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.

Checking the news, I found out about another cool company trying to bring internet access to the most remote parts of the world. It is called United Village (http://www.unitedvillages.com/).
Their idea is to provide WiFi enabled PCs to kiosks in the rural areas of third-world countries. Students hired by Universal Village then drive around with a bus that automatically communicates with these PCs and send a cached update of the most popular websites (eg. Cricket results, etc.). At the same time it delivers and receives the latest emails, voicemail (which enables villagers to have a phone number), Google searches (yes…!!), etc. They are currently doing it in India, but are about to expand to Brazil and China.
I don’t know how scalable this business model is, but I must say it is a cool idea to try to break the digital divide and move slightly towards a universal internet access.

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.

Installing a city-wide WiFi network (aka municipal WiFi) from scratch is commercially not viable. New examples of this evidence pop up everywhere: Earthlink backing out of the San Francisco project, Chicago’s WiFi project canceled, etc. The top-down commercial solution with huge capital expenditures will never fly and the tax-payers are usually paying a high price for these failures.
On the other hand, you can find everywhere you go 4, 5 or more networks available around you. If people would share their network using Whisher, you’d get  “Free Municipal Wifi” without spending extra on infrastructure. Certainly a model worth trying.

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

It has been just over four months of very hard work, listening to users, adding features, implementing changes, and generally improving Whisher, but we’ve done it! A private beta program is set to start in a few days, and we are looking for users to participate in it. In general terms, we are looking for the following - you must:

• be knowledgeable in WiFi technologies and networking, we’re not asking for gurus, but we need people who know what an SSID is
• have at least one laptop computer with WiFi, be it a PC with Windows or a Mac. A desktop with a USB or PCI WiFi adapter is also good.
• have at least one WiFi access point or router, and be knowledgeable in its configuration and management.
• be willing to test a software application and report frequently and consistently using an online bug tracking platform (don’t worry, it’s dead easy to use!).

As part of the beta testing program, we will offer two prizes, one for the most active tester, and another randomly drawn amongst all participants. The prize for each winner consists of a Linksys WRT300N Wireless-N router and a matching WUSB300N Wireless-N USB adapter, so that you can enjoy up to 12 times more transfer speed than normal 802.11G technology, and up to 4 times more range!

If you feel like you can make a difference, please contact the beta team at beta@whisher.com today! We will give you more details about how the program will play out, and get you started. Beta testers will also have access to a private area of the Whisher Forums to exchange experiences, make comments and participate in the beta program. Please include a brief description of your experience and equipment so that we may better evaluate your application.

We are very proud to have been selected as one of the finalists in CNET’s Webware 100 awards, under the Mobile Communications category. Voting is now open, so click on the image on the right, or visit this link, to cast your vote!

The Webware 100 Awards recognizes the best Web 2.0 sites, services, and applications that are leading the next wave of innovation. Voting is open to the public from May 23 through June 11, where the top 25 finalists in each category will be listed.