Before you open up your wallet for expensive software or try to make your own sound effects, you may easily be able to find free sound effects on the Web. There are plenty of great resources available online. Best of all, it doesn’t have to cost you anything!

Have your headphones ready? Here’s the top 5 websites for free sound effects downloads.

Flash Kit

Flash Kit’s Sound FX page is one of the best places to download free sound effects. The site has over 7,000 royalty-free tracks available for download.

You can search the collection manually or browse various categories, like nature or transportation, for the sound you’re looking for.

If you come across a desirable sound effect, all of its information, including length, quality, and size, are available and you can easily preview the track before downloading. All tracks are downloadable as WAV, MP3, or Flashtrak files.

Feel free to also contribute to the archive yourself by submitting your own original sounds.

Soungle

While Soungle may look and feel like just an audio search engine, it really isn’t. The website is touted as a mega online library and it only searches its impressive growing database of sound effects.

Soungle keeps everything easy and straightforward. Search results simply include a preview, description, clip information, and if you like the sound effect, just download it. It’s as easy as that.

Soundboard

Soundboard has a massive supply of thousands of sound effects to choose from. You can either search the collection by keyword or explore the slew of soundboards, with everything from airplanes to circus animal sound effects.

Once on a soundboard page, you can listen to the playlist and download whichever tracks you like. All sound effects are MP3 files.

SoundBible

Offering thousands of sound bites and effects, SoundBible is the encyclopedia of free sound clips. The site divides its content into free sound effects or royalty-free sounds.

All the sounds are plainly listed with a preview listen button and what license each falls under. Royalty-free sounds consist of Creative Commons and public domain works.

Learn more about SoundBible in the MakeUseOf Directory.

Freesound Project

The Freesound Project is a repository of Creative Commons licensed audio samples. It’s a huge collaborative database of just sounds, so you’re bound to find what you need.

You can search through all the content by keyword or browse the popular tags. Of course, you can always contribute to the database by adding your audio samples released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License.

Still can’t find what you’re looking for? Try out FindSounds, a great search engine just for sound effects. MakeUseOf’s Directory of Apps has also got the scoop on SoundSnap, yet another resource for sound effects, however, keep in mind that the site is not entirely free anymore and you’re limited to only five free downloads a month.

Do you have a favorite website for downloading free sound effects? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: Fe Ilya

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I find myself downloading Putty, VLC, Firefox and a multitude of other applications each time I install. The ones I downloaded the last time around are easily outdated.

It is important to grab the latest and greatest versions to protect against bugs or other issues with the software. So you have a list of 10 items you need to download and install. Wouldn’t it be MUCH easier if we could select these applications from  a list or website and have IT download and install my applications?

It sure would be! And now we will show you how you can do just that! Head on over to Ninite and once you are there it will be a breeze to get the applications you want on your system with a limited amount of clicking. (Note: Ninite currently works only on Windows PCs)

Once you hit the installer app site you will see a screen that looks like this:

Under the instructions you will see applications and check boxes. You can install from a vast array of applications ranging from Skype to Firefox, Dropbox to Google Earth and back to Putty and Notepad ++.  You will see the applications broken up into categories that include Web Browsers, Messaging, Imaging, Documents, Anti Virus, File Sharing, utilities, compression, tools and other items. The list is quite extensive but if something is not there you can suggest it!

Let’s run through the list and check the check box next to each item you want to download.  If you want FoxIt reader installed simply click the box next to it – it is that simple. When you are done selecting the items you want in your installer app, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen.

You will see directly under the entry for Eclipse there is a grey button that says – Get Installer. All you need to do is hit this button and a custom installer app will be created for you on the fly so you can install all of these packages with ease. I selected 3 items and hit Get Installer.

The screen changed and told me the download would start shortly – I can only imagine they are compiling your download at this point. And sure enough in about 1 minute another window popped up.

My new installer app was ready to be downloaded and installed. I clicked Save File and Firefox saved the file to my normal download folder. I navigated through the jungle that is my hard drive and double clicked on the executable. The file’s name has all of the applications listed that you selected. That’s nifty!

Once I ran it it started preparing to run which took about 30 seconds.

Then the application started downloading my installers at the speed of light. The three of them were complete in under 1 minute.

As soon as the downloads were complete Ninite started installing each of the applications silently. I saw NO prompts. Very cool!

And as quick as it started – it was complete.

Upon checking my start menu all of the applications I choose were installed with the newest versions. This is a very handy tool!

Does anyone else use something like this on Windows? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

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Confused yet? Fret not, things are about to get much simpler.

