I’ve been using Transmission forever. It sits dutifully in the background ready to fetch any torrent downloads that I throw at it. It never complains, it just works; while I never really pay attention to it.

It turns out that Transmission is a torrent downloader that has more convenient features under its hood. All the user has to do is dig a little deeper into its Preferences (Command + Comma). And oh boy, it is rewarding.

Automating The Downloading Tasks

All this time, I stuck with the mundane manual torrenting tasks. Everytime I wanted to download a file via torrent; I would download the torrent file, manually add it to Transmission, wait until the download finishes, then move the file to their respective foldesr: movie files to Movie folder, mp3 files to Music folder, png and jpg files to Picture folder, you get the picture.

After looking into the Preferences options, I realized that I can automate the process using Transmission’s built-in features.

Our first stop after opening the Preferences is the “Transfer” menu. The “Adding” tab is the place to set the default location of downloaded files. You can also tell Transmission where to put the unfinished downloads and whether Transmission should show the “Adding transfer” option window.

But the automation magic is in auto-add setting; you can automatically add torrents from a specific folder to the download queue. If you combine this with default download setting from your browser or download manager, you can really simplify your torrent life.

You can take this automation concept further by utilizing the “Groups” feature. Basically, Groups allow users to categorize files based on some specific criteria and set a specific location for each group. Users can save their time considerably because they don’t have to manually move the downloaded file over to a new location.

To set a group, select one color from the available options on the left pane. Rename the label, tick the “Custom Location” checkbox, and set the download location for this group.

The next step is deciding on the filtering criteria for the group. Upon ticking the “Assign group to new transfer based on criteria” checkbox (and later by clicking the “Edit” button), you will see the familiar Finder-like filtering system.

Click on the “Plus” (+) button on the right to add more rules, and if you want to delete a rule, simply click the “Minus” (-) button.

The last automation option available via Preferences is bandwidth usage automation. If you have an internet connection with a fair-use policy, you can schedule specific transfer speed limits at certain times here. Just tick the checkbox and set the time when speed limit will occur.

Subscribing to torrent?

For those who love to download TV episodes, it would be nice of you could subscribe to the series so that it will be downloaded automatically without the need to add them manually every time the new episode is out.

Transmission doesn’t have that kind of feature, yet, but that doesn’t mean that users can’t do anything about it. The same result can be obtained by using a help from another application called Automatic which will automatically download RSS items based on a preset criteria.

If you “subscribe” to the RSS torrent of a series, it will be added automatically to Transmission and downloaded to the specified location. All that’s left to do is to enjoy it.

Do you use the Transmission torrent downloader? Check out other posts about Transmission and the comparison to uTorrent. And don’t forget to share your thoughts and opinion using the comment below.

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• Top 6 Torrent Alternatives To The Pirate Bay (30)
• How To Cheat With Your BitTorrent Ratio (35)
• How to Access your Torrent Client & Download Torrents Remotely (15)
• FeedMyTorrents Keeps TV Shows Downloading Automatically (17)
• Download Torrents Without A Client Via Torrent2Exe [Windows] (10)

Here are 6 of the best alternatives to Pirate Bay torrent downloads.

Mininova

Mininova is one of the most visited and most used torrent trackers on the web, formed after the split of SuprNova. Mininova tracks .torrent files from numerous websites across the web, including those that are private and commonly requires invites.

Mininova also has a large, dedicated base of users that consistently makes Mininova one of the higher quality moderated torrent trackers.  At the time of writing, Mininova had over 8.9 billion downloads – definitely credible.

isoHunt

Another extremely popular torrent tracker is isoHunt with over 1.3 Petabytes of data (1300TB) of files and over 1.6 million active torrents.  So you can be pretty sure you will find what you are looking for.

One good feature of isoHunt is that it updates all of its torrents seeders and leecher numbers hourly, unlike many other torrent trackers, which occasionally updates on a 6 hour or even daily basis, allowing users the ability to get accurate information consistently.

btJunkie

A lesser known torrent tracker, btJunkie is quite an effective alternative to more popular trackers. Boasting that it has over 3.6 million torrents and 80 million peers (seeders and leechers), certainly puts it up there with some of the top torrent trackers.

Similar to Mininova in that btJunkie also has a spider that automatically searches public and private trackers for the latest and greatest, makes it definitely worth checking out.

NowTorrents

Although NowTorrents is not a tracker, it is one of the best, if not the best, torrent search site. By searching over 14 popular torrent trackers, and allowing you to vary your searches based on the relevancy, number of seeders, number of leechers, seeder to leecher ratio, etc. really helps making finding torrents that much easier. NowTorrents even allows users to register for the site and change various preferences to your liking.

VerTor

VerTor is one of the best torrent search sites on the web, and that is not an exaggeration at all. The main feature that separates VerTor from any other torrent search engine though, is its ability to scan and verify all of it’s torrents and individual files.

Furthermore, when searching for a movie, for example, VerTor will automatically show you the different virus scanner results for the individual files and give you 9 screenshots throughout the movie as well as a 30 second audio preview for quality purposes, and can even tell you when there is a password protected archive file.

The only downside to VerTor is the number of torrents it has (around 650,000 at time of writing), but make no mistake VerTor almost always has at least 5 different versions of the latest kind of torrent, just not the variety you would get from a traditional torrent tracker. (VerTor has been previously covered on MUO here.)

(For more torrent search engines, see the MUO directory for the tag “torrent”.)

Is this the end of the famous Pirate Bay tracker? How long before Pirate Bay downloads are a thing of the past? What torrent tracker sites, or torrent search engines, do you use for your torrent sharing needs? Tell us in the comments!

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• Top Torrent Search Engines for All Torrent Downloaders (23)
• How To Cheat With Your BitTorrent Ratio (35)
• Download Torrent Files Hassle-Free with BTaccel [Free Invites!] (53)
• 7 Apps to Make Most of TORRENTs (31)
• Wyzo Beta – The Web Browser for Downloaders (12)

In the end, all of this is superfluous next to the vast advantages, but sometimes we still dream about torrent files – or the rest of the internet – being more flexible.

If you’re looking for added flexibility, or simply secrecy for your torrents, do read on.

hid.im

With hid.im, you can encode your torrents to an image file – this allows you to hide torrent files inside pictures beyond recognition. Simply surf to the website, upload your torrent file and wait for your png. You can save the image to your harddisk, or temporarily reach them on the website.

The png file will look like a rectangle of electronic noise, as you can see below (ubuntu-9.04-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent).

So what’s the use of this technology? Besides being able to  ‘hide’ your torrent files inside pictures, which will be increasingly difficult once this technology gets more well known, TorrentFreak puts it on ease of use.

That’s right, with your torrent file in picture format, you can simply upload it to otherwise restricted forums, mail them to your friends, or embed them in a MakeUseOf article. Exactly how many people will need it remains the question, but it’s a beautiful concept, and I can imagine a multitude of situations in which it’d be useful.

Decoding your Torrents

Obviously, you can’t just open the png files in your local torrent client, they’ll need to be decoded first. There are two ways to do this.

