For newcomers to this topic, BBC houses many of their shows on the web, however, viewing is limited to those within the UK. In order to be able to watch them from an IP outside the UK, you need to install some software using Windows and Firefox.

These steps also work on other sites, including Spotify if you are outside the UK or Hulu if you are outside the US. For both, just follow steps 1 through 9 as listed below.

Step 1: Download and install the latest stable release of Tor for Windows from http://www.torproject.org/. In this case we will be installing everything that comes with the package. (Tor is a tool that allows you to browse the web anonymously by routing your requests through various servers/proxies).
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Step 2: We now need to ensure that the last server your request is routed through is a server in the UK. Go to http://torstat.xenobite.eu/. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click “Show Custom/Advanced Query Options”. Under “Require Flags” choose “Yes” for “Exit” and under “Advanced Search” choose “Country Code” “equals” “GB”. (If you’re trying to use Hulu outside the US, enter “US” instead of “GB”.) Click “Apply Options”. Take note of all or some of the Router Names of the resulting servers except those marked Unnamed. These are your exit nodes in the UK.
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Step 2a: If torstat.xenobite.eu is down, you can try any of the following mirrors: https://kradense.whsites.net/tns/; http://torstat.kleine-eismaus.de/; https://torstatus.all.de/; http://torstatus.amorphis.eu/; https://torstatus.blutmagie.de/; http://torstatus.cyberphunk.org/; http://tns.hermetix.org/; https://torstatus.kgprog.com/

Step 3: Go to Start Menu and open All Programs -> Vidalia Bundle -> Tor -> torcc. This will open the Tor config file. Scroll all the way to the bottom and enter the following lines:
StrictExitNodes 1
ExitNodes <list of the names you found in step 2 separated by commas>
An example of the second line above would be:
ExitNodes anonion,anotherlink,colinwillsdorkyahoo
If a line starting with “ExitNodes” already exists, then overwrite the line with your new exit nodes. Save the file and exit notepad. Note: you may often have to update your list of exit nodes (step 2 and step 3) as the servers come and go.
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Step 4: Ensure you have the latest version of Flash installed for Firefox. You can do this by going to http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/.

Step 5: Run Vidalia. After a few seconds, it should say "Connected to the Tor Network".
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Step 6: In Firefox, there should be a status at the bottom of the browser saying “Tor Disabled”. In order to enable Tor, you click it, and it should say “Tor Enabled”. This is where you can switch Tor on or off depending on whether you are browsing a site that needs it. In my previous post, I suggested installing Foxy Proxy to allow Tor to only be applied to certain sites, and you’re welcome to do this, but you don’t need it. Others have suggested Mgeni, which is another option depending on the flexibility you need. These instructions assume you don’t use either of those.
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Step 7: Right-click on the “Tor Enabled” status and select “Preferences”. In the “Security Settings” and “Dynamic Content” tabs, make sure that “Disable plugins during Tor usage” is unchecked.
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Step 8: Now that Tor is enabled, go to http://torcheck.xenobite.eu/. This page should confirm that you’re now using a Tor exit node.
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Step 9: Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ to use iPlayer. Enjoy! (at this point you can also go to http://spotify.com or http://hulu.com if you’ve set it up for that)

I should note that trying to watch iPlayer through the proxy server is often very slow, and so some people prefer to download an episode and watch it on their computer. You can do this as follows (thanks to bisquick for the info):

Step 10: Go to the page of the show you wish to download and click on “More downloads” under the video. Choose “Windows Media Player” and save the file to your desktop. Let the file download – it will probably take a while. If you want, you could copy the location of the link from the Download popup, turn off Tor, and download it without using a proxy server, which might be faster.
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Step 11: Once the show has downloaded, you now need to set up Windows Media Player so that it will download a valid license to watch the episode. Open Internet Explorer and click on Tools -> Internet Options. In the “Connections” tab, click on “LAN settings”. Now under “Proxy server”, check “Use a proxy server for your LAN” and enter 127.0.0.1 for Address and “8118″ for Port. Uncheck “Bypass proxy server for local addresses”.
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Step 12: Play your episode in Windows Media Player. The license should download and your episode will play. Once the license is downloaded, you can undo the proxy settings in IE (by unchecking “Use a proxy server for your LAN”)

After tax and shipping, the cost is just $20.12.

Much of the social media news in the past couple of weeks has focused on Facebook’s release of a number of new features. Some of the features have been welcomed, while one in particular has garnered most of the attention and criticism.

In particular:

• What used to be called “Pages” (Facebook’s branded and celebrity hubs) have now been changed to “Public Profiles” which treats these brands more as Facebook friends and less as a separate feature.
• User can now choose to share their profile information and status updates with the world, instead of limiting viewers to the people in your friends list.
• A new homepage was launched.