I stumbled onto Bodega a couple of days ago and it got me wondering what the heck it was. Something like AppFresh, perhaps? But the description said, “Your neighborhood store.” What on earth could that mean? It wasn’t until after I downloaded it, only did I realize that it was an App Store for Mac (or call it Mac Apps Store). Something like that anyways.

Bodega takes the iTunes’ App Store and translates that idea for Mac applications. In other words, it’s a centralized Mac application store – a place to be exposed to new and interesting Mac apps.

I can’t help but be impressed by the design of Bodega. It even looks like a store. Hold and move the app around your screen and the signboards swing about! Alright, let’s take a short tour and I’ll show you how to use it.

As soon as Bodega launched, you’ll be presented with its Featured apps of the day as seen in the screenshot above. There will also be sections dedicated to showcasing New Releases, Shopkeeper’s Picks, Top Free/Paid Downloads. The Featured page is a fantastic way to be exposed to and try out new apps.

Click on a category from the list on the left and you’ll be presented with apps, laid out on shelves. Very shop-like. Click on an app and it will be lit by a spotlight.

To find out more about the app, either click on its label to switch between the name, price and rating. Or you could double-click on the app to be brought to its dedicated page where you can read more about it and view some screenshots.

If you see an app you like and if it’s free, click on the Download button and Bodega will retrieve it for you. No additional browser windows need to be opened. You can view the download process in the Applications page. Downloads are automatically saved in your Downloads folder, naturally.

If you happen to like a commercial app and decide to buy it, everything can be done within the app itself. In this example, I chose HoudahSpot and clicked on the Buy Now button. Bodega opened up the Houdah Software Store page and allowed me to complete the transaction without leaving the application.

Besides being an App Store, Bodega also keeps track of the apps you always have on your Mac. It will detect installed applications and then check to see if they’re up to date.

All in all, I consider Bodega to be a work in progress. It doesn’t feature enough apps to challenge the big boys like MacUpdate. It is a fantastic idea and I’d love to see it boom. If you’re a developer, submit your app to be featured in Bodega.

Where do you go to get your Mac apps?

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Most download managers have it, µtorrent has it and they are perfect for my need. There has always been a great void in this setup due to Firefox. Many a time, I have files downloading in Firefox but no way to auto-shutdown the computer. Some time back, I hacked together an auto script that would sit there and wait for the Firefox’s ‘Downloads finished’ notification to appear, it would then close Firefox and shutdown the computer. Lame I know, but it did the trick.

Recently, however, I found an excellent addon that lets you do schedule auto shutdowns in Firefox and a whole lot more, its (aptly) called Auto-Shutdown. The addon is auto shutdown software that provides you with a number of options to perform precisely the action you want once the downloads have completed. You can play sounds, clear downloads, shutdown, logoff, restart your computer or run any command or multiple commands through a script.

Auto Shutdown is available at AMO, it works with Firefox version 3 and upwards. Once installed, the auto shutdown software will add a power icon to the status bar. You can remove the icon if you desire, however it provides quick access to its options and can be used to enable auto-shutdown in a flash.

You can use the built-in commands for basic needs like shutdown, hibernate, stand by, etc. There are different versions of these commands for different version of Windows and Linux and Mac.

Apart from the built-in commands you can do almost anything with Auto Shutdown. You can run any JavaScript code or any external application when the downloads finish or when the computer is idle while Firefox is downloading the files. To run custom commands or JavaScript code:

• Go to the Customize tab within Auto Shutdown settings.
• Type in your code in the lower text area surrounded by <javaScript> </javaScript> tags or <shell> </shell> tags depending on what you are planning to achieve.

• Click Save As and assign the script to User Command 1 or User Command 2

• Choose User Command 1 or User Command 2 from Adjust shutdown Command drop down list towards the top.

You can easily pass arguments to external applications and Auto Shutdown also provides you with certain reserved words that can be used in your scripts to refer to special locations and files. %sysRoot%, for example, refers to the Windows/system32 directory and %WinD refers to the Windows directory. The complete list is available here.

You can also choose the amount of time Auto Shutdown waits before executing the commands after the downloads have finished. Auto Shutdown will display a countdown for that specified time, allowing you to save any work if you have been working along or cancel the download altogether. You can force Firefox to exit when the command is eventually triggered and choose to restore the session, the next time Firefox is started. If you use DownThemAll, Auto Shutdown has you covered and can monitor DownThemAll as well.

