It should be noted there can be issues with uninstalling Hotspot Shield (detailed a bit on Apple’s support forum and removing the ads it uses from Safari). Install at your own risk.

How does it know where you are? Well, your IP address gives you away. Without getting too geeky, your IP address is basically your address on the internet — similar to your house address in the real world. Hulu, and other sites, can tell where you are coming from in the world by your IP address. They can’t necessarily drill down to your exact physical location in the world, but they can know that your IP address is given out by a internet service provider in, let’s say, Canada. (For more on IP address terminology, visit wikipedia) What you need is a way to fool Hulu into thinking you’re not from Canada but actually in the US.

There’s a simple little program called Hotspot Shield that can manage this for you. Hit up a href=“http://www.hotspotshield.com/”>their website and click on the Download the latest version link on the right hand side:

You’ll get a file that downloads and should mount on your desktop and present you with this image in the finder:

As the image suggests, just click and drag the Hotspot Shield application to the Applications folder. Then browse to your applications folder and double click Hotspot Shield application. You’ll have to enter your password to install the application. Once installed it will launch a web page where you’ll have to click ‘Run Hotspot Shield’:

After a few seconds it will reload the page with your newly minted IP address located somewhere in the US:

After a few more seconds the page may reload with a bunch of advertisements, which you can close. You’ll also get an icon in your menu bar at the top-right of your screen:

With these options:

Now try hitting up Hulu and viewing that episode of 30 Rock you missed. There’s a whole ton of content on there including movies, classic Saturday Night Live videos and more.

When you’re done watching, you can click the menu bar icon and choose disconnect to stop hiding your IP address.

One reason to not keep it running constantly is that it does insert adverts into your regular browsing. There’s also some web services that you use that stores data/cookies (in a good way, IMHO) for you based on your IP address.

All this is, of course, hypothetically speaking. There are legitimate reasons to block/hide your IP address including security reasons.

Problem: the camp manager’s office in his house and our new internet access point are ~100 metres, 5 walls, and a few groves of trees apart.

Solution: create mesh network using 2 Linksys WRT-300n routers ($100 each) and Sveasoft’s “Talisman” firmware ($25/year subscription)

It took a little wangling (had to return one of the routers because it didn’t work properly), but I got it working. Plus, if I ever want to boost the signal… say… to my cabin, all I have to do is buy another router, install the firmware, place it between the access point and my cabin and I’ll have internet access.

I love it when things just work! If anyone out there needs help making their own extended network using Talisman, I am happy to help. Let me know in the comments!