The easiest, perhaps, is by using the bookmarklet which you can find on the webpage. For those of you that don’t know, a bookmarklet is a bookmark that executes a small piece of JavaScript in your browser. Once you activate your bookmarklet, you can simply click on the image for a download link to appear, as demonstrated in the screenshot below.

The bookmarklet works on Safari, Firefox, but not yet on Chrome. Internet Explorer is not specified, but you could give it a shot.

An alternative – for Firefox users, that is – to the bookmarklet is the hid.im add-on. With this one installed, you can simply right-click on your torrent pictures, and save them to your computer. Less work, but only if you’re using Firefox.

Have a Go

Below we’ve included a sample coded torrent. The torrent file in question is, of course, 100% legal. Its identity, however, remains unknown. Install the Firefox add-on or bookmarklet, and see if you can decode the torrent.

Do you think you know which torrent it is? Tip: its got to do with a popular MakeUseOf subject.

What do you think about hid.im? Advancement of the century, or useless technology? Let us know what you think – or how you plan to use it – in the comments section below. Share your ideas with us, and your fellow MakeUseOf readers!

There are plenty more cool torrent articles. Read how to download torrents with your console and mobile, or how to download them on a Windows computer without using a client. Check out other torrent related articles – I bet there’s plenty of stuff you haven’t heard about!

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• Top Torrent Search Engines for All Torrent Downloaders (23)
• Top 6 Torrent Alternatives To The Pirate Bay (30)
• How To Set Up An Instant Private Network With Remobo (20)
• How To Cheat With Your BitTorrent Ratio (35)
• Wyzo Beta – The Web Browser for Downloaders (12)

According to our research, many of you want to know how to best install LimeWire and use the program, without getting bit by a virus. Today, I’ll show you how.

How to Install LimeWire & Share Files

The company which makes LimeWire will tell you – this is very important – when you go to download the installation file and install LimeWire, you should only do so from the program’s official site! Doing so makes absolutely sure that you have a legitimate version of the program, without the inclusion of any malicious code. Please don’t download from other sources, especially from other P2P networks.

When you install LimeWire for the first time, it’s a good idea to make sure that the program is set to not automatically share any downloaded files. Despite what is often said in the mainstream (read: non-tech-savvy) press, it has been sharing or distributing files, not downloading or receiving them, that has ended up with so many people being brought into court.

One caveat: That setting doesn’t apply to downloads through the BitTorrent network, which LimeWire also supports. In a BitTorrent network (or "swarm"), everyone downloading a file is simultaneously distributing it!

Search Filtering

Please, make sure "Search Filtering" is on. Click on the Tools menu near the top, then Options. After the Options screen appears, click on Search, then Configure under Search Filtering. Make sure that the settings are such that programs (executable files) are not included in the search results. Virus code spreads easiest in executable files, opened on accident by users who may not know better.

You may think you’re downloading a photograph, but go to open the file, named HotChick.jpg.exe, which ends up, as my teacher might say, barfing all over your system.

Scan Everything!

While your top threat is from executable program files, any file you download can be infected with some kind of code. Remember, you’re not necessarily getting these files from a clean server, you’re getting them from other users, who may be unknowingly infected by something. It’s of critical importance to, before doing anything else with a file, to scan it with an updated anti-virus program. This is especially true for those of you who have enabled program downloads anyway.

If you have an antivirus software installed, be sure to keep it updated. Consult the program’s documentation. If you don’t have an anti-virus installed, try the AVG Free Edition.

Once the download is complete, right-click the file listing in your Library, then select Locate on Disk. This will open up your file manager and highlight the file. Right-click on that file, and select the appropriate command to scan your file. Your anti-virus will report to you any infected files, and prompt you to delete said file.

When scouring P2P networks like LimeWire, it pays to play safe. A few preventative steps, plus some common sense, adds up to a safer experience.

If you have any important tips for potential downloaders, please feel free to sound off in our comments.

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• Protect Your Privacy On P2P With Peer Guardian 2 (28)
• How To Get A Layer Of Downloading Protection with PeerBlock (10)
• 5 “DISPOSABLE” Web Accounts to Keep Your Identity Safe (91)
• Your Computer, Your World – How to Keep Out the Mindless (51)
• Using Pando To Send Huge Files Across The Web (16)

BTaccel, a browser-based and remotely hosted BitTorrent client, can help to make things far easier. Feed it a link to a torrent and it does all of the P2P wizardry automatically, downloads the file and prepares it for you to grab off their servers via HTTP.

In order to use it to download torrent files, you’ll need to sign up with an invitation. Lucky for you, I’ve managed to get 150 free invites just for MakeUseOf readers! You may get it at the end of this article but continue reading to find out what BTaccel can do.

First, the user interface is Google-simple. You have an account link at the top, and a box in the center where you enter a URL or keyword. You can search by keyword, browse a website by proxy or paste in a direct link to a .torrent file.

Browsing torrent tracker sites via the proxy is a bit hit-and-miss in this alpha release. Sometimes, it will pick up a clicked torrent link, but not always. Your best bet is to browse the tracker in a separate window, copy the torrent link’s location and paste it into BTaccel.

After you’ve chosen a torrent, the next screen you see will be a summary of the torrent’s contents. Once the download from the swarm is complete, you can be alerted by email, and then you may download torrent files individually, or download a single compressed ZIP of all the files packed together.

To view the torrents currently in your download queue, hit the Home page and you’ll be presented with a list of your torrents and their progress.

What makes BTaccel so great is the fact that your system won’t be bogged-down with uploading and downloading. Once the torrent is finished, you’ll have a direct download from BTaccel’s servers (which must be completed within 72 hours). Another advantage is the fact that you can start a torrent from any computer with a browser and then finish the transfer at home, when it’s convenient.

In comparison to using a traditional BitTorrent client, BTaccel offers users an advantage on ease-of-use. For those interested in the protocol, we have plenty of BT-related material on MUO, especially The Big Book of BitTorrent, which I consider a must-read. How do you like your BitTorrent? Let us know in the comments.

We’ve got your hookup for the first 150 users to sign up with alpha invite code “100GBmakeuseof150”. If you’ve missed out, follow @btaccel on Twitter for a chance to score a code.

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• Top 6 Torrent Alternatives To The Pirate Bay (30)
• How To Cheat With Your BitTorrent Ratio (35)
• How To Automate & Organize Torrents with Transmission [Mac] (16)
• How to Access your Torrent Client & Download Torrents Remotely (15)
• FeedMyTorrents Keeps TV Shows Downloading Automatically (17)

You can help those poor souls who are still unfamiliar with torrent by using Torrent2Exe. A few readers mentioned it in the comments of my previous torrent article. Using this service, users can download files with the torrent protocol without the need to install a torrent client.

How it works

Basically, what Torrent2Exe does is combine the “.torrent” file and a small torrent client into one single stand-alone EXE package. Users then can execute this EXE file and immediately start the downloading process.

It also means that anybody can just create an EXE file of a torrent, copy it onto a thumb drive (or send it via email to friends) and download it on another computer. There’s no need for a separate torrent client! Perfect for one-time torrent downloaders who don’t want to install additional software.