Auto Shutdown is a dream come true if you ever leave the computer running only to let the downloads complete. With Auto Shutdown, you can now automatically close the browser or shutdown the system when downloads complete. Give it a spin and let us know what you like or dislike.

Do you have some clever ways of your own to automatically shutdown the computer after downloads complete? Let us know in the comments.

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Sometimes you find something at work that you want to download for your home computer (or vice versa). You could:

• download it on your work computer and bring it home later, or…
• ask your home computer to do a remote download right away – real time – from your work computer.

There’s nothing wrong with the first option, but even from the non-geek point of view, the second one is way cool. So if you have a Mac machine (which is always connected to the net) and a Dropbox account, I’ll show you how to set up the system to do a remote download – non-geek style.

Note: Dropbox is a service which will allow its users to synchronize files online and across computers. If you haven’t got it, you can get the free version, or you could try the 14-day free trial pro version (credit card required but you won’t be charged).

To learn more about this service, you can read our article comparing Dropbox and Sugarsync.

How the system works

Before we start, I think it’s best to understand how this remote download trigger works. I got the idea of setting up the system when I wrote about “2 Useful Tips For Organizing Electronic Files [Mac Only]“.

Basically it would go like this:

• you find a file that you want to receive through a remote download
• you get the download link and save it into a text file
• you put the text file into the specified Dropbox folder
• that folder will be synchronized with the same folder in your home computer
• the addition of this new text file inside the folder will trigger a download action
• after that, the text file will be moved to another folder and synchronized back to your work computer. You will be notified that the remote download process has started.

Setting up the system

Here’s how I set up my system. You can do some modifications according to your preferences.

First, I created a new folder inside the Dropbox folder on my home computer called “Remote Download“. Inside the folder I created two other folders called “New Links” and “Started“.

Then I created an Automator workflow to trigger the automatic download. I went to “File –> New –> Folder Action” menu and I :

1. Set the “New Links” folder as the trigger for the folder action



2. Chose “Files & Folders” from the Automator library



3. Dragged the “Filter Finder Items” workflow as the first action, and set it to “find all .txt files inside the New Links folder



4. Dragged the “Open Finder Items” workflow as the second action and set it to “open the .txt files using my download manager. Please note that you have to use a download manager that can import download links from txt files. I use iGetter (not free), but you can experiment with the download manager that you choose.



5. Dragged “Move Finder Items” workflow as the third action and set it to move the .txt file to the “Started” folder.



6. Saved the workflow as “Automatic Download“

You can change the folder’s name and the saved workflow to your liking, but you have to set the workflow actions accordingly.

How to use the system

To use the system, you just save a download link into a text file and put it in the “New Links” folder inside the Dropbox’s “Remote Download” folder in your work computer. You can also use the web interface if your work computer don’t have the Dropbox application installed. The text file will be synchronized and the download will be started automatically in your remote home computer. The scenario is also applied the other way around (from home to work).

The cool thing is, you can trigger the automatic download from any operating system (or even a mobile device) as long as you can connect to the net and can save a text file.

I strongly suggest you put one link inside one text file. Multiple links usually caused the download manager to ask for confirmation, so the download won’t start automatically.

As an additional bonus, you can set your work computer to notify you every time a new file is added into the “Started” folder so you’ll know that somewhere far away your download has started. Just set another Folder Action from the Automator.

You can use the same principle to trigger a torrent download, but instead of a txt file, you put the torrent file in a Dropbox folder and set your torrent client to monitor that folder and start the download automatically everytime a torrent file is detected. I know that Transmission is able to do that. But if you are using another torrent client that doesn’t have monitoring features, just use Folder Action.

I’d love to write a similar system for Windows users but I haven’t found a Windows equivalent to Mac’s Folder Action and download manager that can import links from a text file. Can anybody help?

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It was ridiculous to see the hundreds, if not thousands of how-to’s on downloading media from YouTube, but hardly a single one about other media broadcasting sites like the BBC iPlayer.

The most returning response of our stand-by tech time was to record the audio output of the stream — literally record the sound as it booms out of your speakers — but there had to be a better, more elegant way of doing this.

It turns out there is, and we found out how. (NOTE : this only applies to the audio streams, NOT the iPlayer videos)

1. Download The RealMedia Metafile

I presume you’ve already found a hard-to-download piece of audio on the BBC website. For this example, I will be using the BBC iPlayer audio broadcast of the 2009 BBC Proms.

