StrongVPN

The solution is StrongVPN. Love it! I can establish a virtual connection to the States, in our case. Currently, we’re “in” Washington D.C. I’ve found that it has the best/fastest connection for the best video streams. After following a quick step by step tutorial from StrongVPN you will automatically be able to connect with one click any time you want to stream video. It will slow down your connection a little bit but generally it’s fantastic.

The plan I recommend for most users is the 3 City Special PPTP US$55/year plan. It gives you access to San Francisco, New York & UK. I use the Lite Open and PPTP plan. It’s US$90 per year. It just gives me access to more cities and connection options. If you have a connection that’s not particularly fast one day to can switch to another. You’re allowed to change cities/servers 3 to 5 times per month without charge. You can also upgrade and downgrade without extra setup fees.

I have watched: various TV shows, NFL games (just caught the Giants/Dallas game) US Open Golf (it was a perfect Live stream in near Hi Def quality) The British and US Tennis Opens and many more.

Connect to StrongVPN and go to Hulu.com, NBC.com or where ever your program is available. Most of the video sites look like Tivo or YouTube. Use Firefox 3 as your browser. I’ve tried with Google’s Chrome and Internet Explorer 8, but Firefox is the best. Once you queue up your show, let it buffer for a little bit. Definition: Give the “Internets” a little time to load the show into the viewer. For Hulu, you will see a buffer gauge of one to five bars just like your mobile phone. The more bars the better. Once it gets to about 3 or 4 bars you’re usually safe to hit play. Sometimes you need to wait to 5 bars to get a good uninterrupted quality video stream. Hulu, Fancast, etc. usually run a 15-30 second ad every 10 minutes or so–a lot fewer commercials than you find on TV. The commercials are almost worth watching, since the advertisers don’t have the FCC breathing down their neck on the Internet. The ads might screw up the buffer, so you may need to pause the show for a minute. Once you’re buffered up again, you’re ready for your TV enjoying experience.

Quick Recap of what you need:

• A computer with XP, Vista or Mac (Sorry don’t know about Linux)
• Good internet connection. (i.e. not dial-up)
• A web browser. Firefox 3 has worked best for me.
• StrongVPN, Pick your plan.
• Hulu, Fancast, or other site that is otherwise blocked for foreign users.
• Enjoy!

StrongVPN: Other Cool Stuff

Pandora

Get Your Music Fix. Another little bonus is streaming music from Pandora.com. It’s closed outside the US, but thanks to my US IP address; I’m able to listen to 30 hours free per month. There is an alternative, Last.fm. It’s US$3/month to stream music without a US IP address. Although very much like Pandora–Pandora has a better mix of songs in my opinion. There are also some radio stations for both talk and music that are only available to US listeners. The stream quality of music is excellent and there is no notable difference compared to my experience in the States.

US Website Access

The reason I first looked into StrongVPN was to convince regular websites that I’m in the States. Since I operate a travel company, I need to shop the competition. I can’t have Expedia or Priceline thinking that I’m in Uruguay when I want them to believe I’m in the US. The sites are different abroad and you can’t always select a US version. I’ve also heard reports from Expats of rejected transactions by Amazon, PayPal , etc. even though their billing address is in the US provided through Earth Class Mail, family, or other residence. By using StrongVPN these sites always assume I’m in the US. It’s been great and is a small cost of doing business.

Email:

My email messages are less likely to go to spam folders when sent from a US IP address. It’s kind of important that my clients receive my emails. ¿No?

Poor man’s solution:

I do have a workaround, which is particularly helpful for live events that are not available online. I like to watch the Vikings. I can’t find a free stream online, so I’ve had my Dad fix his webcam on a TV in his office where we usually Skype. We start a Skype Video call and I am able to watch the whole game. The quality isn’t perfect, but last week I was able to watch Brett Favre rip his old team the Packers on Monday Night Football. It was glorious.

I’ve tried several solutions and StrongVPN has been the best and serves the purpose of both business and pleasure. I’d love to hear any other solutions people have for watching their favorite shows while living or traveling abroad. Please add your comments.