How to make the EXE file

• Enter the link to the torrent or select a torrent from your hard disk
• Choose whether you want a small or normal size EXE file, the difference is stated below
• Click “Start Download” to get the EXE
• Share the EXE or the link to download the EXE to with your torrent-illiterate friends
• Run the EXE to download the files

Please note that the “Small EXE” file is smaller but require extra components to be downloaded the first time it runs. “Normal EXE” file on the other hand, is bigger in size because it already has all the components needed built-in. Since the difference in size is not too significant compared to the size of commonly-shared files these days, I personally would choose the “Normal” one. But maybe those who would like to attach the EXE in email will prefer the “Small” one.

To draw you a picture, in my experiment on downloading Fedora (691MB), the small EXE is 96.3KB and the normal exe is 592KB – insignificant compared to the downloaded file.

Extra Functionalities and Limitations

Torrent2Exe goes one step further by providing users with extra functionality to share torrents, such as:

• Users can publish the EXE file on their sites or blog by just providing the visitors link to the EXE file. This link will appear after user adds the torrent files to the Torrent2Exe site.
• Users can also insert direct links to the downloads together with links to the torrent files. A special script is provided to help automate the process.

Still, there are some limitations.

• First, the fact that the stand-alone has the “EXE” extension on it said that it can only be run in Windows computers.
• Second, even though you don’t need a torrent client to download the torrent-shared files, you still need a torrent-friendly connection. So if your admin block the lines, there’s nothing you can do (except try to bribe the person).
• Third, if you plan to share the EXE files via email, it’s recommended that you archive the EXE files into ZIP or RAR (or other compression formats) before doing the emailing. Some email services (such as GMail) don’t allow the distribution of EXE files. Plus, compressing the files will give you smaller size.

Want to learn more about using torrents? Check out our MakeUseOf Big Book of BitTorrent: The Torrent Guide for Everyone.

Have you used Torrent2Exe or do you know other alternatives? Share your thoughts in comment below.

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• How To Cheat With Your BitTorrent Ratio (35)
• Top 6 Torrent Alternatives To The Pirate Bay (30)
• Top 4 Sites To Download Free, Legal Concert Recordings (6)
• The Big Book of BitTorrent: The Torrent Guide for Everyone (61)
• How To Use RSS Feeds To Download Torrents Automatically (8)

Now, while you are downloading the movies, wouldn’t it be great if you can preview it, check out its quality and then decide if you want to continue the download?

VLC

We all know that VLC is a versatile media player that can play almost any media format you throw to it. Well, another thing that you can get it to do is to repair and playback the partially downloaded video.

Open your VLC and load the video file. It will automatically detect that this is broken file and will prompt you to repair it. For instance, it can open broken avi files.

Click the Repair button to start the repair process. It could take quite some time depending on the file size of your video.

Once the repair is finished, it will automatically playback in the player.

To avoid damaging the integrity of the partially downloaded torrent file, it is best to first duplicate a copy of the video file, then use VLC to repair and playback the duplicated copy. When you are done previewing, simply delete the duplicated copy.

DivFix++

DivFix++ is complete rewrite of the “DivFix” application simply because the developer feels that the original DivFix program is too slow and take up plenty of CPU power. What DivFix++ is capable of doing is to fix broken AVI file, rebuild the index of the video and allows you to playback in a media player.

Indeed, after using DivFix++, I do find that it is much faster (than DivFix and VLC), not CPU-intensive and able to reproduce the AVI file in good shape. The best thing is, it doesn’t require any installation. Karl has written a well explained article about DivFix++, so I will not  go into great detail here.

One thing that I like about is the ability to fix a file to a temporary location so you won’t hurt the original file. Similarly, you can preview the fixed video with a media player and then delete it once you are done.

Like VLC, DivFix++ works in Linux, Windows and Mac and it is a great software worth trying out.

GOM Player

On the frontend, GOM player looks just like any of the media player in the market. It allows you to play videos (of various format) and have great subtitles support. However, what really distinguishes GOM player from the rest is its patented technology that allows you to play broken AVI files on the fly.

Don’t ask me how the patented technology works, I know nuts about it. The only thing that I know is that when I playback the partially downloaded file, it doesn’t show any error message, nor a prompt to ask me to repair the file. What it does is to repair the file quietly on the backend and playback when it is done. It is just like streaming video on the Web, the initial process might be slow, but if you pause the video and wait for the streaming (backend repairing) to complete, you will get smooth playback in no time.

GOM Player is currently available only for Windows platform.

The above three software have helped me a lot when I was downloading bitTorrent videos. What about you? What software do you use to preview partially downloaded video?

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• How To Use RSS Feeds To Download Torrents Automatically (8)
• Top 4 Sites To Download Free, Legal Concert Recordings (6)
• The Big Book of BitTorrent: The Torrent Guide for Everyone (61)
• How To Repair Broken AVI Files That Won’t Play (21)
• How To Cheat With Your BitTorrent Ratio (35)

We’ve seen multiple applications, trying to expend the reach of Torrent clients and the like. The Vuze and xTorrent clients both implement the web in their applications, allowing you to browse torrents as well as downloading them.

However, why is it that the web should be integrated in a Torrent client? Why not integrating torrents into a web client? Well, Wyzo manages to do just that, and the results are astounding.

Wyzo – The Media Browser

Wyzo’s long-term aim is to make web browsing smarter and more enjoyable. They want the user to feel home and to have the tools he needs, at any given time.

Most of this reflects upon the ease of downloading, but doing so without repressing the global browsing experience.

The browser is based on Firefox, and many things remain the same. Other things however, got a real makeover. You can read about the features of the browser below.

New Look

This third version of Wyzo has been completely restyled. You’ll notice that the tabs and buttons have adapted a slick chrome-like appearance. It’s a professional-looking skin that’s easy on the eyes – nothing too graphical, like some of the things we see these days.

Torrent Downloads and Acceleration

In the area of downloading, Wyzo comes with two major trump cards; FireDownload and FireTorrent, two great addons developed by the guys behind Wyzo.

FireDownload is a simple download accelerator. It doesn’t do anything particularly fancy, except speeding up your downloads. A lot. By using multiple connections with the server, FireDownload can accelerate your downloads up to ten times their original speed.

FireTorrent handles, as you might’ve guessed, the torrent integration. All torrents are simply added to your browser downloads. You can download in multiple sessions, and seeding happens automatically. Using FireTorrent, torrents become as easy as direct downloads.

FireDownload and FireTorrents are also available as Firefox add-ons via FireAddons.com.

Search … Everything

Wyzo comes with a customized startpage, which allows you to search the interwebz for almost everything, including torrents, images, video, news, blogs and maps. Each section gives you access to multiple search engines (e.g. you can search for torrents on YouTorrent, Mininova, Vuze and Torrentz).

Loaded With Add-ons

Besides FireDownload and FireTorrent, Wyzo is pre-loaded with various other Firefox extenstions, that enhance the user’s browser experience.

Remember your OS’s alt-tab function? Ctrl-Tab does the same in your browser. It’s a slick and easy way to visually navigate between your open tabs.

Cooliris - previously covered on MakeUseOf – gives you a visual representation of web content. On supported sites, it crawls for pictures, videos and articles, and presents these as a picture wall. It’s an extremely beautiful, and addicting way to surf the web.

FireGestures allows you to perform simple actions through mouse gestures. Hold a trigger and draw simple shapes to navigate and interact with web pages. You can also add new gestures, by using user-scripts.