Although BBC switched to Flash ages ago, they still offer support for RealPlayer. Thus, if you look well, you can find several audio files that are not hidden in the flash. First of all, we’re searching for a RealMedia Metafile – a small RealMedia playlist that will eventually lead us to our audio.

Just open the source code of the webpage in question (View – Open Source, or right-click on the page). Press Ctrl+F to open a search box and query for “.ram”, without quotes.

Once you’ve found the URL of your ram file, copy it and download it to your desktop. You can use a download manager, or just paste the URL in the address bar of your webbrowser.

2. Resolve The Link

Sadly, our RAM file is a referrer-file. This means that it only points to relevant audio data, but doesn’t contain it. To find our audio files, we’re going to use a third-party application.

Magic RM RAM to MP3 Converter, similar to most applications with a ridiculously long name, is a paid application. Nevertheless, the free ‘trial’ – which dumbs down functionality, but does not force any particular usage timeframe on you – will work just fine.

Once you’ve downloaded the application, go to ‘Tools – Open RM Link File…‘

In the pop-up window, open the RAM file you’ve downloaded in step 1. Magic Converter will automatically resolve the file, and present you with a hyperlink to the relevant audio file.

The link comes with a long suffix of gibberish, but you can ignore everything behind the ‘.ra’. Trim the link and copy it to your clipboard.

3. Download Your File

All that’s left is to download the file. Peanuts? – not necessarily.

To our disappointment, Real streaming doesn’t use the HTTP protocol you might expect. Instead, it uses the fairly obscure RTSP (Real Time Streaming) protocol, which most download managers don’t support. Luckily, there are still a handful of applications that walk the RTSP pathways. And FlashGet, a free download manager, is one of them.

With FlashGet installed, add a new download with the link to your RA file. Peanuts? – most definitely.

What’s Next?

If everything went well, you should be receiving your RA file by now. RA stands short for Real Audio — basically, the mp3 of Real Media.

To enjoy your RA file, you can either download the free Real Player – a really fine one at that – or you can install the necessary codecs to play it with other applications.

As an alternative and my recommended option, you can convert your RA to MP3, or another media format. There are plenty of applications out there that do the job for free, Jodix and Switch are two great examples. Another is Quick Media Converter which Mark discussed in his “Mark Pack” articles.

Do you know any alternative methods to download audio from BBC iPlayer? We’d love to hear about it! Don’t be afraid, and plop a comment in the comments section below!

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For most sites, you can just use some of the many online tools and tricks available. Aibek wrote an article on it last year — How To Download and Play Flash Games Offline. Sadly, MiniClip.com isn’t what we’d consider ‘most sites’.

If you want to download a flash game, MiniClip can be a real hard-ass. They do their best to ensure that the games keep being played on their site. That’s were the nerds come in.

Today, we’ll show you how to download free flash MiniClip games to enjoy on your computer or on a USB stick. The process seems a little bit difficult at first, but if you follow the instructions, you’ll do it in no-time.

Downloading Free Flash MiniClip Games

If you are to download a game from MiniClip.com, you must be willing to get your hands dirty. Where fancy tools do not work, we go in the old-fashioned way.

First off, we’ll be looking for the location of the flash file (a separate file in which the game is contained). To do this, we’re going to take a look at the source code. For those of you who are not that technologically skilled, it is a document filled with code. These lines define how the webpage is built, how it looks and – most importantly for us – what files are embedded.

Open the source code with Ctrl+U (Firefox on Windows), or right-click on the page and click View Source. This ought to work in any current-day browser, even though the phrasing might differ slightly.

Next, press Ctrl+F to initiate a search, and use .swf as a query (including the dot will filter out unnecessary results). Your first result should be something of the kind you see below: value=”doodle2.swf”. The exact name depends on which file you’re trying to download. Write your value (the name between the quotation marks) down, or copy it to your clipboard.

Now we know the file’s name, getting it to your desktop is easy. Just put the value behind the game’s original browser address, and you’ve got your download link. Now all you have to do is download the file.

However, if you haven’t got a download manager, downloading with the URL from a browser can be tricky. Because of their support for flash files, your browser will probably try to open the file, not save it. This can be avoided using a simple workaround.

Go to an online HTML code tester, like the one on Draac.com and enter your link in the following way: <a href=”YourLinkComesHere“>text</a>. Just press the button and you’ve got a clickable link waiting for you!

True, this is more work than we’re used to when downloading flash files — probably MiniClip wants to assure web-traffic by disallowing users to download the file. However, if you really want the file and know the drill, this won’t take more than a minute.

