Use Hotspot Shield in Vista 64-bit (no software required)

Update 18/03/2009: Sorry everyone, it looks like this is not currently working. The entire Hotspot Shield for iPhone service seems to be down as it's not working on my iPod Touch right now either. Let's hope it's temporary.

Hotspot Shield is software that encrypts your internet traffic between your PC and their servers, purportedly to avoid snooping at open WiFi hotspots (a purpose for which it works great). My main use of it (being outside the US) is to access the multitude of US only sites and services (Hulu, Lala and Pandora to name only a few).

Unfortunately it comes bundled with a TUN/TAP driver that is not 64-bit compatible - it doesn't even fail gracefully during installation, rather you end up with this error:

The application continues to install and even prompts to run at the end, but then immediately dies.

But there's another way. Hotspot Shield offers a service for the iPhone (and iPod Touch) which uses L2TP to create the VPN connection. You can use the same connection within Windows Vista (and any other operating system which supports L2TP) to use the same service. Here's how I did it:

• Create a new VPN connection (Start > Network > Network and Sharing Center > Set up a connection or network > Connect to a workplace > Use my Internet Connection (VPN)).
  

• Now visit http://www.hotspotshield.com/clientless/iphone/get_started.php - this is where you will get the required connection information.
  

• Click the giant Get Account ID button.
  

• The instructions given are obviously for the iPhone, but there's some important information we need:

Server: 64.55.144.10
Account: abc123 (I'm pretending abc123 is mine - yours will be unique)
Password: abc123 (ditto as above)
Secret: password

• Enter 64.55.144.10 for the Internet Address. For Destination Name, put whatever you want. I put HotspotShield. Be sure that Don't connect now; just set it up so I can connect later is ticked, because we need to change some advanced settings later.

• For username and password, enter what you were given by the Hotspot Shield website. Tick Remember this password. You don't need anything for Domain. Close the window when you finish.
  

• Now go to Start > Connect To. Right click on the connection you created and choose Properties.

• On the Networking tab, change Type of VPN to L2TP IPsec VPN and then click IPsec Settings.

• Choose the Use preshared key for authentication option and type in password for the Key (this is what the iPhone calls Secret).

That's it! You can now connect to HotSpot Shield through the Connect To option on the Start menu - that's even easier than using the software from my point of view. I guess it would be possible to install a 64-bit TUN/TAP driver but I haven't investigated whether one exists for Vista because this way just seems so clean.

Just remember to disconnect after you're finished!

Update: Some folks seem to be having trouble connecting, or with keeping their connection to their ISP. As I haven't experienced such issues myself, it's not something I can help you with - but maybe other commenters can! Thanks to an anonymous commenter who pointed out a possible fix for those who find they lose their connection upon connecting to Hotspot Shield - try the instructions at this Yahoo! Answer post. If it works for you, let everyone know here by leaving a comment. 
Some have found their problems resolved by following the instructions carefully or fiddling with their settings.
Thanks also to the anonymous commenter who pointed out that these instructions will help those who run Windows XP 64 bit.

Update 2: Some commenters are worried about a redirect to rss2search.com, some even worried they are infected with malware. First note that there's no way I could infect you with malware - I haven't offered you anything to install and you are only using settings from Hotspot Shied's iPhone page. In case you haven't noticed, Hotspot Shield is funded by advertising and the rss2search.com page is part of this - you would be getting the same thing if you installed the Hotspot Shield software itself on a supported operating system.

Update 3: Bad news right now I'm afraid - Hotspot Shield's site appears to be returning an error when an Account ID is requested. Nothing I can do about that obviously - let's hope that it's temporary and they fix it soon! Ok, it's working again.



P.S. Hi AnchorFree!

Modifying multiple motion paths in PowerPoint

or Why having human readable file formats is a Good Thing.


Recently I was creating a PowerPoint presentation to demonstrate a web site I had been developing. As I've discovered over the years, it's a wise thing to use PowerPoint, or rather screenshots of some sort, because it minimises the chance of something crashing or doing something equally as nasty.


What I wanted PowerPoint to do was to scroll everything up, like scrolling a page on a website. So I selected everything and then added a motion path. What I ended up with is something like this:

 

Each slide element has its own motion path. What I wanted was for each motion path to be exactly the same length, so that the scroll effect would look real - and the default length was not long enough. I tried shift-selecting all the paths and then extending each one by one but it didn't work.

So naturally, being who I am, I decided to try playing with the PresentationML (or "pptx" if you like) file format to see if there was anything I could do there. I started by saving the presentation and renaming it to have a .zip extension and then extracted it to see what I could find.

Basically I looked around the folder structure, trying to find some XML that might be describing the motion paths - and I found it. Inside the ppt\slides folder there are a number of XML files, each of which describes a slide in the presentation. I opened up my slide and looked around.

Here's something interesting:

   origin="layout"
   path="M 0 0  L 0 -0.33333  E"
   pathEditMode="relative"
   ptsTypes="">

This was present a number of times, and seems to be relatively self explanotory. It would make sense that -0.33333 would indicate the path was to go up (negative) by 0.33333 (whatever that represents). So I did a find replace for the path, replacing -0.33333 with -0.5 and re-zipped up the pptx contents. Sure enough, I find that all of my motion paths have grown in length and for me, -0.5 happened to be just right:

Just goes to show, human readable file formats can work wonders. Maybe there was a better way to do it within the UI, I don't know. But really, XML is Fun.

This is a joke, right?

I started getting a prompt when I booted saying I had to activate Windows again because I changed the hardware. Of course we all know that the activation system Microsoft uses is ridiculous and treats us all as criminals but my problem is what brought it on.

"Changed hardware!", I hear you cry, "You must have really done something drastic to your system!"

You'd think that, but no. What did I change then? The frickin power supply. That's right the power supply and nothing else. I really don't think that changing the power supply is something Windows could even detect so that leads me to the thought that this is probably a bug. A bug that has the ability to piss me off fully and however many other people have encountered it.

It creates more food for thought too. What if the year was 2015 and Microsoft was no longer activating XP. Or they may not even exist (come on, it's possible!). Activation is another dirty form of DRM which can only hurt consumers. And today that consumer is me.