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Expat Tech: Hulu Blocks Anonymous Proxies

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Hulu Adds More RestrictionsI previously wrote about how to work around content restrictions on viewing television shows from outside of the US using anonymous proxies and VPN services. Unfortunately, those measures no longer work for Hulu, the largest free online site for viewing TV shows.

TechCrunch reported yesterday that Hulu is now blocking VPN services and anonymous proxies in addition to their other blocks on non-US based IP addresses. If you try to access the service using a VPN like Hotspot Shield, you now get the message:

Based on your IP address, we noticed you are trying to access Hulu through an anonymous proxy tool. Hulu is not currently available outside the U.S. If you’re in the U.S., you’ll need to disable your anonymizer to access videos on Hulu.

If you’e lucky enough to have a private or corporate VPN in the US, that should still work, but this move effectively shuts out most of the major public VPN providers.

In a bit of positive news, the Financial Times reports that Hulu has been signing international deals for content. This could lead to an global roll-out of its services, though there is no estimated time frame for this.  Looks like we’ll go back to using Miro and BitTorrent until someone realizes that content cannot really be controlled anymore.

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Expat Tech: Twitter

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Twitter Buenos AiresUnless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months, you’ve probably heard of Twitter. It has been covered by every major news source, spoofed on the Daily Show, made the talk show circuits, contributed to the break-up of Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer, had Ashton Kutcher post a picture of Demi Moore bending over in a bikini and then race CNN to 1,000,000 followers, been touted as the next Google, seen Oprah sign up, praised, criticized, and more. So, now is the time for you to get on the Twitter bandwagon.

This post is not going to go into the intricacies of Twitter – there are tons of pages that already do that – but we’re going to talk about how you can use Twitter to meet people in Buenos Aires, find out news, ask for advice, see trends, help others out, etc.

The first step is to sign up for an account and get familiar with the service.  Twitter has a bit of a learning curve, there’s no doubt about that.  You’ll need to learn the concepts and vocabulary, acceptable behavior, find people to follow, get followers, personalize your page, and grasp other general concepts. You’ll probably wonder what the hell all these people posting less than 140-character updates is all about and why you’d be interested. Stick with it, it’s worth it. There is truly a wealth of information available on the site and it’s growing every day.

Once you’re familiar with using Twitter, the search function is the next place to really explore.  This is one of the powerful areas of the site, and in our example case, we’re going to show how to use it to monitor information about Buenos Aires.

- Go to Twitter Search and in the search box, enter: buenos aires OR buenosaires OR bsas OR #buenosaires
- Hit enter and you’ll get the results for any mention of Buenos Aires or its common abbreviations. You’ll find a wealth of information and people who may interest you. Feel free to reply to them or follow the ones who interest you. Unlike Facebook, following people you don’t know is highly encouraged.
- Now, on the upper right, you’ll see a link which says “Feed for this query.” You can copy that link to Google Reader and have a constantly updated stream of mentions regarding Buenos Aires.

Of course, you can do this for any terms that you are interested in.  This is the real power of Twitter – seeing a stream of information in real-time, unlike Google which must take the time to index web sites.

Give it a try and feel free to leave a comment on this post with your Twitter name.  I’m @davemccomb.  See you there!

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Expat Tech: Google Voice Coming Soon

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Google VoiceMore interesting news from Google – they have just announced Google Voice, a new service that will give you a new US phone number from Google with a slew of services to go along with it.  The basic premise of Google Voice is that you will have one number for all your phones, for life.  When this number is called, it can ring all of the phones that you have (home, work, cell) and also handle voice mail.  As these numbers change, your Google Voice number will remain the same.

Now, most expats are already using voice-over-ip (VOIP) services like Vonage or Skype, so why would you need this service?  While it’s true that this is not a VOIP service (yet) and you will still need an existing phone to place and receive calls, Google is offering a tremendous number of services that most other VOIP don’t provide – and they’re doing it for free.  Some of these services include:

  • Call US numbers for free and cheap international calling (might be cheaper than using another VOIP service)
  • Voicemail transcripts – receive your voicemail as email or text messages automatically converted from voice to text (Vonage charges $.25 per message for this)
  • Call screening – announce and screen callers
  • Listen in – listen before taking a call
  • Block calls
  • Taking calls – answer on any of your phones (No word on whether it will support international numbers or what the cost would be.)
  • Phone routing – phones ring based on who calls
  • Forwarding phones – add phones and decide which ring
  • Listen to voicemail – check online or from your phone
  • Notifications – receive voicemails via email or SMS
  • Personalize greetings – vary greetings by caller
  • Conference calling
  • Call record – record calls and store them online
  • Call switch – switch phones during a call
  • SMS – send, receive, and store SMS
  • And more… (Visit the Google Voice features page for the rest and to view short videos on these services)

The free SMS services are especially interesting since many expats are unable to send and receive US-based text messages, so this would be an easy way to enable that.  And, SMS text messages are becoming more and more critical as many US-based services use them as an additional measure of security for authenticating accounts (PayPal, Craigslist, etc.) or for approving bank transactions (I had this at Bank of America but had to turn it off when I moved to Argentina).

The downsides to Google Voice?

  • You will need to pick a new number from Google as there is not currently any way to transfer your existing number to them. This means changing your old number everywhere.
  • You still need a US based number for the call forwarding to work. At this time, the service is US only.  Though you could sign up just to get a free number with voicemail, SMS, etc. and not have the forwarding or calling features.
  • The Google Voice service is not yet available but will be rolling out over the next few weeks.  You can sign up to be notified when it launches.
  • There is no fax support, so it may not replace all of your numbers yet.

All things considered, it looks like an amazing service and I’ve already signed up for the wait list.  You can read more abotu Google Voice at:

-  Google Voice: A push to rewire your phone service [C|Net]
- GrandCentral To (Finally) Launch As Google Voice. It’s Very, Very Good. [TechCrunch]

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Expat Tech: Google Translate – Now Supports PDF and Office Docs

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Google TranslateGoogle Translate has been an  indispensable tool in my move to Buenos Aires and I’ve written about the many benefits of using it already. I’ve used it to translate local Spanish language web sites, decipher emails from new Argentine friends, help with my Spanish homework, etc.

Google has just added a new feature: the ability to translate PDF files and Office documents from one language to another. It does this by converting the document to HTML on the fly, and then displaying the translated HTML file back to you.  The cool thing?  It can do this even if the document is not indexed in Google.  So, how do you do this for a document on your computer or in your email that you want translated?  Glad you asked…

First, you need to put your document up on the web somewhere.  I use my favorite file sharing site, Drop.io, to create a new “drop” and upload the document. Drop.io lets you create shared web folders with up to 100MB of storage for free. You can pick the name, set a password and access permissions, etc. For this to work, make sure that your drop is public.

Once the drop is created and the file is uploaded on drop.io, click on “Full Page View” under the document. This opens a new window with the document displayed. Right-click on the “Download” link in the upper left, and select “Copy Shortcut” to save a copy of the link to that file.  You now have a URL for your file that you can give to Google to translate.

Next, head over to Google Translate. Click on “Text and Web” at the top and paste the link from drop.io. Make sure the language settings are correct and then click “Translate.”  That’s it!  You’ll now have a translation of your document available for viewing.

It works fairly well, but it seems to be limited to smaller documents right now.  I tried to translate a 47 page document and received an error: “The page you requested was too large to be translated.” The limit seems to depend on the file size and number of pages of text.

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