Putting the files on Your USB stick

Right now you can just put the files on your USB, if you want. From there, you can carry it to a friend’s, or enjoy yourself at school or work. However, not all computers can just open these free flash MiniClip games. There are two possible ways of going about this.

First of all, you could simply use your web browser. All browsers (Firefox, IE, etc.) with the flash plug-in installed, can also play these files from your desktop. However, you’ll need to point your computer in the right direction with right-click -> Open with…

Alternatively, you can install one of the many desktop flash players out there. One free solution that worked pretty well for me is the Swiff Player, but there are plenty of alternatives.

We hope you’ve learned something useful from this MakeUseOf tutorial. If you’ve got any remarks, suggestions or questions about the article, feel free to write something in the comments section below. If you are aware of easier way to download Miniclip flash games for free share it comments as well.

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It’s true that a good anti-virus is designed to stop a malware in its tracks before it gets triggered. A firewall and a good anti-virus form the first line of defense. But wouldn’t you surf more peacefully if you had a few more deterrents on your hard disk?

When it comes to protection against virus or Trojan attacks, there’s nothing like too much defense. The more the merrier. So here’s one more for the merry bunch – Dr.Web LinkChecker.

Dr.Web LinkChecker is a browser add-on for Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer. It is a small tool for a big task; a way to scan files before download in order to protect yourself from potential virus threats. How often do we visit not-so-above board sites, torrents and file sharing sites for a juicy download? I get especially suspicious when the download size doesn’t quite match up with the nature of the software. Usually suspicion wins.

These days a lot many anti-virus solutions scan files on the fly without saving them locally. For instance, avast! has its Web Shield and AVG comes with its proprietary AVG LinkScanner.

Using Dr.Web LinkChecker, you can actively (but manually) scan files before download begins with just a right click. The added protection integrates with the browser’s right click menu and scans the link on Dr. Web’s servers with the most up-to-date version of the Dr.Web scanner and the latest updates of the virus definitions database.

Here’s how it works in Mozilla Firefox (and Thunderbird)…

1. Download Dr.Web LinkChecker from the Mozilla add-ons gallery or the Dr.Web website.
2. Install as you would any other add-on and restart the browser.
3. For any download link, right click and choose Scan with Dr.Web. Dr.Web takes a few seconds to a few minutes to scan the file before download against its online database.



4. The post scan report gives a summary of the results and a visual notification – Green for a clean file and red for an infected one.

Here’s how it works in Internet Explorer.

1. Go to the download page for MS Internet Explorer.
2. Download registry file drweb-online-ru.reg from the language choice among the seven given.
3. Double-click the file and confirm to add it to the registry.
4. Restart Internet Explorer and use with a right-click on a download link.

Here’s how it works in Opera.

1. Opera integration is slightly more arduous as you need to edit an Opera configuration file.
2. From Windows Explorer go to Opera’s default directory under C:\Program Files\Opera\defaults. The defaults folder is the location for all of Opera’s configuration files.
3. Open and edit (using Notepad) the standard_menu.ini configuration file.
4. The sections – [Link Popup Menu], [Document Popup Menu] and [Image Link Popup Menu] need to be edited with an item entry pointing to Dr.Web’s online scanner. The detailed instructions can be found here.

   

   Note: In the snapshot, I have used Notepad2 as the text editor.

5. A Scan Link with Dr.Web gets integrated in the right-click menu.

As a pre-emptive bullet quick online scanner which can be used with three popular browsers, Dr. Web is a handy add-on.  Dr. Web’s anti-virus solutions have existed since 2003. So it is fair to assume that they follow the products with constant virus definition updates as the site itself claims.

Maybe, the main chink is that the anti-virus scans files limited to a maximum of 12MB. As a featherweight solution, it could fill an important role of the third line of defense after the firewall and the principal anti-virus.

But a real test of an anti-virus solution comes with detection rates and that too over a long period. Do you use Dr.Web to scan files before you download them? Do you think that this can add-on to your main anti-virus solution?

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Its offerings include full length album previews, an online store with 7 million songs, DRM-free high quality variable bit rate MP3 music downloads, a web-based music jukebox and social network, all in one tightly knit interface.

Lala turns out to be one of those websites that are great, yet somehow aren’t yet gathering the crowds lesser competitors are. With just over 20 people on the staff and consistent funding from Warner Music, you can be sure this service won’t disappear into the mist of the economic recession. While the 500 000+ members don’t stack up to Last.fm or Facebook, it isn’t exactly a niche audience.