Since a Twitter/Facebook merger is not currently in the cards, it appears that Facebook has decided to turn itself into Twitter instead, by opening up users’ status updates to everyone. While this in and of itself is a great move, they have lost some of the features that made Facebook appealing over Twitter in the first place. Facebook has described the new home page as a real-time stream but nothing could be further from the truth. Facebook’s previous home page did in fact have a real-time stream (it was under the “Live Feed” tab), but in this new version, the feed does not update automatically (ie: stream) and on top of that, it edits what you can see of your friends’ behaviors. So while you used to be able to see everything that was happening in your Facebook community, you have now lost the ability to see things like who your friends are friending and how many friends have added a particular application.

Another significant occurrence of last week was that TweetDeck, one of the most-used Twitter clients, released a new update which includes Facebook integration and allows users to receive real-time updates of their Facebook friends’ statuses in the client. Considering Facebook’s move toward having the homepage show almost solely users’ status updates, that leaves me wondering why I would want to visit Facebook in the browser at all.

In a poll that Facebook is conducting for user feedback, 94% of respondents do not like the new Facebook homepage. Now, yes, taking into account the number of people who have responded, it’s true that only half a percent of Facebook users are vocal about disliking the redesign while others remain silent. It’s also true that most of the time people are resistant to change. But Facebook’s most valuable users are its most vocal and for a company that highly advertised their launch of a new real-time homepage with ultimate flexibility for its users, it is unclear why Facebook would launch a page that is neither, and not address that. In their words:

As more and more is shared, we want you to be able to find out everything that is going on in the world around you at any given moment, or shape the stream of information most relevant to you.

Despite the negativity surrounding the new homepage, Facebook’s change of “Pages” to “Public Profiles” is a smart and innovative move to allow brands to more easily share information with their fans or followers and to allow those users to feel more closely connected to those brands as friends. It’s a pity that much of that innovation has been lost in the noise.

As a fan of Facebook, I am hoping that they remedy the situation soon – not by reverting back to what they had, but by adding to the redesign some of the more addictive features that they removed.

Follow Cherie on Twitter.

It’s been a interesting week for Hulu. A week ago, Hulu removed its content from both TV.com and open-source media center, Boxee, thereby removing one of the only ways to watch Hulu content on your television. As Fred Wilson explains on his blog post entitled “Why Hulu Should Embrace Boxee“

Boxee is a browser optimized for the 10 ft experience. Much like mobile browsers on phones, Boxee renders the content it finds on the web in a way that optimizes it for the device it runs on (in Boxee’s case that is the TV).

Asking for video to be removed was a seemingly strange request for Hulu and its content providers to make, as the content when viewed through Boxee is exactly the same as the content when viewed on Hulu.com – complete with advertisements. This seems counter to Hulu’s open policy of allowing users to embed the videos on Facebook, their own blogs or wherever they please. It also prompted a number of posts including “Is Hulu Driving People Back to Piracy” from NewTeeVee and Lifehacker’s guide to how to get Hulu on your TV without Hulu’s help.

Perhaps the content providers are being influenced by the cable companies, who are getting fearful that being able to view Hulu content on the television will lead to a mass exodus of cable subscribers. On Monday, however, Nielsen’s A2/M2 Three Screen Report reported that people are watching more TV on the television than ever before and online viewership has not detrimentally affected offline viewership at all.

At the same time, cable companies are trying to negotiate online access to all the content they currently show through their network, wanting to eventually launch their own versions of Hulu – both on the computer and on their set-top box. This would make it very difficult for independent plays like Hulu to keep their audience, considering that the MSO’s could allow their content to bypass bandwidth caps and speed throttling to provide a much better experience than a company not owned by an MSO could.

Adding to this, Peter Chernin, who was a powerful ally for Hulu, just announced his retirement from Fox.

All of this presents a significant challenge for Hulu and its open strategy to continue its success in a business as closed as Hollywood traditionally is.

I’ll admit it. I’m a social media junkie. And it’s not difficult to satisfy my addiction, considering the large number of social media sites that are quickly popping up as of late. But it has also got me thinking – considering the popularity of social media sites these days, should we be more concerned about our privacy? 5 years ago, it was only the early adopters who were on sites like MySpace and Friendster and most people were weary of sharing too much on the internet. These days Facebook has over 100 million registered users, and over 222 million visitors per month. Below is a list of some of latest and greatest social media sites, along with ways you can ensure that the whole world knows everything about you:

1. Facebook

The largest social media network on the web. Here you can share pretty much anything, ranging from what you had for dinner, to a picture of what you had for dinner. And with Facebook Connect, you can now share anything you do anywhere on the web. It’s a marketer’s dream-come-true. Fortunately Facebook does have many tools where you can manage the privacy of your data down to the minutest detail.

