambots from accessing your blog by analyzing their actual HTTP requests and comparing them to profiles from known spambots.

As detailed in the Bad Behavior site, since the past two days many users have found themselves blocked from their own blogs while using recent versions of Bad Behavior. A third party blacklist which the plugin queries recently began sending false positives for any IP address queried. To fix this problem, you will need to download the latest Bad Behavior 2.0.11.

That has fixed my problem and headache, and should fix yours too. No need panadol when we come to blogging.

If you found yourself suddenly couldn’t send out emails from Outlook or any of your email clients today, don’t panic. Thanks to Tmnet for blocking port 25 for all out going emails.

What is ridiculous is Tmnet did this without any prior notice. I receive no notification from them other than lots of junk mails although I have been using Tmnet dial-up and Streamyx for so many years… My friend however did receive an email notification from them today. Yes, he received it today only when the block is in effect! If my friend didn’t forward the email he received from Tmnet, I would for sure have called up my web hosting company and started an argument. Lucky I didn’t do that and lucky my friend forwarded the notice from Tmnet to me!

Following is an excerpt from the email:

… many anti-spam organizations have blacklisted a large number of IP addresses from TM’s network. Due to this many customers have been unable to send emails from their mail server to companies who might be using database from the abovementioned anti-spam organizations.

These spamming activities by a small group have affected a large number of our customers, regardless of the nature of their Internet usage.

Therefore, TM is taking immediate action to address this issue. Effective 3 December 2007, TM will block OUTBOUND Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) traffic or port 25 for all out going e-mails from dynamic IP addresses. Only Outbound SMTP traffic from smtp.streamyx.com and smtp.tm.net.my will be allowed. …

With this implementation, we will not be able to send out emails if our dynamic IP address falls within the affected IP address range. We are thus forced to use Tmnet’s open relay server, at least until our web hosting provider configures an alternative SMTP port.

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What is the latest and hottest gadget in Malaysia? iPod? Microsoft Zune? No,… I don’t think so. I think it has to be Apple iPhone. Let me do a very quick and simple review of the Apple iPhone which I merely owned for 30 minutes. Haha, actually it belongs to my colleague and he only loaned me for 30 minutes to play with… but it’s enough to fall in love with this futuristic phone!

Overall, I would say the phone is not perfect. Nothing is. But it’s certainly far ahead of it’s competitors in many areas. Let me detail them below.

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You wish to appear on the top position in Google? That’s the magic question asked in an email from Exabytes (Malaysia’s largest web hosting company) which I received this morning. As usual their emails, or rather newsletters are nicely designed, but what caught my attention was the prove they show that they can make you top position in Google.

Go to Google.com.my and search for they keyword “hosting” and you can see that their website is in the number 1 position.

This is really good… although I am not sure how much you need to pay to Google AdWords in order to be number 1 on the keyword “hosting”. I guess it’s not cheap… considering there are so many web hosting companies in Malaysia bidding for that keyword.

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It doesn’t matter if you have missed the previous two rounds of PIKOM PC Fair, or you simply miss the PC Fair babes because a third round is coming to us real soon!

Yes, you saw it in the news. Malaysia’s largest ICT fair is back with even more irresistible gadgets and computer accessories… and of course with more beautiful babes! For your reference, below are the dates and venues of the third and final round of PC Fair this year.

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