Here are some of the memories from the past of SmartHide Dev. Team to cheer up a little bit 
Well, it all started long time ago with SmartHide v. 1.0 and the search for our own way. We tried to write a driver which would intercept certain protocols. After that we tried to add UDT which increased the data transfer speed in the network almost twice as much. We tested the interception of network API’s with the help of dll injection. We did a bunch of different things trying to feel around for the right solution. Our experiments brought us to Open VPN. The interaction with the OVPN process and the minimal functionality were added to GUI. The major version modification took place. SmartHide became 2.0 after that.
On August 25, 2007 we released the first official, not beta, version. As far as I remember we did not integrate billing at that time and could not sell the software. That’s why everybody who was interested received trial versions from us. There was no server list update mechanism at that moment. Each time we wanted to add a new server we had to recompile and upload the program. The releases followed each other one by one. We issued 3 versions during 4 days.
Version 2.0.36 [August 28 2007]
- New: Added new server in Great Britain for Trial version
Version 2.0.35 [August 27 2007]
- New: Some changes in the GUI
Version 2.0.34 [August 25 2007]
- New: UDP based data transfer
- New: LZO data compress
- New: SSL data encryption
- New: Transfer UDP and TCP traffic
- New: Using tun/tap driver
I also remember that there were some problems with the reconnection – it just did not work properly. It was necessary to activate the disconnect notification in the first run to make sure that reconnection is functioning. But the notification was in a simple message box and as long as you do not press OK manually, no automatic reconnection took place. The message stating that “you are using a trial version, please consider purchasing the software” was not readable at all. I’m sure that nobody read it.
To be continued…