You can segment your friends into lists and then choose which items you share are visible to which of your lists. However, doing this for all of your friends and for each item can be quite tedious. In addition, you have to watch out for friends of yours uploading photos and videos of you. You can easily disallow friends from tagging any media of you thus stopping them from linking anything to your Facebook account, but that kind of defeats the purpose of social media, doesn’t it?

2. Twitter

Twitter is like the status update function of Facebook. What’s addictive about Twitter is the ability to easily consume just those people’s statuses that you’re interested in, and just as easily share your thoughts – in 140 characters or less. Your privacy options here are pretty much limited. Should you choose, you can limit viewing of your Twitter stream to only those you approve, but it’s probably just a better idea to not share any thoughts you’re not ok with everyone in the world being able to read.

3. LinkedIn

LinkedIn was one of the first social networks I joined as it is focused mainly on business networking. Here you’re able to keep in touch with any business contacts you’ve met, as well as share your work history with the world and get recommendations from those you’ve worked with. LinkedIn is particularly good at being able to find the connections you have in common with someone. So if you ever want to do background checks on a person you’re looking to hire, you can very easily find some people to ask.

4. Flickr

Here you can share every digital photo you’ve ever taken. You can share photos with the world, your friends, or no one, but Flickr also acts as a pretty cool way to backup and index your photos for easy searching should you choose not to use it as a photo-sharing site.

5. Last.fm

At Last.fm, you can share any music that you’ve listened to on your iPod or through iTunes. You can choose to share that information with everyone on Last.fm, just your friends or with nobody, but watch out, there’s no way to filter privacy just by song, so if you’re listening to Vanilla Ice on a daily basis, those you share it with will know.

6. Boxee

Boxee combines two things I love. Social media and television. Boxee is a free media center through which you can stream content from sites like Hulu, Netflix, ABC, CBS and Comedy Central (as well as photos and music from Flickr and Last.fm) Boxee can be used on your computer, or installed on your Apple TV if you have one. Whenever you watch or listen to anything, Boxee makes sure all your friends know. You can also tie it in to your Twitter stream to broadcast to all your Twitter followers exactly what you’re watching.

7. Yelp

Did you go out for dinner last night? Want to share what you thought of that meal? Well, Yelp is the place for you. Here you’re not able to hide any reviews that you create, but if you’re creating a review for The Counter, you probably want to share it with the people wondering what the burgers at The Counter are like. It also acts as a great way to do research on a restaurant before you go.

8. Raptr

Raptr is like Boxee for video games. Here you share what games you’re playing and how you’re doing, and like Boxee, it can also broadcast this information to your Twitter or FriendFeed accounts.  So if you’re slacking at work and taking a break to play that cool Flash game you found on the web – now everyone can know about it.

9. Google Latitude

Released recently, Google Latitude is a mobile application that allows you to see exactly where your friends are at any time. It takes stalking to a whole new level. While I think the idea is cool, I wonder how quickly people will adopt this. Even this social media junkie thinks that perhaps this is information that should be kept private. For the time being.

What do you think? Is there a way to fully enjoy social media while still protecting our privacy, or does privacy not mean as much in today’s connected society?

This post was originally posted on NewMedici.com.

While browsing Hulu recently, I discovered that the site had “enhanced” versions of episodes of one of my favorite shows, Battlestar Galactica. After clicking on the episode to find out what it was, I was extremely excited to discover that it was basically an episode of Battlestar Galactica, along with running commentary by Ron Moore – the show’s creator.

Now Ron’s been doing commentary on episodes pretty much ever since BSG started. It started out as just a podcast, which I could either listen to without seeing the video in front of me, or I could put onto my IPod, go home and run BSG from my DVR and listen to commentary at the same time. Besides the obvious inconvenience with this setup, synchronization of start times of the podcast and the show needed to be near perfect, and on top of that, I had to stop the podcast when the commercials were shown or my sync would be off. Fortunately the commentary came on the DVDs, but I’d have to wait months for those to come out and by that time, having to go back and rewatch the entire previous season with commentary seemed a daunting task.

It seems like such a simple solution, but having Hulu add the commentary to episodes of BSG the day after they air satisfies my obsessive need to get as much BSG as quickly as I can. In this way, the show is not only making money off of me watching on television and buying the DVDs, but there is now this third revenue stream as I watch it again on Hulu. And it barely cost anything extra for the show’s marketing or production budget.

