One of the great things about my trip to New York was being able to watch a bunch of programs on Hulu.  Hulu is a great service available in the US that lets you watch current programs over the Internet. There are a bunch of great shows on offer like House, Lost, Dollhouse and other shows not yet shown in Australia like Modern Family.

Unfortunately when I got back to Australia, licensing rules and IP addresses stopped me. When you try to watch anything, you get the Hulu black screen of nada.

How to set up Hulu to watch outside the US

Firstly, do not waste your time with a free service.  I spent numerous hours researching the internet and trying a bunch of different free services.  Hotspot Shield, FoxyProxy and IPHider do not work.  You just cannot get a connection to the US that is fast enough and Hulu is shutting down most of these free services.

Your best bet is to purchase a US Based VPN.  There are numerous VPN providers out there.  Some even give you the ability to switch between the US and the UK, therefore allowing you to watch the BBC iplayer too!

As an added plus, a VPN will also help you get around this ridiculousness Internet filter that is being proposed by Communications Minister Senator Conroy.  According to Adam Turner, writing for PC Authority:

“…the easiest way to access restricted content is to mask your location using a US-based Virtual Private Network. A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel from your computer to the VPN provider, who then connects you to the internet.”

(Thanks to Anthill for this quote)

Steps to watch Hulu in Australia

1. Check your internet connection speed.  I have the Bigpond cable Ultimate and sometimes it still results in stuttery play.  Go to www.speedtest.net and check your download speed to LA.  If you get anything below 0.5Mbps then it’s probably not going to work for you.

2.   Purchase a US VPN from a reputable company. I like VPNAuthority.com because for $63/year, you get the option of using a US or UK based IP address at one time. Another upside, they do not restrict the number of times you switch between them. In the past, I used StrongVPN.com, but the switching restrictions to go between hulu and bbciplayer are prohibitive.

3. Set up your new network (Your VPN provider will have the details) and connect

4. Start watching shows!

“According to Nielsen NetView for October, Facebook’s “unique audience” was 8.1 million, followed by YouTube on 5.8 million and Wikipedia (5.2 million). MySpace was steady on 2.3 million users while Bebo lagged well behind on 358,000.”

According to the General Manager,  Francisco Cordero, Bebo focuses on the 13-24 market but Bebo struggled to get a foot hold here in Australia, and failed to really challenge either Facebook or Myspace.

Read the SMH article, Woe is Bebo: site to shut down in Australia by Paul McIntyre

Interesting Related Posts:

• Bebo may retreat form Australia

• Mayday, mayday – Bebo NZ is going down

• Intenet, Internet Radio, Internet Video and Video games consumption grew YOY
• Tv, radio and print declined YOY
• Multitasking has now become mainstream. 61% of users watch TV while they are online and 50% listen to the radio.

Download the Nielsen Press Release AUSSIES DITCH THE DESKTOP IN FAVOUR OF WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY

Thanks to a tip from Chris Kettle, who runs  Australia’s leading online dining and entertianment guide, I did some investigating on Facebook users.

 Top 10 World Facebook Users

Top 10 World Facebook Users by country in 2008

The US leads by far in the number of Facebook users, but that’s to be expected given their huge population.  Myspace had 70m users in the US  in Dec 07, but I am still trying to get a more recent figure.  The surprise for me was Turkey, who knew Facebook was so popular there!  Australia currently sits in seventh place with almost 4million users (1).

Australian Facebook Users

Top Australian City Facebook Users in 2008

% of Facebook users by city population in Australia, 2008

Using ABS statistics, I worked out a rough estimate of Facebook users as a % of population.  It seems Brisbane is a Facebook town, with the highest % of users at 32%.  Interesting Darwin’s usage was very low at only 3%.  Perhaps it’s just that no one in Darwin wants to admit it!

Sources:

1 – Facebook | Advertising, Estimates taken on 19th of December 2008.

2 – 3218.0 – Regional Population Growth, Australia, 2006-07″. Australian Bureau of Statistics, via Wikipedia: List of cities in Australia by population

Disclaimer

All numbers are estimates only.  All statistics from Facebook were taken on the 19th of December 2008.  Facebook users as a % of population calculated by:

total number of Facebook users listed in the city  (Source 1)

city population estimate (Source 2)