So what’s your take on Wyzo? What do you, or don’t you like about it? Tell us, and your fellow MakeUseOf readers, all about it in the comments section below!

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• Top Torrent Search Engines for All Torrent Downloaders (23)
• Top 6 Torrent Alternatives To The Pirate Bay (30)
• Top 4 Sites To Download Free, Legal Concert Recordings (6)
• Safe Torrent Downloading with Vertor (6)
• The Big Book of BitTorrent: The Torrent Guide for Everyone (61)

BitTorrent, an example of P2P, is a great, perhaps even the best way to download files, both in concept as in use – that is, once you’ve got the hang of it.

Because all of it seems pretty abstract to innitiates, many people experience difficulties at the start. Even those that would call themselves ‘advanced users’ often don’t know even half of what’s possible.

MakeUseOf proudly presents to you The Big Book of BitTorrent. All you think you should know, and more.

In 28 illustrated pages, Saikat Basu from The Things I Do takes newcomers by the hand and guides them in their first steps. Initiates, but also the more experienced users get their fair share of information.

Read how to start, and advance is the world of BitTorrent. Download The Big Book of BitTorrent here for free, in PDF.

Please pass this manual around and help us spread the word.

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• Top 4 Sites To Download Free, Legal Concert Recordings (6)
• How To Use RSS Feeds To Download Torrents Automatically (8)
• How To Cheat With Your BitTorrent Ratio (35)
• Download Torrents Without A Client Via Torrent2Exe [Windows] (10)
• Check If Your ISP Throttling Your BitTorrent Downloads (28)

So, how to download torrents automatically:

First and foremost you will need µTorrent. You can download it from here.

RSS if you still don’t know is a way to keep track of when your favorite site has been updated with new content. Using something called a feedreader you can get these updates delivered to you. Now whenever a new torrent is added, the torrent sites would update listing it and thus the new torrent would appear in the RSS feed. We can use this RSS feed to view/download interesting torrents automatically

Get the right Feed

So how can you find a feed listing only the torrents you want to download? After all the torrent sites would show every new torrent file in its feed and you couldn’t be downloading them all. Well as it turns out, a lot of torrent sites provide several RSS feeds and ability to create your own feeds as well.

Lets look at mininova for example. Apart from separate feeds for different categories you can also get feeds for your searches. Let’s say you are looking for releases by aXXo, so you search for aXXo and then click on the RSS button that appears on the top and there you have your RSS feed. You might want to refine your search to get the results you want. Now whenever there is a new aXXo release, you will get notified and/or can start download automatically. You can use the same approach to get feeds for TV Torrents. Also check out tvRSS for the same.

Setup µTorrent

Now its time to set up µTorrent to take the feed you have created/searched and do its thing! Follow these steps to setup µTorrent the way you want:

1. Grab the feed url and open µTorrent
2. Click on Add RSS feed and paste the put in the feed URL. You can choose to automatically download all the torrents that appear in the feed or just view them and then decide which ones to download and which ones to skip.



3. Make sure you have the sidebar visible else you will not be able to view the feeds.
4. There you have µTorrent setup for downloading via RSS, you can stop here or you can take it one step further by adding filters to download only specific files that specify a set criteria.
5. Right Click on the feed and choose RSS Downloader, Click on add and then specify the filter options. You can specify all kinds of options here including download folder, labels, specify episode numbers to download, the priority to start the download with, the acceptable filetypes and much more.



6. You can also right click on a feed entry that and choose “Add to Favorites” so that you can then filter entries similar to it and tweak the settings if you would like a bit of finetuning.

You might be wondering why not just use something like Miro or TED to download torrents automatically? That’s because I am a huge fan of µTorrent and would recommend it highly. Lightweight, feature rich, an awesome web interface for remotely starting downloads, set out to do one thing – “BitTorrent” and does it best. Your views may differ, make them heard! Shoot them in the comments section!

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• Top 4 Sites To Download Free, Legal Concert Recordings (6)
• 7 Apps to Make Most of TORRENTs (31)
• 3 Easy Ways To Preview a Partially Downloaded Video Files (11)
• The Big Book of BitTorrent: The Torrent Guide for Everyone (61)
• How To Cheat With Your BitTorrent Ratio (35)

Comcast came out and admitted to it’s practices in the United States last year. You can read about it here on wired. Since then there has been lot’s of speculation on if other ISP’s are doing the same thing…

What do you think?

Yeah we do also!

Now there is a free tool that will simulate BitTorrent activities and let you know if your speed or activities have been effected and to what extent. This program (aka bittorrent throttling test) and group have picked up momentum since 2008 and now have the backing of Google and other big names.

Are you curious as to if your ISP is throttling your torrent downloads and doing you dirty?

Well so are we.

Run the tool below on any web browser on any operating system and post back what your results are in the comments. It is strictly web based and nothing gets installed. So you can try it pretty much anywhere.

I tried this in the office on my Cogent circuit. It is a 100mb Ethernet handoff so I was not really expecting any throttling. All you need to run the test is browse on over to:

a title=”http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest.php” href=”http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest.php”>http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest.php.

You will be greeted by a web page that looks like this:

Simply scroll down on the page until you see the Start Testing button. You can run the detailed or the simple test. The only difference is the intensity of the test. Some ISP’s are believed to only throttle torrents after a certain period of time (greater than 5 minutes) so this will have you covered.

After you hit the Start testing button your test will begin and you will see a count down in a window that looks something like what you see below.

When the test is complete you will get your results. They will also look something like mine which you can see below. My ISP is NOT throttling my BT downloads or seeding activity and they go into detail on each point they checked as well as the speeds they were able to achieve with the transfers.

I love geeky statistics. Here are my results:

I had a buddy of mine run this against his machine on Comcast in Manhattan and his results came through with Throttling and max speeds of only 25kbps… Whoa that’s slow! Thanks for the tip El Di Pablo!

Post your results in the comments. And if you have another method of testing if your ISP is getting it’s grubby hands on your torrents post that as well. Don’t be shy kids

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Many admins block connections to torrent networks preventing the users from acquiring the torrents and/or the files.

But there are ways for the less fortunate to bypass torrent blocking – and here they are :

TXTor

Let us start with the simplest. Sometimes all the lazy network administrators do is filter the “.torrent” file. Their logic says that if you can’t get the torrent, you won’t be able to get the shared file. Well, yes – and no.

If your problem is only this shallow, you can use TXTor. Basically, the service works like this:

• you tell TXTor the link to a “.torrent” file.
• they will download it and rename the extension to .txt
• then they will give your browser the link to the renamed file.
• you download the file, rename it back to “.torrent”.
• open the file using a torrent client and start downloading.

Unfortunately, TXTor can’t help you if your admin blocsk/filters the torrent traffic. The TXTor site suggests users to try to use different ports in the client or encrypt the traffic. But don’t fret. If meddling with ports and encryptions is too much for you, there are other easier online solutions to try.

BitLet

A pure online torrent client and behaves exactly like a desktop one:

• users put the torrent link in the box (or uses an existing torrent file) then click “Download Torrent”.
• BitLet will ask where to save the shared file.
• after users give the location, the download process will start.