I’ve been using this service since Mozy launched several years ago.  It’s saved our butts more than once and provides peace of mind for $4.95/month.  We use the MozyHome version for PC’s (there is also a Mac version). There’s a business version called MozyPro, but for most users, including business users, MozyHome is the better option based solely on the cost benefit.  You pay more per backed up gigabyte with MozyPro and you don’t get many extra bells and whistles.

An example of how Mozy saved our butts: A few years ago, one of our staff inadvertently deleted an entire client profile of data which we didn’t realize until a couple weeks after it happened and we needed it…now!  Thanks to Mozy we were able to download all the files back to the desktop into their original location with nothing more than a couple clicks. It takes some time to download a lot of data back to your computer, but at least you can recover it.  (A few minutes for several files…maybe a couple hours if you have lost gigabytes.)

These were problems that we had before we found ourselves as expatriates. Now imagine, you’re in a new country with an uneven power supply (Uruguay is pretty good btw). What if you have a power surge, flood, or the humidity finally says this is the end of the line for your computer? Well, Mozy is a small investment that even the most technologically challenged retiree or baby boomer will be able to manage with no trouble.  If you have any issues with Mozy, shoot me an email or if you’re here in Uruguay, lets meet!

Your backups through Mozy also include various versions of files.  If you’re old school, still use Word and wanted to go back to a saved version of a file from a month ago, you can pick any day to restore that file to.  We’ve had to do this and it’s really fast since the file is small.

OK.  Major crisis mode.  You hard drive completely crashes.  You’ve never done that back up that you’ve been meaning to do for months…ahem…years.  All of your photos and documents are gone!  You could pay a service $1000 to try to recover your data and if you’re lucky, you might see some of it again.  Maybe.  See this story about the Miracle on the Hudson. In the case that you ever lose your entire hard drive, like the article, Mozy will FedEx your data on DVDs so you can reload all of your data.  That’s not going to be cheap, but be happy that within a few days while abroad (next day in the States) you can be back up and running.  You’ll be without that precious music and photos for days…not forever. There are several other reasonable ways to back your data, but this has been the easiest for us.  As I said, get Mozy.

Next up in the Expat Travel Technology Series: TV.  There are cool things you can do to watch your favorites shows while on the road or living abroad, but some tricks to make it work.

RingCentral

We currently have three VoIP services with our primary service being RingCentral. RingCentral offers a hosted plan. It’s very easy to set up and you don’t need any hardware other than a computer and a headset.  RingCentral has a “softphone” panel that appears on your computer screen, looks like the face of a regular phone and operates in most ways like a regular phone.  You can use the softphone from a laptop on the road over WiFi or 3G wireless card. It also allows you to send and receive faxes from your computer by either attaching a file such as a pdf or scanning your page right into the program to be sent off.   Like many VoIP services, you receive your voice messages and faxes via email.  I have tried Packet 8, Vonage, and efax. They are all fine service, but RingCentral blows all of these out of the water.  It is comprehensive. You can route calls to various extensions if you have staff or contractors in other parts of the world and can all have US, Canadian, UK or other global phone numbers. It has a very simple interface and even works on your iPhone as a calling app. My clients can call me from anywhere in the world and have no idea that they’ve reached me in Uruguay unless I’ve told them. I called a client in Kazakhstan the other day on my RingCentral line to his Vonage line dialing a local US phone number. Call quality was great. I have yet to drop a call with anyone (I actually had more dropped calls in the States than I do here…weird).

There are many plan levels for RingCentral.  The cheapest starting at US$9.99/mo.  I have opted for a middle of road plan that includes a Linksys IP Phone.  It’s a regular business class phone that sits on my desk.  The call quality is excellent.  It’s more stable than the softphone that I mentioned earlier.  If you’d like to order the phone from RingCentral, you’ll pay anywhere from Free-$100 depending on which service plan you go with.  They also have a plan that includes unlimited use and four business IP phones with individual numbers for $99/month.

RingCentral comes with my highest recommendation if you’re an expatriate that requires a business class solution. If you already have business numbers you’d like to keep, you can port them over no problem. Would you like an 800#?  You can pick between 800, 866, 877 and 888 for free.

