I just read that China has cut off access to Gmail, Google.com, etc. And I'm leaving in 10 days for a two-week vacation there. I'm looking for a good way to stay in touch with that damned firewall in the way. I need a way to VPN, or at least proxy, my way through that.

Of course there are loads of public services, like Hamachi or more general VPNs. But I'm assuming that as the Chinese government learns of these "leaks", they get blocked as well. So my expectation is that to ensure that I'll have a way out, I've got to implement it myself.

Aside from accessing mail and anything else I need through my notebook, another requirement adding complexity is that I be able to use the tunnel to access Google Voice using my Android phone (through the GrooveIP app, which allows it to be used as pure VoIP).

Can any of you suggest a good strategy for doing this?

My first guess was to set up a VPN using my dd-wrt router. I'm pretty sure this is possible, but the documentation is far from clear (to the degree that it exists at all), both in the creation of the VPN itself, and in its usage. Also, I'm not sure that I'd be able to use it with my Android phone.

Maybe it would be easier to set up an application of some sort (whether a VPN or just a proxy server) on my desktop computer, and set up my router to pass the traffic through to that computer.

Just catching the conversation up...

ACDSee just released a new version, for Pro it's now at v6. It doesn't seem like a very major upgrade, but then the upgrade price is pretty reasonable. The one big feature I've been looking for, Face Recognition, is still not even whispered about there.