But being a torrent client, it’s still possible that the traffic gets blocked by the admin. It might work on your connection, it might not. My tests on several different networks gave me more failures than successes. It’s worth trying, though.

Torrent Relay

We can say that this is an online torrent client with a twist; accessible via normal browser, iPhone and iPod Touch, Play Station 3, and many other mobile devices. The service has been discussed before.

Here’s the overview about how the service works:

• users provide Torrent Relay with a torrent link.
• the shared file will be downloaded to Torrent Relay’s server.
• users will get a HTTP address to download the file from their server.

The good thing is, this service makes the process of downloading torrents accessible to everyone, everywhere. The bad things are, due to the heavy traffic (as expected from this kind of service) sometimes the process becomes unavailable, and unless you are their “Prime Users” (read: paid members) the HTTP file download is non-resumeable.

I found no problem using Torrent Relay for small files, but if you are downloading large files with an unstable connection, you might consider paying them or the process will become extremely annoying.

If there’s a web service which allows users to download a file from a HTTP address to a resumeable online server, the combination with Torrent Relay would be a perfect option. (anybody know any?)

ImageShack

One of my friends tipped me off about this service. I was not aware that other than image hosting, ImageShack also give users the ability to download torrents. You only need to open a free account with their service.

At first glance, this one looks like a perfect one: users download torrents and save the shared files into their ImageShack storage and the shared files can be downloaded from anywhere, and by anyone the users share their files with. The limitation for free users is also generous (considering you can apply for more than one account): 5 GB of storage and 10 GB of bandwidth usage.

But I still haven’t been successful in my trials of using their service. I’ve always been presented with a “try again” screen and options to upgrade to one of their paid subscription options, with more storage and bandwidth, and “prioritized bandwidth allocation”.

But then again, maybe it’s just me. Maybe you will have better luck using this service.

Instant Torrents

Another would-be winner, Instant Torrents was a perfect service. Users sign up, login and put in the torrent file address (or uses an existing torrent file). Then they will download and save the shared file to their server under their user’s account, keep the file(s) for 20 days, and they even seed the file(s) until the ratio reaches 1.0. But as I’ve said before, this kind of service will attract overflooded traffic and strain the servers.

So, Instant Torrents changes the rules. Users have to be connected first to Ivacy Network (a paid VPN service which gives 1 GB free traffic) then go to Instant Torrents dot site version to add torrent files. A bit of a complicated process if you ask me, but users can utilize their private tracker inside Ivacy VPN which provides no real IP address – total anonymity.

As an option, users can search completed torrents in the Instant Torrents site or browse their “Ratings” tab for popular files and download them instead.

So, all in all, I still haven’t found the perfect service along these lines. But if you know other good alternatives that lets you bypass torrent blocking, or just want to share your experiences, please use the comments below.

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Ironically, the biggest disadvantages lie also with the ratio system. Don’t get me wrong, I think everyone should upload as much as they can, but sometimes your ratio obligations can put you in some pretty nasty situations.

I remember looking for a certain private tracker invite for a few months. When I finally got in, I tried to get my ratio up as high as possible – stacking up reserves. But however hard I tried, I wasn’t able to reach an approachably decent ratio. There were just too many seeds and too few leeches.

I had my computer running day and night, trying to upload as much as I could, but in the end I wasn’t even able to reseed my first download and I got nicked.

Cheat With Your Torrent Ratio

Some time ago, I found out that there were ways to manipulate your ratio. However, the consequences are not to be excluded.

(LEGAL) DISCLAIMER

Before we go on, I want to emphasize that everyone with a decent mindset should upload as much as possible. Don’t be the parasite on the backs of this unconditional medium, try to support it as much as possible.

Also – obviously – torrent trackers don’t like you doing this, and if they find out you’ll probably get banned. MakeUseOf will not be held liable in this matter – all blame for your actions lies with yourself.

Through the use of applications, we can spoof our upload count, and hereby alter our Torrent Ratio. There are several applications that can do this, all working in the same way. They fake the tracker update reporting protocol with fake data, to boost your ‘upload’.

Tracker Pro

Tracker Pro is one of these applications, and very easy to use.

To spoof your upload count, just add a torrent to the program. One of the great features that distinguishes this application from others is that you don’t even have to download the torrent to start “uploading”.

Tips For Staying Undetected

Like I mentioned in the disclaimer, if trackers notice that you’re spoofing your upload, you’ll most likely get banned. To prevent this, you need to lay low.

Limit your usage

Don’t use this application excessively. People will notice it if you suddenly become a master uploader – try using it only if you must.

Limit your upload bandwidth

You can limit the false upload speeds in the options. The lower you keep this, the harder it’ll be to get noticed. Note that this number is in Kbits (8 Kbits = 1 KByte).

Also, change this number as often as possible. Trackers use scripts to detect cheaters. By keeping your speeds low, and ruining your pattern, you can mislead these scripts.

Changing your User Agent

This is for the paranoid people amongst us.

Also in the options, you can also define which program you’re using, by changing the User Agent code and Client ID, although I’d advise you to refrain from this if you don’t know what you’re doing – messing up these codes will be like lighting a beacon.

You can search for these codes on User-Agents or plain ol’ Google.

Do you personally have any other tricks for getting one up on BitTorrent or any other file sharing network?

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Time is something that is hard to come by nowadays so I take what I can get. If that is a Simpsons episode on my train ride home or an episode of “24″ while I am commuting from Manhattan to Far Jersey then to me that is awesome.

My TiVo at home tapes all my shows and I can grab them, convert them and go. But that takes time and time is what I don’t have.

So let’s say I visit this FeedMyTorrents website. They have RSS feeds all set up already for most of the popular shows that are currently syndicated.

You can click here without signing up to check out and grab their feeds. Check it out. Here is a snip of what they offer.

Each show has its own feed. This feed can be checked via most popular Torrent applications. The files are the same files you would find by searching your favorite Torrent site like The Pirate Bay or Bitsoup.

The blue “Normal” icon shows the resolution. Normal is just that. A standard broadcast. Some of the feeds have “HD” listed (720p)

So without signing up you can utilize the already created feeds. But If you create an account, you can combine all your favorite TV-shows to a single torrent feed.

Now that you get the idea let’s check out how to make it work. This gem is cross platform and works on the following torrent clients/OS:

• uTorrent (Windows/Mac OS)
• Azureus/Vuze (Windows)
• Deluge (Windows/Mac OS/Linux)
• BitComet (Windows)
• BitRocket (Mac OS)

Clicking on each of those links will take you to their own How To Guide. We will be working with Azureus on Windows.

Open up your Azureus and go to Tools – Plugins – Installation Wizard.

Next choose the top option to pick from a list from SourceForge

Scroll down and choose RSS Feed Scanner. Then click Next.

You will then see this screen :

Just click Install and you are almost done! In a few seconds you willl get a pop-up that says it is complete like so:

Now that it is installed, let’s set her up and activate it. Go to Tools… Plug-ins… RssFeed Scanner

Then simply click the Green Plus Sign on the top to add a show like I did below. You will be able to fill in the details on the right pane after the plus is clicked.

It will then ask you for the name of the feed and the URL. I entered the Simpsons URL from their website.

