We’re glad to announce that we have made available for download a new version (04/10) of the Mac OS X Whisher plugin, compatible with Tiger (10.4) and Leopard (10.5). We have fixed some issues affecting compatibility with Tiger and PPC machines, plus some fixes on connectivity to commercial hotspots.

The Whisher plugin, as can be seen in the screenshot below, adds additional useful information to the standard Airport menu, and enables you to seamlessly connect to commercial WiFi hotspots with a universal currency, WiFi Out.

It also makes sharing your WiFi and connecting to other shared WiFi hotspots easy! Simply click on the ‘Share this WiFi…’ menu, fill in the details about your hotspot on the web form, and you’re set:

(Click on the image for a larger view).

If you would like some free WiFi Out credit to test at our network of over 60.000 commercial locations, such as airports, hotels and coffee shops, drop us a line at info@whisher.com. As always, suggestions and comments are welcome!

We need beta testers for our Windows XP and Mac WiFi plugins. We will give away WiFi Out credit, so that you can connect for free at thousands of commercial hotspots all around the world, including the best hotel chains, airports, coffee shops and so on. We are literally everywhere, thanks to our roaming agreements with operators like Swisscom, BT Openzone, AT&T, Wayport, and many more.

Please take a look at our coverage maps, and if you’re ready to check how easy it is to connect to those hotspots around you, just send us an email at info at whisher dot com.

WiFi Out is like Skype Out, but instead of voice minutes it gives you WiFi access minutes. It works as a plugin, which embeds nicely into your operating system, and allows automatic access to both commercial hotspots and shared hotspots (those contributed by the people).

We look forward to giving you truly free WiFi!

We’ve made it! Whisher 2.0 is now available for download here, in our super cool new site. Right now Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux versions are available…and hopefully Windows Vista by next Friday - Microsoft makes it very hard for developers on their shiny new OS.

What’s new? Well, a lot, which is the main reason why we haven’t had summer holidays this year…but it was worth it!

First of all the application is much more stable than previous versions. There are still minor issues to fix, and the occasional crash, but we are counting on the precious help of our active beta testers team to solve them. Secondly, we have pretty exciting new features, the most remarkable being:

• Guided process for easy and automatic WiFi sharing, WiFi tagging and connectivity to other hotspot networks.
• Integration of multiple instant messaging platforms: GoogleTalk, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ and AIM, all integrated in the same interface.
• Twitter: yes, you can also send and receive tweets directly on Whisher. We’re not completely sure, as there always seems to be some hidden lab somewhere working on pretty much anything, but this is probably the first cross platform Twitter application ever.
• Catch up with your friends: check your online address books and find out if your friends are already on Whisher, and optionally invite them if they are missing out on the fun.
• Better usability on the online coverage maps; have fun seeing how Whisher spreads all over the world. We bet you to find a country without Whisher presence.

On top of all this, geolocation of buddies, notification balloons, sounds, LAN support, faster file transfer…we’ve added so much that we encourage you to download the software and join us in the effort of creating The World’s Largest Free WiFi Network.

Said all this, we wish you a nice WiFi experience and very much look forward to your feedback.

The Whisher Team.

We are honored to have been picked as one of the ten Tech Startups to Watch by Laptop Magazine, the leading publication related to mobile computing and connectivity. Quoting the article on Laptop’s website:

Whether they’re creating new products or redefining the technologies we already use, these ten companies are working on improving the way we learn, compute, and communicate. Their names probably won’t ring a bell, but we guarantee that what they’re doing will get you excited about the future of technology. We’ll introduce you to a company that wants to make quid pro quo Wi-Fi sharing the norm, a company that will deliver your voicemail as text messages, and a company that wants to sync and update all of your gadgets simultaneously. Read now and remember their names: We’re sure this isn’t the last you’ll be hearing from them.

This year will be very exciting, with plenty of movement, ideas and announcements in the WiFi space, so stay tuned!

We’re pleased to announce the release of an updated Mac Whisher client, which fixes the same issues that were fixed in the last Windows release, plus the following:

• Fixed WPA and WPA2 support, with Apple’s latest APIs.
• Fixed some crashes during registration of WiFi signals.
• Improved login time.
• Improved general stability.

The download is available here, as before, simply mount the .dmg, and drag the icon to the Applications folder. There is no need to uninstall the previous version, although it could help if you have a much older release and you experience problems with this one.

As always, we welcome your comments and reports, and development continues to adapt and improve Whisher in many different aspects, more news to follow!

Greetings,

We have just posted a new release of the Mac version (2007-02-05) on the website for download, which fixes the following issues:

- Scrolling in user search results would not scroll the actual text.
- User would not be logged out when computer entered sleep, and this also caused a freeze on the signals list. You could still see a delay between connection and the client showing that you are connected.
- High CPU usage seen after idle for a long time or connection to server lost.
- High CPU usage after error message box is displayed.
- Client would stall due to no internet connection.
- Login related crashes.
- Speed improvement when logging in.

The new release can be downloaded here and should simply be installed on top of the previous version.

Since the Mac version was a bit more unstable than the Windows version, we have posted this update so that participants in LIFT can get a much improved experience. Towards the end of the week a common update to both versions will be posted.