Our NEW TV Directory launched

We have launched our new Online TV Directory www.my-expat-telly.com A brand new site that lists tons online TV content currently available and of interest to UK and US Expats. Why not bookmark Expat Telly and use it as your one stop shop to your favourite TV shows.

Online Directory

We are putting together a new website which will have links to the most popular online TV content available. The directory will list both UK and US websites that we believe our members regularly visit, but now hosted in one convenient location. One of the most common questions we get is from new subscribers is, "what programmes can I watch ?" Well, our new online telly guide will be an invaluable tool for new and existing subscribers. We are finalising the site this week, and will post here as soon as the site is "live".

More New Servers

Both our UK Mobile Device service and our UK Desktop service have had large numbers of new subscribers before during and after the Rugby World Cup, and we are delighted that the word is spreading. To keep up with demand we are currently installing two new racks of servers for our UK VPN services which will keep our service as good as possible.

The new servers will be configured and online in the next couple of days, and we will post here with more news as soon as they are working.

Planned server maintenance

We will be doing some network upgrade maintenance to our servers in October. This work is going to be staged so the possibility of disruption is kept to an absolute minimum. Individual servers will be offline for a maximum of 30 minutes. We envisage minimal disruption to the majority of end users. However any subscribers connected at the time will have to reconnect should they lose connectivity.


The timetable of work for October is as follows :


05/10/2011  between 04:00 and 06:00  (UK Time)

 

17/10/2011  between 22:00 and 00:00  (UK Time)

16/10/2011  between 22:00 and 00:00 (UK Time)

 

19/10/2011 between  01:00 and 03:00  (UK Time)

 

Facebook Friends

Thanks to all those of you who regularly visit our Facebook page  we really appreciate your feedback.
We are offering an iPod Classic to one lucky subscriber, as soon as we hit 2,000 "likes" on our Facebook page. The winner will be drawn randomly from all of our Facebook friends. The winner of our previous draw, David Keyte can be seen on our Facebook page with his prize.
We are also keen to post any photos and info from our many subscribers from around the world, who are happy to share their Expat experiences with fellow Brits abroad on our Facebook page.

Contact Us

We have had some problems with the "Contact Us" page on our website for a couple if days that has just come to light.
If you have used the page recently we have not received the mail and may not get it at all. However we can be contacted at my.expats@gmail.com

Google Mail (Gmail) disruption

Our email service is run via Google Mail which helps us to prevent spamming problems and junk mail filtering. However every now and again Google have their own issues with the service which can cause temporary disruptions. Earlier today Google Mail was down for a couple of hours and we would like to apologise to any of our subscribers who have had trouble contacting us today.

OSX 10.7 feedback

Our new Mac OSX 10.7 Lion software has been getting great feedback from existing subscribers. Thanks to all for your patience while we developed the upgrade. All new Mac subscribers running OSX 10.7 or earlier OSX versions can download the same upadated version of or software, as it is compatible with previous OSX versions too.

Mac OSX 10.7 Lion NOW AVAILABLE

We are happy to let you know we now have the new version of our Mac software that is compatible up to version 10.7 available on our website.

Existing subscribers will need to trash our old software, empty the trash and do a restart before subscribing again.  

Then CANCEL the current subscription 

https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/ebook/subscriptions/cancellations.html 

We have detailed "Sign Up" and "Installation Guides" under the How To's tab on our website.

We had hoped to offer an upgrade for existing customers but the complexity of 10.7 means this would take some considerable time, so to get everyone back up and running quickly, a new subscription is the best solution.

As a goodwill gesture we will refund the first payment of your new subscription.

Please let us know when you re-subscribe so the refund can be made straight away.

Many thanks for your patience whilst we have developed the new software.

My Expat Network Support

Mac OSX 10.7 tests OK

Beta testing of our new software upgrade for Mac OSX 10.7 has been successful and gone according to plan.
We are currently configuring our servers to deliver the new version, and will post on the blog and our facebook page as soon as it is available for download for new subscribers. We will mail directly those existing customers who have contacted us for the new version with information on how to upgrade.

Beta Testing

We are beta testing our updated Mac OSX software at the moment, and will make it available when we are 100% happy with it. We will post on facebook, our blog and contact directly those subscribers who have emailed us, once testing is completed. The update is required as the new Lion 10.7 operating system has a totally new architecture to previous versions.

Mac OSX 10.7

The new Mac OSX 10.7, or Lion as the marketing guys have called it, has been launched this week. We have had to wait like everybody else for 10.7 to hit the shelves, but our techies now have their geeky hands on a copy and will have an updated version of our software available early next week. Mac users who have updated to 10.7 can then login at http://www.my-expat-network.co.uk/login.php and use their existing credentials to download the updated version.

