If you're abroad and want to keep a finger on the pulse of life at home, what are your options? You might sign up for satellite TV, buy an over-priced newspaper, or read online. But sound and moving pictures somehow make you feel more "connected". Streaming audiovisual content may be the answer.
Local radio
Peak FM is our local radio station in the UK. I used to catch the news bulletin as I drove to work, and often at lunchtime as I did my house calls. Although the traffic information isn't much use to me 12,000 miles away in New Zealand, it was nice to hear what was going on in the neighbourhood. Unfortunately, however, despite the station allowing folk to "listen live" over the net, I am barred from doing so with a New Zealand IP address:
No way around that one. At least Simone can still listen to Hit Radio FFH.
BBC television
In the case of BBC News video content the restriction is partial—you can get narrowband content. Here is the narrowband player (actual size):
To get the broadband stream outside of the UK we are asked to pay $40 per year, but despite there being an Intel-native Real Player for Mac, the sign-up page says:
This service has not been designed for use on a Macintosh.
Then I recalled writing about the BBC testing health-news video podcasts, noting that Ben Metcalfe had created an unofficial feed list that links directly to the streaming media. Interesting, I can subscribe to the broadband feeds despite my New Zealand IP address and watch the associated streams in Real Player on my Mac. And fair go too, since we continue paying our UK television license fee. The video is much clearer and less pixelated (actual size):
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There is also another way to go about this that would give you more control over your network than relying on public proxy servers, but it's slightly more technical. It involves using a piece of technology that was just released on Dec. 1, called psiphon. Psiphon is basically a roll-your-own proxy server. A friend of yours in the UK installs psiphon on their computer (PC and Linux only so far, Mac support coming soon) and then gives you a url, username and password. You then navigate to that URL in your browser, enter your username and password and then enter the url you want to access in the psiphon toolbar. Any website you access will only see your friend's computer's IP address and not your actual IP address in NZ. I think this only works over http and https though.
If you'd rather not burden any of your friends you might want to have a look at this forum where you can request a username and password for using psiphon, and more specifically, this post, where you can find a username and password for a pisphon server already up and running 24/7 in the UK.
Thanks for the suggestion Kevin; I tried psiphon with an account on that UK node, but was unable to stream anything from Peak FM.
Hm, I tried posting another comment earlier, but it doesn't seem to have appeared. It recommended using a public proxy server based in the UK.
Thanks again Kevin. One problem with psiphon seemed to be that it rejected any embeded media, inserting "removed by Psiphon" into the page source. Apparently it doesn't like secure servers either.
I tried adding a few UK-based web proxy servers I found via Google (System Prefs > Network > Proxies), but was then unable to reach any site. As I understand it, all I need to do is enter the domain and port number before clicking "Apply", so I'm not sure why I failed. I notice you can specify a streaming proxy; might that facility be useful?
Helpful stuff....
I love my trips to macau and HK where I can surf freely....
Best from the Pearl River...
LBH