AnchorFree Blog

China’s Skyping On You…
by Michael Standaert, The Huffington Post

How To Watch Videos On Hulu From Anywhere
by Adam Pash, lifehacker.com

Five Best Sites to Stream TV
by Adam Pash, lifehacker.com

ISPs Ask Lawmakers to Let Them Police Themselves
by Erika Morphy, E-Commerce Times

The Telecommuter’s Tech Toolbox
by Eric Griffith, PC Magazine

In which I reveal myself as Marie Antoinette (VPN dept)
by James Fallows, The Atlantic

Hotspot Shield makes VPNs more accessible
by Rick Martin, China

15 Great, Free Privacy Downloads
By Preston Gralla, PC World

This Week’s Top Downloads
Lifehacker.com

Windows only: Freeware application Hotspot Shield secures your public web browsing by connecting you to the internet through the Hotspot Shield virtual private network. What more people seem to use Hotspot Shield for is to access US-only websites from outside the US. We post a lot of content on Lifehacker, and sometimes we get guff for not identifying US-only services. Hotspot Shield has been the go-to service for tons of Lifehacker readers dying to try a site who’ve hit the US-only wall. Hotspot Shield is ad-supported and installs a toolbar (lame, I know), Windows only. Got another tried and true method for accessing region-specific sites? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal - by Emma Ritch
In true Silicon Valley fashion, Mineta San Jose International Airport is letting its passengers surf the Web for free.
The airport officially began offering free Wi-Fi on May 29, although free Web access has been available in parts of the airport for several weeks. The San Jose airport, which serves 10.9 million passengers annually, is the only Bay Area airport to offer free Wi-Fi.
The airport spent $90,000 for the hardware, folding the Wi-Fi installation into the current airport renovation. The annual cost for broadband will be $41,000.
The airport gets about 30,000 passengers each day, so communications director David Vossbrink said a conservative estimate is that at least 1,000 people a day will use the free Wi-Fi. The network has a 15-megabyte bandwidth, airport technology director Diane Mack-Williams said.
“We probably didn’t need that much bandwidth, but we wanted to make sure all our passengers have a good experience,” she said.
The network will not block access to any Web sites, Mack-Williams said.
The network — called SJCfreewifi — will compete with fee-based Wi-Fi networks T-Mobile and Wayport. The airport’s cut of the profits from those networks is $139,000 a year, Vossbrink said, and that sum will decline if passengers opt to use the free service, which will include ads instead of the $8-per-day Wi-Fi without ads.
Vossbrink added that having paid and free Wi-Fi service in one location is “uncharted territory.” The airport is uncertain how much money will be generated, but officials were willing to take a chance because their first objective is to satisfy customers and then generate revenue, Vossbrink said.
Still, the airport demographic is so desirable to advertisers that the ads probably will generate enough money to cover all the airport’s costs and possibly create a revenue stream, said W. Scott Holmes, executive vice president of strategic development for Airport Marketing Income.
Mineta San Jose officials are working with Clear Channel as well as Beaverton, Ore.-based Airport Marketing Income and Sunnyvale-based AnchorFree Inc. to subsidize the Wi-Fi with ads. The ads are likely to start in about six weeks and could generate enough money within a couple of years to pay the annual cost and cover the initial investment, Vossbrink said.