Email Helpdesk

Due to holiday commitments we will be manning our email helpdesk to UK time until 27th July.

Our U.S based helpdesk will be back in action after this date.

We will as always endeavour to answer any General Enquiries and Troubleshooting requests on the same day, but for our Far East and U.S subscribers, and for late evening requests in Europe this may not always be possible during the holiday period.

Website back online

Obviously the website is fully up and running again (after a few hours of hard work and stress related symptoms) or you would not be able to read this post on our news feed !


Thanks to all the engineers and techies, both working for us and the network hub, who got it sorted a quickly as possible. And apologies to any subscribers who had difficulty finding us !!

Website Problems: Contact

We currently have a network problem which is outside of our control that we are urgently trying with others to resolve. At the moment the tabs on our web page are not working so if you require any info we can be contacted on my.expats@gmail.com
Our service may be intermittent today as the engineers fix hardware. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience, and are kicking backsides on your behalf !

New Servers

We have implemented a new bank of servers today as part of a systems upgrade that will be taking place over the next week or so. We will notify everyone via our website news feed, facebook and the blog of any service disruptions that may need to be scheduled while the work is completed. We expect this investment to improve the overall experience of signing up to My Expat Network for new subscribers, and to give our existing subscribers the best possible VPN product, whilst keeping our subscription fee at just £5.00 per month.

iPad 2 Winner

Here is a photo of our competition winner David Keyte with his iPad 2 on his balcony in Spain. David was one of the first 1000 people to "like" our facebook page and was randomly picked out of the hat to win the iPad 2. When we get to 2000 likes we will do another draw, this time for an iPod Touch. Please tell all your friends !!!

David wrote to say...

"Thanks for this wonderful prize, I have included a photo of Myself and the Ipad on my terrace in Leon. Can I say that my experience of using My Expat Network has been great, in every way. Thank you once again, from a very happy customer.I will be subscribing for my new iPad 2 ASAP"
Best regards

Dave Keyte

Facebook contact

We are always pleased to hear from our subscribers via our facebook page and we do our best to post fresh content there as often as possible. However we are getting help requests and some troubleshooting emails via our facebook page which is not directly linked to our helpdesk. Can we ask that all such requests be sent to us us via our "Contact Us" page which can be found on the website at :

http://www.my-expat-network.co.uk/contact/index.php 


The "Troubleshooting" form on this page gives us the important details we will need to help.
Also contacting the helpdesk directly will get emails answered on the same day, and we operate in both US (central standard time) and UK timezones. 

iPad winner in Spain

The winner of the iPad 2 is David Keyte, who is currently living in Spain. We have mailed him with the good news and look forward to his response !

And the winner is...???

We have broken through the 1000 likes barrier on facebook !!!! So we are going to randomly draw someone from our many fans to win a brand new iPad 2.


Watch this space for the announcement sometime tomorrow. 


Many thanks to everyone for liking us, and please feel free to contribute photos and any tips and info you may wish to share from your part of the Expat world.

China Subscriptions

There seems to be a problem subscribing to our service from China.The best way to resolve this may be to get a friend outside of China to subscribe on your behalf, and have them forward the login details to you by email. As long as you have the username and password supplied by Paypal and the link to our login page you will be able to download and install the software normally. Once up and running the VPN will work correctly.

facebook...close to 1000

We are getting very close to hitting the 1000 "likes" mark on our facebook page. We have a brand new iPad 2 to give away as soon as we get to the one thousand mark, so why not tell your friends about us, get them to like us on facebook, and take part in the draw to win the iPad. We are currently at 977 so it won't be too long before we randomly pick the lucky winner.

Wi-fi Directory

We have found a great free public wi-fi directory which has literally thousands of free hotspots listed from all around the world. This is a great tool for those of us landing in new places and looking to get online for free. Check out http://www.jiwire.com/ 

New Macbook Pro

Our techies have worked overtime on the the New Macbook Pro issue and have hopefully resolved the problem. A new version of our VPN client will be replacing the existing Mac client over the next day or so. The good news is that the sign up process will remain the same as it has always been for Mac users, so it's a BIG thanks from us to Apple for setting us the challenge !!!

New Macbook Pro Thunderbolt

There seems to be a conflict with our VPN software and the new Macbook Pro's with the Thunderbolt connection. Our techies are urgently looking into resolving this issue. In the mean time we would ask subscribers using the new Macs to send us a bit of info on the machine i.e is it the 13" 15" or 17" and to forward us a System Profile. To do this just open the System Profiler application, and from the drop down File menu save the report and mail it to us. With this info we will hopefully see where the conflict is and come up with a fix.