Skype

Of course many people know Skype.  I use it regularly to call vendors and clients in other countries. If you’d like to give it a shot–you can download Skype. With Skype I can have video conferences or simply use it as a phone (again you need a headset with microphone or a WebCam for the video features).  There are Skype Cordless WiFi phones that you can use in your house as well and can be purchased through various online and retail outlets.  I’ve not purchased the cordless but had considered this option.  Skype phones come in several versions. Some require a computer and some do not. Check the details.

Skype is a fee based service to call regular phone lines and a free service to have video calls and/or voice calls with other Skype users.  If you never need to call a regular telephone–you won’t pay a cent for this service.  Just get your family, friends and clients set up with a camera and show them where to download Skype and you will be up and running in no time.  For the younger set this is very easy to set up.  If you are not exactly best friends with your computer, you might need a hand from your 11 year grandson or granddaughter.  I referred this to one gentleman that has 90+ year old family members in various parts of the United States.  They can’t travel as easily anymore and Skype has allowed them to see family across the country and around the world with the free video chats.

MagicJack

Finally, now that I know the service, a MagicJack.  The commercials and the website are really cheesey and it seems too good to be true, but this little thinga-ma-watchit really works and is a perfect solution for someone that needs a cheap solution that works great.  You just plug MagicJack into your computer–it installs some software–you type in your confirmation info, and then plug in a standard corded or cordless phone and you’re set.  It dials like a regular phone.  Once you pay your initial $30 or $40 bucks you have free calling to anywhere in the US, with inexpensive calls around the globe.  We opted for an additional 5 years of service so we paid about $100 in one shot.  Now we have free calling to family and friends.  We also use the MagicJack in case one of our other services not working.  Your voice messages can be picked up from your phone or via email since a small VM file is emailed to you.   I have also set up an email rule to forward to Lisa’s email as well so we both get messages on our computers.  We treat the MagicJack like a land line with no payments in our case for 6 years.  It’s free for family to call and they don’t need anything special to do it.  Just your new phone number.  At the time, I’m writing this you cannot move a current phone number to the MagicJack, but I understand that feature is coming.

There is so much more to say about phone and VoIP technology.  I’m not covering many different other possibilities.  Just know that you can communicate with just a little additional cost.  In fact, you are probably going to pay less than you were at home, because you’ll be ditching your land line and expensive cell phone plan in favor of one of these simple and inexpensive services.  VoIP is one of the greatest, and most important tools to any expat.  Shoot me some questions for anything that you’d like me to expand on.  I’ve tried to keep this simple.

So now you’ve eliminated the bulk of your mail. What to do with the rest? In our case we receive the remainder of our postal mail through an online scan and mail forwarding service. We started this about 6 months before we left with a company called Earth Class Mail (ECM). ECM receives your mail at a PO Box, then does an initial high resolution color scan of the front and back of the piece of mail. This scan is then emailed for you to take action. Scan what’s inside, Recycle, Shred or forward via FedEx to another location. The service is great for sorting mail. You have copies of all your mail in PDF form that you can save to your computer or it can be archived on ECM’s site.

We’re self employed as many expatriates are. We still received paper checks from clients and vendors, which is another issue. I wish everyone just did ACH/direct deposit, but they don’t. One of the many tools that ECM offers is “Deposit Check”. After scanning your mail you may deposit a check with a click of a button into a Wells Fargo account. I had to establish a new account with Wells Fargo to make this happen but it beat having to worry about sending checks to family for them to deposit on my behalf. For a small per check fee I can deposit online in just one step.

To be honest the set up process with Wells Fargo was long and painful. It took nearly two months for the account creation and testing. I believe this was due to it being a relatively new service at the time of my set up, but be prepared. Wells did cover the cost of my checks (which I may not use since I live in Uruguay, but still) and waived account fees for the first couple months.

I love ECM. I love receiving mail online. If I return to the States I will continue this service. It just simplifies things too much for me to give it up. They also license the technology throughout Europe with Swiss Post (addresses available throughout Europe). It’s great if you’re a road warrior traveling for business 4 of every 5 days of the business week or just don’t want to deal with all the junk. With Earth Class Mail, junk mail is almost all gone and if I do get it,  I hit the recycle button. I’m kind of a hippie too and this is a fairly green way to deal with your mail. You’ll have a much higher percentage of your mail recycled and a much lower percentage of garbage mail making it to your virtual door.

