Overseas with no TV to watch the latest episode, I fired up my laptop and surfed over to hulu.com, only to discover - horror of horrors!- that I was 'Outside of the US, and am ineligible for hulu.com at this time.'

Well, I wasn't going to stand for that. So, for that, and other reasons, I got myself a VPN service, a potent arrow in any geek's (or businessperson's) quiver, from StrongVPN.com.

Virtual Private Networks give you some major benefits:

- Complete encryption of all your Internet traffic from your desktop all the way to a remote server - so no kid can sniff out your paswords or usernames
-Ability to surf anonymously - no one can tell what sites you visit
-Get around geographical restrictions - whether it's just to watch hulu.com overseas, or to bypass internet firewalls in places like China, Oman, etc.

VPN's encrypt all traffic sent to and from your computer at the computer level - meaning no one, not even the hotspot owner, can tell what sites you're visiting, let alone what data you entered. In a day and age when any 13 year old with 5 minutes of knowledge can find out your online banking password, VPN's are a powerful tool. There’s a reason big corporation require their employees use them. It's pretty much an essential service to have if you use a lot of open, public hotspots, like at Starbucks or other places.

StrongVPN.com is not the cheapest provider, but they're probably one of the best. First of all, you can choose a VPN server in over 9 countries and multiple cities, to find one that provides the fastest connection for you. Secondly, their customer service ROCKS - I was having trouble setting up my Mac, and a quick live chat got a support tech to share my screen, set it up, and get it working within 5 minutes. I’ve contacted them multiple times, and let me tell you, it's rare indeed to find an Internet service company that has 24/7/365 live support these days, and good support at that.

So if you want security, pace of mind, or just NEED to watch Glee overseas, I highly recommend strongvpn.com.