Facebook competition

We have over 900 fans on our facebook page "My expat Network Group". When we hit the magic 1000 we will give an iPad 2 to one lucky fan. The winner will be chosen at random and informed by email. We will publish the name, and hopefully a photo of the winner with iPad in hand, on our facebook page.
If you happen to be fan number 1001 don't worry, we will offer a new prize to one of the next thousand fans.

Twitter

We have ventured in to the land of Tweets !! We're still finding our way round for the time being, but we will do our best to keep things moving along. Click on the "follow us on Twitter" logo on our website to join in.

Server Outage

Apologies to a few of our subscribers who have experienced connection problems in the last 48 hours or so. One of our servers in the pool of servers was not processing requests properly, resulting in the failure to connect. In the short term disconnecting and reconnecting randomly allocated a different (working !!) server which overcame the problem. However the problematic server has now been dropped out of the pool and a bank of new servers has been added and will be up and running before the end of the week.
We were not alone in the technology cock up department this week as the BBC totally lost all their internet services for an hour or so on Tuesday, web sites, iPlayer...the lot.

Hopefully Mr. Random Malfunction is now making his way home by a different route...

Brits in Japan

We have been contacted by several Brits who are currently helping in Japan with the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami. As a small gesture to recognise the fantastic work they are doing we are offering a free subscription for a month to any Brits who contact us from Japan. Contact can be made via the "Contact Us" page on our website :

http://www.my-expat-network.co.uk/contact/index.php

Anyone interested can fill out the form and briefly let us know where you are working and which organisation or group you are with. We will then send you free login details that will last one month from the day you receive them.

Facebook page

We have recently started a facebook page called "My Expat Network Group", and thanks to everyone who has added us as a "like". Being and ambitious bunch we are offering a free iPad to one of our facebook friends, in a random draw, once we hit 1000 "likes". Pass it on !!!

Earthquake effects

Some of our subscribers, particularly those using our U.S service, may find that their connection speeds are slower as an effect of the earthquake in Japan.
This may take a few days to recover as re routing takes place. Unfortunately this is beyond our control and pales into insignificance when we consider the heartbreak and hardship being endured by those directly affected.

Japan Earthquake

Our sincerest thoughts are with the Japanese people after the horrors of the weekend. We also have many Expat subscribers living in Japan who will have been affected by the quake. One of our senior management team was was visiting Tokyo for business on Friday and experienced the full effects of the earthquake on the 16th floor of an office block. Very frightening, but nothing compared to those struck by the tsunami...

NEW Mobile device service

Our new service for mobile devices has launched this week. You can now use our VPN on your iPad, iPhone, iTouch, Android phones and tablets, as well as Windows enabled devices.

This service runs entirely separately from our existing desktop service, and uses a different VPN protocol, so needs to be configured manually, rather than downloading our software for the existing service.

Be sure that you subscribe to the service you require, and click on the relevant "Subscribe" button on our Welcome page, as the usernames and passwords Paypal supply will not work on both services.

With the new mobile device service you will be able to configure up to three devices on the one subscription, as long as you don't use them all simultaneously. We have an active connection counter on our servers so subscriptions can't be shared.

Many new mobile devices will come to market over the coming months and new mobile media services are being launched almost as quickly. The number of global Public WiFi hotspots is increasing exponentially    so we believe the opportunity to keep in touch with the UK, literally from wherever you are in the world,
has never been greater.

When using Public WiFi hotspots always make sure you connect with our VPN, as without your data being encrypted it is extremely easy for anyone to eavesdrop on your data and steal you personal information and identity.
All multi-national companies and governments insist on VPN connections for their employees for a good reason. You are advised to do the same.

Download Link

Sometimes our download link email can go to your spam or junk mail folder.
The link required is : www.my-expat-network.co.uk/login.php


You may need to copy and paste the link into your address bar .

NEW iPad iPhone and mobile device service...

Great news for the many many people who have been requesting our service for their mobile devices.

Our VPN solution for iPad , iPhone and other mobile devices will be launched in Feb 2011.

The best bit is that all mobile device subscribers will be able to run the VPN on BOTH their iPad and iPhone, so long as only one device is used at a time. Because these devices use a different protocol to our existing VPN service we have been able to incorporate a connection counter to monitor the number of simultaneous connections from the user ID. You can now have two VPN connections for £5.00 per month and secure mobile access to UK online content for your handheld devices, wherever you are in the world.

HAPPY NEW YEAR !