Now, the most popular way to facilitate said access seems to be using TOR. Tor is basically a service that lets you route internet traffic between random nodes across the world, thereby making sites effectively unblockable. Pretty cool, the preferred usage model is installing Firefox / Vidalia / Privoxy and Tor.

Now, this is a bit of a faff, and involves leaving a bunch of stuff on the machine you are using – not ideal. I figured a useful contribution could be using a tool such as the excellent Xenocode Virtual Application Studio to repack the apps such that they run from one EXE and are sandboxed from the machine you are running on. e.g. you can run from a USB stick without leaving traces.

Since I happen to have purchased aforementioned software, I have bundled up Firefox 3.0.11 with the Vidalia software bundle and i’m making it available here for download. Please note that I make NO warranties around this, but it seems to work – feedback is very very much appreciated.

DOWNLOADS IN ZIP FORMAT: (just unzip and run the EXE):

- My Server
- Rapidshare Mirror

After running, click the ENABLE TOR button down the bottom right of Firefox and then visit a site like http://www.showmyip.com to check it’s working!

When you exit, remember to exit the components aside from Firefox (i.e. Tor, Privoxy, Vidalia – would it be better if exiting FF exited them all?)

Finally, note the ‘Sandbox’ directory – this is your custom settings from the session – instead of being saved on the host machine, they’re saved in there, allowing you to persist your settings on, say, a USB stick, between launches.

If it’s useful, spread the word. and your feedback is very welcome!

Cheers,

P

EDIT: This version should now be x64 compatible.

What is a bit annoying tho with all these ‘cloud applications’ is how they appear as ‘just another browser’ tab, and you therefore can’t speedily switch to them like regular applications in the dock. Ah ha, but now you can!

Courtesy of Mozilla Prism, img2icns and EasyDMG, i’ve created a standalone web application, with a lovely icon (especially if you’re using a Sony Ericsson X1) and in a nice easy to use DMG format!

You can download it from this link – http://content.modaco.net/Dashwire.dmg.zip – enjoy! Please post a comment if you use it!

P