Having just seen a section of a Ray Mears episode I’d already caught before, I wanted to check if he had done any filming in Kazakhstan. Simple enough, chuck in Ray Mears Kazakhstan to the search box in Firefox, and wait to see what gems Google returns. One of the entries looked interesting, so I opened it in a new tab, and checked to see what people had to say with ‘Bear Grylls or Ray Mears – who’d survive?” as the ecademy thread title. I was greeted with a “Join Now or Login to read all comments and to submit your own content, questions and comments.” message. Rather than register at every forum or knowledgebase that may or may not have useful information, I have two approaches to such occasions. The first is to return to the Google search results, and click on the Cached link at the bottom of most search results. This will then open up a page with what the Google bot originally found. This tends to effectively grant full access, as if the search engines can’t see the content, then search results aren’t likely to include the site.
Alternatively, if there is no cached version available, or if the site looks too garbled, I use the BugMeNot add in for Firefox. This checks their database for accounts that have been previously shared by other users, and if a match is found, you can log in without handing over your e-mail address to an organization you don’t know well.
If you use the second method, don’t forget that posting under that account is not a great idea, as anyone potentially has access to the same account, and may also alert the site owners to the fact that the account in question is not strictly genuine any more.
Oct 08 2008
October 8th, 2008 11:25 am
In tough cases (alert admins tend to delete logins like bugmenot or somthing) I use disposable emails.
October 8th, 2008 3:23 pm
True, I completely forgot to mention that approach. The add in I mentioned also offer disposable e-mail accounts on their site, though you need to be a little careful, as ANYONE has access to them, no pwd required.