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!

It has taken a few days longer than expected, but we wanted to iron out some last-minute bugs that had been reported, and release a more solid version. We don’t think most people enjoy updating their software every two days!

This is the list of fixes and changes in the 2007-02-19 release:

• Fixed problems with presence at local group in chat window.
• Blinking tab in taskbar when new message arives.
• Special characters in chat messages are now allowed.
• The server connection is now kept alive every 10 minutes, preventing random logouts.
• Presence problem in chat groups when an previous member reenters has been fixed.
• Fixed automatic connection (with auto-login checked) to an AP in private mode.
• Login process speed has been improved.
• Various minor revisions and changes in the GUI.
• Fixed transient non-Whisher status for registered or tagged APs, between no
• connection and internet available instances.
• Non blocker search buddy mechanism + limitation of result number when searching for all.
• WPA has been tested on a variety of access points and routers, and found to work.
• Access points with SSID length greater than 30 characters can now be registered.
• Fixed “deny friendship” message on destination buddy logout.
• Fixed regular expressions in chat messages, URLs are now always recognized and clickable.
• Copy/paste text from/into chat window has been implemented.
• Maximize button for all resizable windows has been added (thanks AustinTX for the suggestion).
• Fixed local storage update after unregistering/untagging an AP.
• AP connection process now uses the keys in the right order and does not retry with the same stored keys upon failure.
• Fixed problem with commenter’s identity in guestbook comments.
• Offline messages timestamp changed to GMT (server time), this will be adapted to the client timezone in a future release.
• Email address is no longer diplayed in user profiles.
• Enabling wireless adapters method has been improved.
• The installer now copies the required files specific for Windows 2000 (thanks to those who reported this and helped identify a fix).
• Various Online Maps improvements and Javascript errors solved.

Since we use Qt to keep versions across operating systems synchronized, the fixes that affect the common code base will be applied also the Mac and Linux (soon to be released) versions. The reason we are not releasing a Mac update is that we are waiting for a set of APIs from Apple which will allow us to make WPA much more stable. We’d like to sincerely thank Apple for the support they are offering us in this project!

To update Whisher, simply download it again, run the installer, which will uninstall the previous version and install the updated one.

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.