So, as I have mentioned before you can use the TOR network (http://www.torproject.org/) to proxy around this problem – but TOR is an install package that may not always be appropriate to install on a company/school pc etc, along comes UltraSurf (http://www.ultrareach.com/) a simple little portable application you can put on your USB stick.
UltraSurf will once it is started open a browser and you can browse the net with a US based IP (by proxying your traffic) thus giving you access to US based webservices. Speed is not great but seemed acceptable and I managed to get an ok mediastream from ABC (note you may have to restart the browser when installing activex components).
A word of caution, I would not share creditcard or other confidential information on a proxyed connection, you never know who/what is inspecting your HTTP traffic, HTTPS/SSL/TSL traffic should be secure though (but still think about what you are doing).
Get it here (Free);
http://www.ultrareach.com/
Show your IP (you will notice this changes once UltraSurf is started);
http://showip.net/ or http://www.ipchicken.com/
If you have ever worked with Microsoft ISA server you may have heard of “GFI WebMonitor”, “GFI WebMonitor” is an add on to the ISA server (it does also exist as a standalone server application) that will allow for Malware, Virus scanning along with traffic analysis and extended logging of HTTP traffic thus protecting workstations against ‘drive by infections’ and other script dangers while surfing.
The news part is that GFI now offer a freeware version, the freeware version is however limited to logging and statistics thus the Malware and Virus protection is turned off in the freeware version after 30 days. But still the logging and statistics functionality is not half bad for free.
So if you are looking for traffic logging and analysis this may be worth a look.
Get it here;
http://www.gfi.com/internet-monitoring-software
Is your harddisk working overtime and you have no idea why!? We all know the sittuation, especially Windows Vista 
and Windows 7 seem to spend a lot of time working on your harddisks without no apparent reason, and it is very hard determining what process it is that is actually causing all the disk/processor activity. Well one way of debugging this is to download procexp.exe from http://live.sysinternals.com, another approach is to try a utility I just got hold of that offers an easier overview “What is my computer doing” http://www.itsth.com/en/produkte/Whats-my-computer-doing.php
Download it here;
http://www.itsth.com/download/getfile.php?file=WhatsMyComputerDoing_E.exe