I'm not a fan of setting up Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). In fact, I've had so many issues with VPNs in the past that I now subcontract that work to a fellow geek who seems to have a knack for understanding the various settings. That's why I have been following Hamachi with great interest for the past several years.

Hamachi is described in the Wikipedia as "a zero-configuration virtual private network (VPN) shareware application capable of establishing direct links between computers that are behind NAT firewalls without requiring reconfiguration (in most cases); in other words, it establishes a connection over the Internet that very closely emulates the connection that would exist if the computers were connected over a local area network."

LogMeIn, a commercial firm that produces both free and subscription services for controlling other machines, sent out an email to customers on Thursday touting Hamachi², their implementation of Hamachi. LogMeIn has been deeply involved in Hamachi development, so the announcement was expected. What I didn't expect to see was that they've left both Mac and Linux users out in the cold.

I quickly jotted off an email to LogMeIn and received this response: "Mac is not currently supported, we do plan on adding support for other platforms but do not have an ETA at this time." For quite a while, there was an open source project called "Hamachi X," but it's no longer supported. Another developer took on the task of creating a Mac OS X and Linux Hamachi client called Hamachi Sidekick, which is a GUI to a command-line Hamachi tool. Unfortunately, LogMeIn also pulled the Mac OS X command-line interface (CLI) version of Hamachi, so there's no way to even try the CLI tool or Hamachi Sidekick now.

LogMeIn may tout Hamachi² as "a VPN that just works," but for Mac users, it just doesn't work.

Have you ever wondered whether the wifi data you send and receive with your iPhone or iPod touch at the local coffee shop or airport is secure? Well, I bet if you hadn't wondered that before, you are now. It's easy to forget that inside that cute little handheld device live the guts of an actual computer, and likely a lot of personal data. Depending on your surfing habits, you could be sending and receiving personal information in a non-secure way over public wifi.

If you're concerned about your data's safety, consider using Anchorfree's Hotspot Shield free VPN service. Hotspot Shield has been a great way to lock down your laptop's wifi for a long time now, and just recently they have released instructions on how to take advantage of their service on an iPhone / iPod touch. Pleasantly, the service does not require that a program be downloaded to your device, but rather takes advantage of the iPhone and iPod touch's built-in VPN functionality.

My only gripe with Hotspot Shield is that it can sometimes be challenging to get the VPN to successfully connect. Anchorfree recommends performing a quick reboot of your device to get your connection going, but in my experience even that can be a hit-or-miss scenario. But it's still better than letting that creepy guy that keeps hitting on the barista peruse my http requests. 'Cause I'm not paranoid, but I'm sure that's what he's doing.

Another Friday Favorite, our weekly opportunity to get all sloppy over our most-loved applications.

If you have an always-on Mac at home, a decent upstream connection and another Mac anywhere outside of your home network, you might find ShareTool to be as useful as I do. It allows you -- with an amazing degree of simplicity -- to access your Bonjour services on a remote machine as if you were still within your home network. It does this over an SSH encrypted connection (and also automatically sets up a proxy for secure web-browsing over the tunnel). Yes, you can get some of these benefits with a simple SSH tunnel, or you could set up a VPN using HamachiX, but the simple fact that ShareTool "Just Works" makes it my favorite choice for everything from screen sharing to iTunes streaming.

I use ShareTool on a Mac Mini, with an Airport Extreme Base Station on a connection that gets about 800k average upload speed. iTunes streaming is flawless, and remote drive access is as good or better than just using SFTP. Setup is as simple as choosing a port (defaults to 22, the standard SSH port) to share on and hitting "Share" on your home Mac. After that, you can set it to start at login, and begin sharing on launch. Then, on your remote machine, you just need to enter an IP or domain and the port, and the rest is automatic. You can select which Bonjour services to enable or just go for broke and enable everything. I've got a static IP these days, but services like No-IP and DynDNS work great if you have a dynamic IP address. ShareTool can even handle updating the dynamic IP service for you, so you don't have to run any daemons.

ShareTool is provided by YazSoft, and a free trial is available for download on the main page. The pricing structure requires a license for every computer, and a pair of licenses costs $30USD (5 for $75USD). YazSoft provides free updates within a major version number (1.x customers get all 1.x updates for free). If you're looking for an easy way to keep your entire home network handy anywhere you go, it might be worth a try.

VPNs are a staple of corporate life nowadays. They create a secure connection from your computer to your company's computers using a 'Virtual Private Network.' This allows you to access company documents via public networks in a secure fashion.

Cisco is a big player in the VPN market, and luckily for us OS X users there is a Mac client that allows connections from Macs to Cisco VPN appliances. Sadly, it sucks. The interface isn't Mac like, and while it works it doesn't offer up any nice features like Keychain integration or automatic reconnects. Enter Shimo, from nexUmoja. This little program offers up an alternative UI to the Cisco client that adds a number of features including Keychain integration, Growl notifications, and auto reconnecting.

All of this is great and as a user of Cicso's VPN client you would think I would use this without hesitation. Sadly, the whole point of VPNs is to make your communications more secure, and I simply don't trust a third party app sitting between my encrypted data and the Cisco VPN appliance. That's just me though, I'm slightly paranoid.

Wednesday is Ask TUAW time! This week we tackle questions on GPS solutions on the Mac, zero-configuration VPN with Hamachi, dealing with a slow starting Mac, as well as a couple of student questions on taking notes and using the Summarize Service, As always, please leave your own comments, and ask more questions for next week either in the comments to this post or using the tip form. Now let's turn to the questions.

If you have spent any time in the corporate world you have probably heard of VPN. Virtual Private Networks are a way to securely connect to one network, say your work's network resources, from another place (like your home broadband connection). OS X server has a VPN server baked right in that allows both OS X clients and Windows clients to connect securely, but how do you set it up?

Maclive.net has just posted a great article that explores setting up an OS X VPN server as well as connecting to that server from a Mac or a Windows box.