I used this link for Season 20 in normal resolution. I then clicked “save”.

You will need to check the box next to your entry to make sure it is enabled as you can see below:

Then click back over to the Status tab and expand your selection like you see below:

There are torrents for all the Simpsons episodes in season 20. You need to create a filter so that it knows what to download. Click the bottom + to add a new filter: Then pick a name for the filter. It doesn’t matter what it is.

In this instance I just want everything from my RSS to be downloaded so I just filled in my path, I chose Set State to be Forced Download and Checked the box next to Active: Enabled.

When I was done I hit the test button and the green bar at the bottom appeared. This means something matched my filter!

Awesome now click back to the status tab and right click on your feed. Hit Refresh and watch it work its auto downloading torrent magic!

If all went as planned you will see your torrents downloading. You can work your own magic with the feeds and filters and you do not have to refresh the feed as I showed you in the last step – but it will take a few minutes for it to check on its own.

If you get this to work let us know what client you are using! This is simply awesome. I love my torrents

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So much so that there is an overwhelming number of torrent search engines that only search torrent files. Here are some of the top torrent search engines and sites which every BitTorrent User must know about:

The Pirate Bay

Think about torrents and the first name that comes to your mind is “The Pirate Bay”. The Pirate Bay is the grand daddy of all torrent search engines and trackers. The guys are facing legal threats, they are been condemned, but they have a mission, a message, and boy do they kick some ass! We all like TPB, don’t we?

The Pirate Bay tracks the largest number of torrents (I won’t even bother mentioning a number here, because it is going to be miles off in a month). Not only they have a huge collection of torrents, TPB is also concerned about your privacy and constantly makes tracking users difficult.

They also have a sort of user Karma. There are VIP users, trusted users so that you can find out which of the users are trusted and you can download the files with ease and peace of mind.

Mininova

Like “The Pirate Bay”, Mininova tracks torrents and has a large collection of them. It is believed that if you can’t find the torrent you are looking for on either The Pirate Bay or Mininova then there is a good chance that the torrent doesn’t exist.

A peculiar fact about Mininova is that the site doesn’t index adult torrents. Moreover the site is clean and I don’t think I have seen “aggressive (as in family content)” advertisements to this day on Mininova. So if you are at work and want to search some torrents to remotely trigger downloads at your home computer, better check it out.

Vertor

Although not exactly a top torrent search engine, Vertor is a nice site to have in your repertoire if you are an avid torrent user. Vertor servers constantly downloads torrents and checks them for viruses, passwords, DRM etc. The site then provides you snippets that can help you identify if the torrent actually has the content you were looking for. You will get screenshots for video files, sound previews for audio files and so on.

Demonoid

Demonoid is definately up there among the best. However to download torrent files indexed by Demonoid, you are required to have an account. The account, although free to create, is not owned by everyone out there. The registrations are open only for some time and you require an invitation to get into Demonoid. If you manage to get an account you will see why this is one of the best.

Meta Search Engines

A meta search engine specializes (or is supposed to specialize) in searching a number of torrent sites. You give it a query and it will search the most popular torrent sites and return you the results. Recently, there has been a flood of such meta search engines for torrents. So which one is the best? Well it comes down to personal preference, but here are some of the better ones:

While researching for this story, I asked all the MakeUseOf geeks which one is their favorite and Torrentz came out on top with a healthy margin. What I like about the site is the simple and clean interface. You instantly get an idea what is where and it works like a charm.

BtDig and Nowtorrents are also worth checking out. The killer features: you can sort by size, seeders, leechers and health. You can also set preferences such as which sites to search and which ones to exclude etc.

Some Specialized Torrent Search Engines

• Legal Torrents – With all the hype about BitTorrent and copyright laws, you never know what is legit and what’s not. If you want to stay out of trouble check out Legit Torrents and Legal Torrents which only list legal torrents.
• Public Domain Torrents – Lists torrents for downloading classic long forgotten movies in the Public Domain.
• Linux Distributions – Linux Tracker and TuxDistro are good for finding torrents of Linux Distributions.

The list is by no means exhaustive, there are so many BitTorrent sites out there on the web, that it is only logical that I may have missed one of your favorites. So why not share with us what BitTorrent sites do you like the most and why?

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VerTor is a new site that reworks the concept of torrenting. Most torrent search engines simply track and list as many public torrents as they can find.  VerTor first downloads and scans any potential torrent to make sure it doesn’t have any spyware, malware, or viruses.  If the file is a video, VerTor will take a set of screenshots as well, so you can verify it is what you are looking for at a glance.  Likewise with audio files, VerTor creates a short preview of each file so you can listen before commiting to a download.

By first verifying all its torrents, you can feel a little bit safer when downloading torrents online. Of course, after downloading a torrent, it’s always wise to scan the output file before opening it, just in case.

As you can see, the site is designed to be a little less like the typical “text-based search engine” and a little more like a community. The people out there downloading movies and TV shows are obviously very enthusiastic about them, so VerTor offers some reviews/news options to users who want to discuss the hottest downloads. The reviews I have seen so far are very elaborate and include many links external references.

VerTor offers an added feature for users who have found a torrent they want on another site. The Torrent Check function allows users to input a torrent’s hash code (a long alphanumeric code found alongside many torrent listings) and check to see if that torrent has been scanned previously by VerTor. While VerTor’s library of torrents is relatively small (compared to older torrent sites), it will invariably grow and this tool will become more and more useful.

With any new technology, there are a number of potential flaws.  The time it takes to download all these torrents, scan them, and sample them will shave some efficiency off of VerTor’s offerings.

Also, as I said before, VerTor is new, so it will take time for its scans to soundly cover all of the files you might be interested in. That being said, VerTor is a good “first place to check” when looking for new movies or TV shows.

The security and ease of use make it a smart choice among torrent sites. There is a good FAQ about torrenting in general and each file gives the option to download directly from your browser via a virtual machine, instead of requiring a separate torrent client. It’s a great place for noobies if ever there was one.

Overall, VerTor is still a fledgling among some very large birds (The Pirate Bay, Mininova, isoHunt). That being said, no one else is offering a Vertor-stule verified safe torrent downloading service. The interface is fairly simple and the list of torrents will find just about any popular file you are looking for. Definitely add this one to your list!

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• Wyzo Beta – The Web Browser for Downloaders (12)
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For the uninitiated, Greasemonkey scripts provides a way for customizing the look and/or functionality of sites according to your needs. Firefox users would require this addon to add and manage Greasemonkey scripts. While it is possible to run user scripts in other browsers, it is a completely different topic. So may I suggest that GIYF (Google is Your Friend) here.

IMDB – Pirated Version

IMDB is the mother of all sites when it comes to information on movies, documentaries, video games and similar content. How cool it would be if you could watch trailers of the movies you are searching for, search for torrents and other download links, right from the IMDB page for the particular title? All with a cool ajax interface that doesn’t get in your way of browsing IMDB. This script allows you to do just that. You can get torrent link, VCDQuality reports, Rapidshare links and trailers right from the IMDB entry for a particular title.

