Unblock-Us Manager Now Available on Google Play
I’m a big proponent of Unblock Us, a VPN-less solution for using online service that are not available in your country, such as Netflix, Hulu, Pandora etc., in your country. It’s purely based on DNS, which means it works on all network connected devices and has practically zero performance impacts.
One thing that always bugged was that one has to reactivate their IP address with Unblock Us whenever it changes, e.g. after rebooting your WiFi router. Previously one had to go to unblock-us.com, wait for the service checker widget to detect that you had a new IP address, and manually reactivate it by clicking a pop-up link. On Google TV this was particularly annoying, since the browsing experience isn’t exactly great and it was just uncomfortable, since you didn’t even realize until e.g. Netflix would stop working.
Long story short, I’ve written an Android application which does all that for you, automatically. It sits idle on your Android device and will be woken up by the system whenever your network connectivity changes. It will then automatically register with unblock-us.com with the current IP address. This should ensure a seamless viewing / listening experience for Unblock Us supported services.
The app is tiny, requires merely internet access permissions, and doesn’t even require a password–just your email address you used to sign up with Unblock Us. Your email address will be used to send an activation request to unblock-us.com.
Ideas for new features:
- Provide a region chooser similar to the one on the website
- Provide a service monitor that will notify you about outages of Netflix and other services