You may or may have not yet heard of this term, but I just read it at several articles today. Maybe it was because of the April Fools Day that have just passed. So what exactly is Rickroll? Basically it’s a prank or an internet meme that involves the song “Never gonna give you up” from Rick Astley (in case you don’t know, he’s a recording artist way back in the 80s).

Rickrolling is an Internet meme involving Rick Astley’s music video for his song “Never Gonna Give You Up”. In a Rickroll, a person provides a link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand which actually takes the user to the Astley video. It can also mean playing the song loudly in public in order to be disruptive.

The practice began as a variant of an earlier prank called duckrolling, in which a link to a popular celebrity or news item would instead lead to a photoshopped picture of a duck with wheels. By May 2007, the practice had become widespread, and it eventually began to receive some coverage in the mainstream media.

source: wikipedia

 

So basically it works like a normal prank, you are being presented by a valuable video link. But instead of playing the video, the Rick Astley MTV is played instead. Actually I was quite naive when I was reading a blog post, I really didn’t expect that the video itself was the prank I was like thinking, WTF is happening? It was until I read the comments and searched Rickroll in wikipedia. You can try it out here (a rickroll video link):

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Personally I like the music of Rick Astley but he really did looked hilarious on that video…

I’ve been a SmartBro subscriber for over 3 months now and I definitely have my share of disappointment towards their services. But that’s what you get if you don’t have any choice of ISP in your area. So instead of whining and gnarling your teeth for some missed features that a dedicated DSL has to offer, it’s time to take matters in our own hands.

First let’s take a look on some problems SmartBro users are encountering:

1. Slow Connection
2. Downloading via Rapidhare. Since SmartBro designates an IP per area(which means several computers are sharing the same IP) you’ll get some trouble downloading from RapidShare, specially if someone in you area is currently downloading from RapidShare.
3. Email using Outlook (SMTP Problem)

Well the good news is we totally have a solution for the 3rd problem. I have also a small remedy on the first, but the second problem is now a constant and you can’t definitely do anything about it.

Here’s some Tips and Tricks on solving the top 2 problems in SmartBro:

• Naturally (actually I’ve just surveyed several friends of mine who has a SmartBro line) the normal download speed of a SmartBro user should be between 40-50 kbps, if yours is lesser than this then you have a problem. Sometimes a technician makes mistake when setting up your Internet connection, thus causing some problems with your connection. To be able to check this, we need to access your Canopy (the antennae that receives signal for your connection). Just follow this steps to be able to access it:

First Method
1.) Go to Control Panel –> Network Connections. Hanapin mo yung connection ng SmartBRO Canopy, normally Local Area Connection.
2.) Once na nahanap mo na, right click the connection and select Properties.
3.) Under sa This connection uses the following items:, double-click yung Internet Protocol TCP/IP.
4.) Set your IP address to 169.254.3.3, and subnet mask to 255.255.0.0.
5.) Click OK, and close all windows.
6.) Open your internet browser, we prefer FireFox, and type in 169.254.1.1 sa address bar, this will take you to the Canopy MS.

Note: If this doesn’t work, probably your Canopy MS is blocked, or has been set to use a nonstandard IP address. This is where method two comes in.

Second Method
1.) Follow steps 1-3 from the first method.
2.) This time, set your IP address to 10.20.30.40, and subnet mask to 255.0.0.0

The following steps will help you identify your Canopy address, if ever nagbago na ung IP niya (hindi na 169.254.1.1).

3.) Open the ms-dos command prompt. (on your start menu, select run, and type ‘cmd’)
4.) Enter the following command: arp -a. It will display IP addresses connected to your network, look for the IP address beginning with 10 (10.xxx.xx.xx), this is your Canopy address. Note that i-disregard niyo lang ung ibang IP addresses, as wala naman tayong pag-gagamitan, and your Canopy address is not the one with 10.0.0.1.
5.) Close command prompt and open your web browser (use FireFox) and enter your Canopy address sa address bar (10.xxx.xx.xx).

source: http://cybernoypi.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/smart-broken-chronicles-episode-one-hacking-your-smartbro-canopy/

After accessing your Canopy go to Configuration->QoS(Quality of Service). This is where you would see the default settings of your Canopy. Check to see if there are values under than 500 (don’t change the zero values), if there are, just change it to 500 and also don’t forget to set your connection to a Hi-Priority channel. Just look at the image and set it to these settings.

After changing the settings click the reboot button on the webpage (note: this will not reboot your computer but will reboot the Canopy instead) wait three minutes before closing your browser and setting your IP to "Obtain IP Address Automatically" (follow steps 1-3 on the first method). After that go to command prompt (start->run, then type "CMD"). On the Command Prompt, type ipconfig /release then after the results are visible type again ipconfig /renew (this would tend to refresh your connection. That’s it! Hopefully your connection will be faster this time around. Let’s proceed to the 3rd problem:

• The problem with using email in Outlook on SmartBro is specifically with the SMTP which means you can’t send mail through Outlook, well generally not. Most email sites use the Port 25 for SMTP but the problem is, this port is being blocked by SmartBro (but if your mail provider is using another port then you are practically OK). To solve this SMTP problem, just do this:

During the creation of your new Email Account in Outlook, just copy the usual setting for POP (that’s from your Mail Provider) but in the SMTP, change the address to smtp.smartbro.net and check My server requires Authentication. In the Authentication, just type the username and password that SmartBro gave you after setting up your Internet connection (normally its the first letter of your name plus your surname eg. Paul Domag = pdomag and the default password is normally 1234)

Before doing this, be sure that you have activated your email account. To do this, just visit https://portal.smartbro.net/index.php and login using your credentials.

And that’s it! I’ll be checking out on using OpenDns as your connection’s alternative Domain Name Server, maybe it’ll fix the RapidShare problem. Hope this post helped you…

It’s the very first item in my pools of rss feeds today. The offer that Microsoft did that spurned a lot of positive and (mostly) negative reactions from the IT industry has now ended. Microsoft has finally acquired (or takeover if you don’t mind) Yahoo. As of this writing the final contract to be signed by Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and MS CEO Steve Ballmer is being finalized.

One of my insiders from MS claimed that this deal will eventually dissolve a lot of Yahoo products including Yahoo Messenger, Mail and 360. All products from Yahoo will also be ported to the .Net framework 3.5 from their legacy PHP code.

Let’s turn away from the technical side of the story. How did this happen? Last week a MS sponsored shareholders revolt took place and successfully replaced 3/4 of Yahoo’s current board members, replacing them with Microsoft backed shareholders. This may sound like a takeover, well come to think of it, yes it’s definitely a takeover.