VCDQuality Tor v1.03

This script works on VCDQuality.com and adds links to torrent searches on Mininova and Torrentz. On clicking the icons you are taken to the search results page on the appropriate site. There was a minor glitch when I tried this script and I had to add http://*vcdq.com/* to the included pages section. Hence forth the script performed as advertised.

Rotten Tomatoes Popular Torrent Search Linker

The script adds search links to popular torrent sites on all RottenTomatoes movies pages. You get a bar just above the tomatometer. Click on the icon for the torrent site of your choice and bam, you are already staring down the available torrents for the title.

Pirates of the Amazon

Pirates of the Amazon is a Firefox Add on and created much hype recently with Amazon having to step in with legal issues. The site was down for some time and when it came up it was not hosting the addon anymore. The internet however is a wild wild place and the addon is already available on ‘n’ number of torrent sites and some ftp directories. Just Google Around.

The addon searches for torrents of anything that you search on Amazon.com and provides you direct links for the torrent file if found. Of course it works with things that can be converted to digital formats. You can’t get teddy bears on The Pirate Bay. Ahem.. or can you?

The Pirate Bay Enhancer

Very useful for users of The Pirate Bay. It adds – seeder/peer ratio which, if you don’t already know about it, is the ratio of the number of seeders to the number of peers. Higher the ratio better are the chances of getting good download speeds. So it’s wise to consider the ratio as the basis for choosing torrents over the number of seeders.

The script also has a command to remove dead torrents from listing. It has some bugs in that the headings remain the same as without the script and some text overflows into obscurity. However you get used to what is what, and it’s easy to hack as well!

Don’t use The Pirate Bay? Search for a similar script for your favorite tracker on User Scripts.

What user scripts do you all use? Are there any specific scripts for torrent users that are really cool and were not covered here? Share them with us in the comments.

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Unfortunately today, BitTorrent has become the mainstream way for sharing copyrighted content. There are a few sites though (like LegalTorrents), that do offer torrents that are free and legal.

Today we will be looking, more specifically, at some of the sites that offer live concert recordings available for download. In order to download these files to your computer you will need a torrent client, like utorrent (Windows) or Transmission (Mac, Linux). Here they are, in no particular order:

Etree

Etree is a site dedicated to providing numerous free and open-source related material and media with torrents being one of the best sections of the site. More specifically located at bt.etree.org, Etree hosts an incredible amount of free, legal, concert recordings available for download and distribution. With a fairly large amount of leechers and seeders, Etree continually has a growing archive of torrents and live concert recordings from artists like Grateful Dead, Phish, Widespread Panic, etc.

Etree is definitely one of the best resources for accessing the best free, legal concert recordings on the web.

Sugarmegs

Sugarmegs is one of the most famous archives of free, legal, concert recordings ever created. While currently hosting over 19,000 live concert recordings and approximately 4,000 bands, you will surely find what you are looking for. Bands range from the Allman Brothers to ZZ Top. Concerts can be streamed through their website, or on your computer with a .asx file. They also offer full concerts in WMA format. Sugarmegs is definitely has one of the largest archives of free, legal torrents on the web.

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive (conveniently placed at archive.org) is one of the most incredible websites that has ever existed. The main intention of the site is to archive all available media and information available to mankind (e.g. books, movies, websites, etc.) and, yes, that does mean audio. With an archive of over 54,000 live concert recordings, you are sure to find just about any genre and any type of music that is currently available to mankind.

COTapers

COTapers, while hosting a much smaller series of torrents then Etree, Sugarmegs, or The Internet Archive, has quite a large archive or torrents that are, of course free. COTapers, actually, does not host all of its BitTorrents, but only the most recent recordings. Still, the collection is more then enough to listen to for quite a while.

Do you know of any other cool sites to download free music from? Tell us in the comments!

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Here is how you can manage and download your torrents remotely which means that you can start a torrent download on your home computer while you are at your friends place or anywhere with access to the internet. So that when you come back home the downloading is already finished and it’s ready to use.

Sweeeeet? Lets make it happen.

You Will Need:

• Either µtorrent (Windows) or Transmission (Linux or Mac)
• A little tweaking around.

For Windows:

1. Download µtorrent Web UI (Direct Link) and follow these instructions to set it up.

2. You need to place the zip file as it is (don’t extract) into the Application Data folder for µtorrent. To open the folder go to Start > Run (or Win + R) and type %AppData%\µtorrent and hit enter. This will open the required folder. Paste the zip file as it is. Don’t extract.

3. Open µtorrent and go to Options > Preferences (or Ctrl + P) and then to Web UI and check Enable Web UI . Provide the necessary details.



4. Now fire up the browser and point it to http://127.0.0.1:<portnumber>/gui/ where portnumber is the one mentioned in Preferences > Connection . Alternatively you can enable Web UI at 8080 from the dialog in step 3. I found this to work better. You can try both the options.



5. If all went well you should see the Web UI in the browser.

For Linux:

1. Just download and install Transmission Client. Look here or use your distribution’s package management. Make sure you have version >= 1.30.

2. Go to Edit > Preferences and Check Enable Web Interface, optionally you can specify a username and password, you will be asked to log in when you try to access the torrents via the web interface.



3. Remember the port number you specify or leave the default if there is no conflict.

4. That’s it, you are ready to rock! Fire up the browser and hop over to http://localhost:9091 (you may need replace 9091 with the port you specified in case you changed it).

5. You should see the interface or login screen if all went well. If not, make sure you did everything right or see troubleshooting below.

For Mac :

Transmission (see above) is available for Mac as well. So most of the setup would be similar, I presume. I have not tried it on a Mac because I don’t have one.

Troubleshooting and Additional Tips:

Entering localhost:port doesn’t show up anything on my machine
Make sure you followed the steps correctly, also check that your firewall allows access to the port. And oh yes, make sure the torrent application is running on the remote machine (i.e. the machine you are trying to access).

Entering localhost:port shows up my friends torrents
Yes, it will. If you want to access your torrents on your home computer you will have to know the IP-Address of your home computer. In that case you will have to enter : or use dynamic DNS (see below) to access the torrents.

I can access the torrents using localhost or 127.0.0.1 but cannot access from the internet
Make sure you are typing the IP correctly. You might also have to forward the port in question. Use your router’s guide to achieve this or try port-forward

My IP changes everytime I connect to the internet, is there a way around?
Great, you have a Dynamic IP. There is surely a way around your problem, it just requires a little extra configuration.

So here you go – There are a number of services that offer you dynamic DNS’s. This means that you will get a URL like yourname.xyz.com, and everytime you enter this URL you will be actually referring to your computer/server at home. DynDns and No-IP are two such services. I have been using DynDNS and there are clients for both Windows and Linux that keep your IP updated. So no matter how often your IP changes yourname.xyz.com will always point to your computer. You can use this with a static IP as well just to make it easier.

I am on Windows using µtorrent and my web UI still doesn’t appear
You might want to enable the alternative listening port from within Options > Preferences > Web UI . I had this problem in the beginning where it would only show up on the alternative port. Some users have also reported problems when using the trailing ‘/’ after ‘gui’ in http://127.0.0.1:<portnumber>/gui/ so you can try with and without the trailing ‘/’ and see if that helps.