With ECM, you still have a physical mailing address to select.  There are many PO Box locations to choose from as well as several street locations.  If you want to be virtually in Manhattan…bam!  You’re there.  (Or at least your mail is there). If you’re only receiving personal mail, a PO Box will location will probably work for you. Since we receive business mail, it complicates matters when vendors will accept nothing but a street address. We pay a small additional fee to have a street address in Seattle (instead of a PO Box). This still wasn’t ideal for us, though, and we decided to have an additional address set up with a UPS store in Minneapolis. Twice per month our UPS Store automatically forwards all of our personal and business mail that is not already directed to our ECM location in Seattle. ECM receives it and upon our instruction they open the Priority Package from UPS and “induct” all of the individual pieces of mail as though they had been sent directly. Many probably won’t require this extra step but ECM just didn’t have an address in Minny so we felt if was necessary for us to maintain our presence there. They have addresses in most major cities and  are adding more all the time.

There are several other ways to get your mail. You can DHL or FedEx regularly to your new foreign locale. Or in the case of Uruguay, you can try a service like Miami-Box. Have your Amazon and other packages shipped right to the street address of Miami-Box and they in turn will bring to down to Uruguay and deliver right to your door very quickly. There are high fees and duty to worry about, as well as certain items that can’t be shipped but it’s a service that’s worth taking a look at.  We also employ the minions that read our blog to courier items down to us.  Not a bad practice!  If you have family or friends coming down, have them take a trip to Target or Costco to grab some of your favorite items.  But I digress… 

Earth Class Mail : Receive PDF files of all your mail online. Sort, save, recycle. Very simple, very easy.

There are many challenges in moving abroad.  One is technology.  What do I bring? How will it work?  Will it work at all?  Do they sell that in Timbuktu? If yes, do I have to give up my first born to get it?  The answer to that last one is…maybe.  Technology abroad–for the most part–is expensive.  

Tech–as it’s always been–is a blessing and a curse.  There are an incredible number of options, but at least we have options.  I give Lisa’s mom a hard time for coming over on “the boat” in the ’50s from the Netherlands.  They actually flew with several stops, including one in Greenland. Either way, it was no picnic.  So even if my computer crashes or my VOIP goes down…I did not have to come over on “the boat”.  Again, options. We can communicate locally and internationally even if that means I have to walk down to the nearest restaurant or McDonalds with WiFi (wireless internet) if my Internet crashes.  WiFi is even available in the parks here in UY and some buses  I’ll have to try that albeit discreetly –if that’s possible– as I don’t want my computer to be relieved from my possession.  You can even sit down at the McCafe and have a “meeting” across the table via webcam.  So you can continue those Starbucks-style meetings if you like.

One challenge involves staying in contact with your “home” country.  For some this may not be an issue if they are severing ties to the homeland.  In our case, we need to work with clients in the United States to allow us to maintain our expat lifestlye and keep up with family.  Thankfully it has never been easier to maintain this connection as an expat.   Even three or four years ago this transition was far harder than it is today.

There are many issues to consider: receiving postal /snail mail, personal and business phone, computer hardware, backing up your computer, power supplies, what technology to bring, watching your favorite TV shows from home, hiring developers or independant contractors. Fortunately there is a tool, a download, a website, or a physically piece of equipment that can address all of these issues. Even if you’re a baby boomer retiring abroad and technology is not your best friend, there are still many tools that are worth the small investment.  I will provide information on several of the travel technology tools that I use everyday in Montevideo… many of these we were using well before the move because they’re just great services. The technology we use untethers us from a physical location and thereby is perfect for a traveler on the go or an expat…well…that’s flat out gone. 

I’m sensitive to you Mac folks…I have not yet joined your ranks, but most of these tools play nice with Mac…probably better.  

I will also talk about some of the challenges of limiting the interuption to my business while navigating the set up process in a foreign country.  There have been pleasant surprises and of course headaches.  I will share it all here.  I may not be able to wait until Monday…there’s so much good stuff!!!

We’re also working on an extensive list of baby items that we brought with us- along with a few items that we wish we had.  This will be released in the coming days.