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!

Red Herring today announced that Whisher was named a Finalist of Red Herring 100 Europe, an award given to the top 100 private technology companies based in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region each year.

We’re thrilled to be given this recognition and are looking forward to continue working hard to make Whisher even better and worthy of higher awards.

Whisher was already finalist in CNET’s Webware 100 awards and proudly listed as one of the Top Ten Startups to watch by Laptop Magazine.

If you have an account with us, you can now login on the ‘My Account’ section of the Whisher website, from where you can manage your shared hotspots, buy WiFi Out credit, check the connections you have made, and more. You can click on the images we use below for larger, full-size versions.

My Account

To access your account, simply sign in by clicking on the link at the top right on the Whisher site:

Editing your profile

If you want to edit your personal profile (we only ask you for a username and email address when you create your account), simply click the ‘Edit your profile’ link, which will bring you to this page:

Simply add or change any missing field, and click ‘Apply changes’. You will now be able to buy WiFi Out credit without us asking for your billing details every time. The currency you choose here will be used throughout the Whisher website and plugin.

WiFi Out Sessions

Every time you visit a commercial hotspot (we will support viewing your sessions at shared hotspots soon), the session details are recorded and shown to you in this section. You can see when the session started, its duration and cost.

WiFi Out Purchases

As with WiFi Out Sessions, here we show you every credit purchase you make.

Shared Hotspots

A feature we have been getting many requests for, you can now edit all your shared hotspots from one central location. Change their name, welcome message, the icon that appears on the online maps, and even change sharing mode between public and private!

As you can see, we have been working really hard over the last few weeks to make Whisher even better, easier to understand, and user-friendly, without sacrificing our core values, easy WiFi sharing and simple, 1-Click connectivity. As always, comments, suggestions and constructive criticism is 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 thought you might be interested in knowing some statistics about the WiFi sharing habits worldwide, so here you have the top 10 countries where Whisher is helping build truly Free WiFi:

1. United states
2. Spain
3. France
4. Switzerland
5. United Kingdom
6. Italy
7. Germany
8. Brazil
9. Netherlands
10. Portugal

We are literally everywhere, with WiFis being shared even in countries where one wouldn’t expect it to happen. Go and check by yourself in our WiFi coverage maps

In the meantime we keep working on Whisher 3.0, which should be available to beta testers before the end of this year.

It’s here at last! The latest Whisher for Windows release is now available for download, with the following changes and fixes:

New features:

• Twitter auto-update when connecting or changing status.

Fixes and updates:

• The signals list could be corrupted on the login screen in some cases.
• Various memory leaks and race conditions.
• Startup time improved.
• Refresh the Twitter feed after a service failure.
• Special characters in the file name caused the shared list to not be broadcast.
• Improved copy & paste in the chat window.
• Various GUI inconsistencies.
• Automated FON login has been improved.

There are plenty other bug fixes and tweaks, too minor to list here, but we’d like to thank all the beta testers and users who have reported their experiences and issues to us, it helps us make Whisher better every day.

A new cool Twitter feature for Whisher will be released in a couple of days. Every time you change your WiFi location and/or status, Whisher will automatically post an update to Twitter with the name and location where you are connected. For example, you get to the office, open your laptop, and Whisher goes online - since Whisher knows where you are, it will post an update to Twitter automatically.

Obviously you will have the option to disable this feature in your preferences. Isn’t this a great way to let everybody know where to find good WiFi connections, while letting them know what you are doing? We’d love to hear about other things you would like to see in these automated updates - this is just the beginning!

Our Beta Testers will be able to use this new feature as of today, and as soon as they give us the OK will pass it on to all of you.

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’ve been pretty busy during the last months, fixing known issues and adjusting the product according to your feedback. Thanks to the support of a bunch of passionate beta testers we’re almost ready to release the next iteration of Whisher, pretty more stable and with promising extended features, some of them probably surprising to you…

For the second half of this year you will hear about us a lot more, now that we feel confident about going massive with Whisher.

Stay tuned because we’re about to create the World’s biggest Wi-Fi network!

Today, our graphic designers sent a nice surprise our way - a set of wallpapers for our computers. We think they are pretty cool, and so we are making them available for you to download.

There are two designs, the Smiley and the Wink - pick your favorite in three different resolutions.

	Click the link below to download for your screen resolution: 1024×768 JPG 1440×960 JPG 1680×1050 JPG
	Click the link below to download for your screen resolution: 1024×768 JPG 1440×960 JPG 1680×1050 JPG