Unable to open SharePoint site on host machine

Few weeks back, i created one SharePoint site means a web application using Central Admin. One thing which i did different from usual is Host hearder entry. After creating site i tried to open it using host header or say fully qualified name but i couldn't open it on my local machine but though i can open it from other machines.

Also one more problem i was facing at the time of creating new SharPoint project from Visual Studio 2010. Error like below

Cannot connect to SharePoint Site: http://<sitename>/. Make sure that this valid URL and the SharePoint site is running on the local computer. If you moved this project to a new computer or if the URL of the SharePoint site has changed since you created the project, update the Site URL Property of the project.

One of my friend gave me this useful link that i am sharing with you

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861

To create/open project in Visual Studio try to use host header URL not machine name or localhost.