The news are out! We can finally disclose what we have been working on during the last few months - Wifi.com completed the acquistion of Whisher in mid-January.

Wifi.com is the logical progression for Whisher, as it combines the best domain possible for a WiFi-related service, our mature client and backend technology, and their experienced team which brings on board business development and marketing experience, as well as US-based operations which can help us grow considerably. We already have exciting deals in the pipeline which will soon be announced.

We would like to thank our fans, our users, our investors, and even our critics, for all their help, feedback, input and support during these three years. With your continued help we can now make wifi.com grow way further!

Below is a short FAQ on the deal.

Q. What does this mean for Whisher users?

A. Whisher users don’t need to worry about service continuity. Simply download the new Wifi.com plugin, available at http://www.wifi.com/download.html. Uninstall your current plugin (Mac users, remember to reboot after you remove the Preferences Pane), and install the new one, entering your current Whisher login & password. Wifi.com uses the Whisher technology for its backend, website and client plugins.

Q. What happened to our shared hotspots, and the maps?

A. The reason the maps have been offline for the last few weeks is that at one point we had to switch our database over to the wifi.com servers, and thus the maps started working at http://www.wifi.com/find.php. We also have a WiFi directory at http://www.wifi.com/location/. The hotspots you have shared are all safe, and available under your account at http://www.wifi.com/ - nothing has been lost.

Q. Will you be offering premium WiFi access?

A. Right now wifi.com will concentrate on the social aspects of sharing. Control who you share with, add as much free WiFi hostpots to the community, and promote interaction between users. Eventually, we will start offering access to commercial and premium hotspots through per-minute and subscription models.

Q. Why hasn’t there been much activity around Whisher during the past few weeks?

A. We have been asked this many times, and we even read comments on other blogs that we were about to shut down - nothing further from the truth! What we have been doing is working extremely hard with wifi.com in order to bring the new service online as quickly as possible. We are a small team, and thus we could not dedicate enough resources to developing Whisher at the same time.

Q. What happens with the Whisher team?

A. Mike Puchol joins wifi.com as CTO, while Ferran Moreno and David Douek both go onto other exciting enterprises, about which we will soon hear great things about. You can find out more about the new team at wifi.com com at http://www.wifi.com/aboutus.html

It has taken a few weeks, but finally we have a new release of the XP plugin with a brand new driver which fixes many of the issues our users have been seeing. These issues could cause crashes or connectivity problems, but we’re excited to report that the new driver is working very well. Due to this driver update, some users may see the WiFi manager appear to freeze while connecting to a network, this should be fixed in the next few days. The manager is not actually freezing, it’s just the GUI not refreshing. Download the new version here. As always, feel free to get in touch with us if you spot a bug, or would like to see something changed!

We are excited to announce the release of an updated version of the Windows Whisher plugin, with many fixes and improvements, most of which affect the stability of the plugin. Most notably, we have corrected various issues affecting login at commercial hotspots, after our extensive testing and certification at the WeRoam labs, and fixed various memory leaks and crash conditions.

Additionally, the account creation process has been streamlined by moving it to the Whisher web site. As an innovative feature, once you create your account on the website, it will be automatically applied to your Whisher plugin, so you don’t even need to enter the details in the user preferences.

Go ahead and download the update!

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!

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!

After several months gathering feedback and reactions from our users, we decided to give Whisher a face lift, include the best ideas, and offer an improved, simplified WiFi experience.

So, what’s different?

Whisher is now a plugin instead of a standalone application. Why try to reinvent the wheel? Users already know how to use WiFi. Whisher is now completely integrated into the operating system, adding the WiFi Sharing and WiFi Out features.

WiFi Out? What is that?

In a few words, 1-Click access to commercial hotspots. Whisher now allows you to get online at more than 60.000 commercial hotspots around the world. It includes WiFi providers like BT Openzone, Orange, AT&T and many more. You can access them all with a unique credit: WiFi Out. Once you have purchased WiFi Out credit, you can simply go to the Starbucks around the corner and connect for a few minutes to check your mail. You don’t need to have a subscription or pay a minimum fee. With WiFi Out, if you don’t connect, you don’t pay!

We are looking for some motivated users in Europe and North America who would like to help us improve the brand new Whisher, for example, by testing WiFi Out, or helping us with bugs that may crop up. In exchange you will get free WiFi at all our commercial locations. If you are interested, send us an email with your details.

What about WiFi sharing?

WiFi sharing is still at the core of the new Whisher. You can contribute to the largest free WiFi network in the world, by registering your home WiFi with Whisher. As always, you can stop sharing at anytime with a single mouse click, and your connection remains encrypted and secure!

Any Mac love?

The Mac version is almost ready, and it will be launched very soon! Most of us at the office are Mac users, so we watch our Windows-toting peers with envy. The developer in charge is on a strict diet of cornflakes, and locked in a filing cabinet until he finishes it.

So is that it?

Not at all! In a few weeks, we will launch mobile Whisher plugin - watch this space. The developers in charge of this version are on an even stricter diet.

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.