Seeder/Leecher Top Image Credit – nrkbeta (flickr)

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Aria2 is for Linux, however Windows and Mac ports are available. It supports downloads in HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/BitTorrent/Metalink protocols. Although it is a command line utility, don’t let it scare you off because there are some GUI’s available that provide a graphical interface to aria2. It is feature rich and not only that but it has some unique features that are not easy to find elsewhere.

Let’s see some of them :

Download files from multiple sources and protocols

Not only does aria2 support multiple protocols, it also lets you download the same file from different sources/protocols. Let’s say you want to download the Ubuntu Intrepid Beta. Such files are an excellent candidate to try aria2 on because you generally have the files mirrored on different servers, plus the file is sufficiently large enough to notice speed differences with aria2. So you would give the following command:

aria2c http://server/yourfile http://server/yourfile

You are not limited to 2 servers – you can add more if you like to the command above. Not only this, you are also not limited to a single protocol. This means that if one of the links is an http link and the other is a ftp link, you can still use them to download segments using aria2. Just throw in the appropriate protocol in the command like:

aria2c http://server/yourfile ftp://server/yourfile

You can even take it a step further by adding bittorrent to the equation.

aria2c http://site/file.torrent

Of course you will have to do some searching to find the torrent for the exact file, this is generally not an issue with ISOs of distros and similar files. Nevertheless check out this Make Use Of article for searching torrents. Some other torrets search engines can be also found here.

Some handy usage options:

There are a myriad of useful options and features offered by aria2. However I would like to mention only some of the cooler ones that I think would be useful to all

- BitTorrent Download

aria2c http://site/yourfile.torrent

- BitTorrent Download (torrent yourfile present locally)

aria2c –max-upload-limit=40K yourfile.torrent

- Repair damaged downloads (only for bitTorrent and metalink)

aria2c –check-integrity=true yourfile.metalink

- Download/upload speed throttling

aria2c –max-download-limit=100K http://server/yourfile

- Quickly specify multiple urls

aria2c -P http://{server1,server2,server3}/yourfile

aria2c -Z -P http://server/image[000-100].png (to download multiple sequentially named yourfiles)

- Oh you just want to download a file plain ‘n easy? Sorry, forgot about you ^ ^, here you go

aria2c http://server/yourfile

Other features include

- BitTorrent extensions: Fast extension, DHT, PEX, MSE/PSE, Multi-Tracker
- Verify downloaded files
- Being a command line utility you can use it effectively to automate tasks
- Concurrent downloads of multiple files
- Run in background
- HTTP proxy and authentication support

Or in case you are hungry for more and want to know about all the things aria2 can do, I would suggest you RTFM ( I what? )

Graphical Frontends: Use Aria from Graphical Interface

If the whole command line scanario scares the crap out of you, no need to be disappointed, have a look at the graphical frontends to the command. Yeah they allow you to specify files and options graphically and a little more intuitively. They then would generate the appropriate options for the command and invoke aria2 with those options. If that’s the way you like it so be it!

What do you think of aria2? Ever used a similar utility or do you know a better one? Let’s hear in the comments.

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Lets see what you can do with an IPN, Remobo and how to set it all up.

Remobo allows you to:

• Control your own computer remotely from any other computer.
• Access your files securely from work or while traveling.
• Share files, photos and media with friends & family on your network.
• Secure all your messages and file transfers against hackers.
• Create a virtual private network (VPN) instantly and securely.
• Play LAN games over the internet as if you were all in the same place.
• Connect to any computer in your list securely to access files and data.
• Run virtually any 3rd party application on top of Remobo.

Quite a handful isn’t it? Lets set it all up!

Download and Install

Simply download and install. It will try to install a BitTorrent client (which will be required later as you will see) so if you already have your own, you can say no to this. While setting up the virtual network driver Windows will warn you. Click ‘continue’ and you should be good to go.

Set up an account

Set up a Remobo account. Simple and easy, no fuss. Requires an email address.

Add buddies

When Remobo starts, it asks you for the account details you just set up. Log in and then click on the button labelled “Menu” and then add one of your buddies on the Remobo network. You would have to enter the username of your buddy and your buddy will have to approve your request. This is unlike Hamachi where you create a network where others can join.

Remobo actually supports more than one PC per account, so you can have multiple entries under one buddy. This simply translates to the various computers of your buddy that you can access. This also means that you can use the same account on more than one computer. So you can have your work and home PC listed under the same username.

Let’s MakeUseOf Remobo

This little menu is all you have to take note of for being a Remobo King!

Send files

Files are sent using BitTorrent. Click on “Send a File” and you will be presented with an option to choose the files and folders to share, choose them and specify if you want to share this one time only or keep it shared for longer. Remobo will now automagically create a torrent and send the torrent file to the other side (to the buddy). The other side can then download the torrent file and use any BitTorrent client to download the file. This increases in significance if you are sharing a file with a group!

View Shared files

Clicking on “View Shared Files” will open up a webpage that allows you to view all the shared files (yours and others’) and also allows you to browse the files categorized by usernames so that you know who is sharing which file..

Windows File Sharing

Don’t want to use Bittorrent for some reason? Well no problem you can try “Windows File Sharing” just as you would do on a LAN. Just that it is a lot more simple here. When I clicked on it I was hoping to go through a messy workgroup setup and complicated network settings, but what did I see? I saw the shared printer and shared docs (in other words, it’s already done and I did nothing). Yes that’s how simple it is. Depending upon your situation you may be prompted for a password or do some minor configurations here.

Play games, Stream Media

Basically you can run any 3rd party application atop of Remobo. Want to play any game with your buddy just like you would have played it on the LAN? Easy, hover your mouse over the buddy name and get the IP. This is the virtual IP or the Remobo IP. Use this for streaming media configuration or playing games over the network.

Control Computer from other computers

Click one of the computer names that you want to access. Choose “Remote Control” from the menu that shows up. Enter your buddy’s password and you’ll get remote access to that computer. The whole password situation used for Remote Control bothers me a bit. While this is fine if you are in a work/home scenario, this might not be a good idea in the “buddy” scenario as the Remobo password and the Remote Control password are the same. So if you know someone’s remote control password, you know their account password. Kinda lame?

Chat

I am not going to tell you how you can chat with Remobo. This is just for you to know, that you can chat as well!

Secure Connections

All the connections are secure and encrypted so your data is secure!

Domain Names

Don’t like remembering IP addresses? Well just use <username>.remobo.com and you don’t need to remember any IP address. In case of multiple computer setups use <username>.<computername>.remobo.com

Community

There is a great Remobo community over there. You can make feature requests, get skins, discuss problems and see how others are using Remobo.

All in all a great application. There is the password issue that I mentioned and some dialogs that I feel are redundant, but overall it greatly simplifies the whole process or sharing files, using BitTorrent to send files, VPN setup and Remote Desktop.

It’s still in beta and I am sure it will mature as it grows. If you thought Hamachi was easy and feature rich (or otherwise) try Remobo, you’ll have no idea!

Let us know what you think about it. Have you tried it? Or do you plan to stick with Hamachi or some other application?

(By) Varun Kashyap, who is getting absent minded and forget to mention his name in the last two articles. And before he forgets, he would like to invite you to his TechCrazy Blog, where he writes about latest on the web, tech tips, tweaks and hacks.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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