Many shows are taking the transmedia approach to storytelling these days by creating webisodes, alternate reality games and other content that can be viewed on the web between shows or seasons. As Jesse Alexander, producer of Heroes says:

It is no longer enough for a mass media content creator to understand storytelling for only one medium. For the current, and new generation of creators to survive, and build sustainable work, they must embrace the transmedia approach. They must understand the capabilities of technology to reach a vast audience, and adjust their storytelling to suit the way that audiences parse information differently on each platform. While traditional entertainment models are collapsing. Transmedia entertainment is expanding.

Besides BSG and Heroes, shows like The Office and Lost are all taking part in extending their narrative away from solely oldteevee.

I’m glad that the talent and creators of shows are starting to realize that the internet is not only a way to market their product, but also a way to create more revenue from fans of their shows which will in turn prompt these fans to promote the show, through sharing the content that engages them on sites like Facebook or Twitter. And it’s important for the talent and creators to be involved, otherwise, we’ll just land up with the same old repurposed trailers and clips content that we’ve had for years.

I’m excited about the future of TV and I look forward to even more of my favorite shows creating great and unique online content. Damages, I’m looking at you!

BBC recently released their iPlayer which allows you to watch many of the BBC shows on the web. Unfortunately for us, BBC does not allow users outside the UK to watch these shows. Luckily there’s a way around this. There are many sites recommending different software to use, but having tried many ways, this is the one I’ve found that works using Windows and Firefox: (note, you can also use instructions below to watch other content blocked from viewing within the US, or even to watch content only allowed in the US when you are abroad)

Step 1: Download and install the latest stable release of Tor using the default options. You can uncheck Privoxy in the install if you like. We will be using another proxy tool. (Tor is a tool that allows you to browse the web anonymously by routing your requests through various servers/proxies)

Step 2: We now need to ensure that the last server your request is routed through is a server in the UK. Go to https://torstat.xenobite.eu/. Click on the pulldown next to "CC:" and select "GB" and hit "search". Now click on the ">" under "Exit". You now have a list of servers in the UK that are allowed to be used as Exit Servers. Take note of all the nicknames of the servers except those marked Unnamed.

Step 3: Go to Start Menu and open All Programs -> Vidalia Bundle -> Tor -> torcc. This will open the Tor config file. Scroll all the way to the bottom and enter the following lines:
StrictExitNodes 1
exitnodes <list of the names you found in step 2 separated by commas>
An example of the second line above would be:
exitnodes anonion,anotherlink,colinwillsdorkyahoo
Save the file and exit notepad.

Step 4: Run Vidalia. After a few seconds, it should say "Connected to the Tor Network".

Step 5: Install the Foxy Proxy addon for Firefox.

Step 6: When you install Foxy Proxy, it’ll ask you if you want to add a Tor proxy to it’s settings. You’ll want to set up the Tor Proxy to have the following 2 patterns: BBC iPlayer pattern – http://*bbc.co.uk/* and Tor Check pattern – http://torcheck.xenobite.eu/*

Step 7: Check that you’re exiting through a UK server by going to http://torcheck.xenobite.eu/index.php

There you go – now, when you have Vidalia and Foxy Proxy running, whenever you go to the iPlayer site, you’ll be able to watch videos. Note, that you’ll probably have to repeat step 2 and step 3 intermittently, as the same UK servers don’t always exist.

http://hurwi.net/map/

• Battlestar Galactica – this is great quality and a great panel! Thanks SciFi!!
• Dollhouse – 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 – be sure to check out Ep5 where someone asks Tahmoh Penniket if Eliza Dushku’s spine glows
• Dr. Horrible – 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 – I made it to this panel, and it was loads of fun
• The Sarah Connor Chronicles – Garret Dillahunt is a really big guy!
• Terminator: Salvation – this one’s edited unfortunately
• Lost – 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Marvin Candle Clip
• Eureka
• Chuck
• The Office
• Heroes – pretty disappointing panel, but I’m sure being there and seeing the first episode of next season was exciting
• EW Showrunners Panel – 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 – taken from quite an annoying angle
• Watchmen – 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 – It seems to be missing some footage. Alternatively, you could watch the whole one on Veoh, but it requires installing VeohTV
• Bones

• Full Tilt Poker – users have to make it through 3 rounds of freerolls in order to get to the main event. First rounds are held many times a day in 225-person or 450-person Sit And Go’s, second rounds 4 times a day and final rounds are once a week. I’ve made it to the second round multiple times, but not beyond that.
• Poker Stars – there are only 2 rounds here. The first round is held every hour, but users can only participate once a week and there are usually around 3000 players. I’ve never made it past the first round.

Of course, in order to make it to the series for free, you have to get even luckier than usual. People play very erratically and usually go all-in on hands they would never play at a real table. I wonder what other sites out there offer good freerolls. More info as I come across it.