Lala’s web designers and coders created an Apple-like experience, everything neatly integrated and in sync. A simple, functional interface reveals the minimalistic approach to the design of the web site. I wonder though if the iTunes interface is the pinnacle of media player design, designers decided to cut some corners or they intentionally opted for a similar layout to make new users feel ‘at home’.

Once you’ve created an account, which doesn’t take more than 30 seconds and doesn’t require a credit card, you can preview whole songs and albums for free (once). Your existing music library can be easily imported using the Lala Music Mover, a small application that matches songs on your computer with the catalog of music downloads available online. It works on Windows as well as on Macs and doesn’t use a lot of resources. Once the upload process is completed, you can listen to all of your songs online, with no additional charge, no restrictions or ads, from any computer with an Internet connection. It will even import playlists and ratings (using the beta version).

Individual tracks can be purchased and downloaded in MP3 format without DRM and a high quality variable bit rate encoding. Downloads are automatically added to your iTunes or Windows Media Player if you installed the Lala Music Mover. For ten cents you can purchase the right to stream a song from the website as many times as desired, a so-called “web song“. Depending on the song popularity and release date, MP3 music downloads range from $0.79 to $1.29, the same pricing scheme of the iTunes Music Store. Lala has strong connections with the music industry and currently indexes over 7 million songs.

The social networking aspect of the service combines different ideas from more general social networks such as Twitter and Facebook and does a good job of serving recommendations, aiding music discovery, while not duplicating unnecessary functionality.

The only caveat to this service is that it only works with United States IP addresses due to music licenses. Of course, you guys know how to get passed that. Go to Lala, give it a try and then come back to share your experiences in the comments. For more posts related to music, you should definitely have a look at MakeUseOf’s music section.

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Free – you ask? Yes, free. Welcome to the world of Linux where things are free both as in free speech and also as in free beer (mostly)!

If you are starting out on your journey towards Linux awesomeness, here are a few free downloadable ebooks to teach yourself Linux that should help you along nicely:

Newbie’s Getting Started Guide to Linux

(Download)

MakeUseOf’s very own Newbie’s Guide to Linux, tells you how to choose a distribution and then teaches you how to perform a basic Linux install. You can then use the guide to familiarize yourself with the Linux desktop and some basic commands.

Stefan did a great job in keeping it simple and to the point, the way beginners want it. Also don’t forget to check out our other MakeUseOf Manuals.

Introduction to Linux – A Hands on Guide

(Download)

Takes you from the absolute basics to basics. This hands on guide tells you everything right from logging in, basic file management, backup techniques up to basics of networking. It is what you need if you are having difficulty figuring out how to get to that resume file you saved just now. The guide explains Linux file structure and introduces to basic commands and text editors as well.

GNU/Linux Command line tools Summary

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One important aspect of working in Linux is that you have to familiar with the command line. This book shows you how to use the command line in Linux to your advantage. Apart from the ins and outs of the shell, this book also introduces various commands and the situations where you would use them. There are chapters that deal with specific tasks and list various commands you can use to achieve the task. If you can study online, there is another excellent manual you can refer to.

Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference

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Ubuntu is one of the most popular distributions, new users look up to when trying out Linux. If it is Ubuntu specific information that you are after then you should definitely check out Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference. The guide takes you from installing and configuring Ubuntu to adding and managing software and securing your system. A must read book if you use Ubuntu.

Rute User’s Tutorial and Exposition

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This one is not for the faint hearted! There is enough Linux juice in this book to keep even the intermediate to advanced users interested. The book begins humbly by presenting the basic commands and tools, however before you know it, you are learning everything from regular expressions to shell scripting to C programming to networking.

There is plenty of great material out there if you are trying to learn Linux, similar to these downloadable ebooks to teach yourself everything you ever wanted to know about Linux. If you have read a book or a tutorial that you found particularly useful, feel free to tell us about it in the comments below.

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You just have to look around a bit, and marvel about the great scores you’ll find. Classical music lovers will feast on Scorpio Fire, and have I mentioned the Tetris song yet?

Other games come with a complete soundtrack for you to appreciate. Final Fantasy IV is one of those games. Composed by Nobuo Uematsu, these are amongst the most popular video game music in the world.

Whether you’re a fervent Final Fantasy fan yourself, or a proud audiophile, this music can be enjoyed by nearly everyone. The majority of the songs are on the classical side, with a flavour of rock, but other styles get thrown in the mix as well.

Final Fantasy IV : Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption

There have been numerous reproductions of the Final Fantasy IV soundtrack, but none could’ve been as notable as this one.

Thirty-five members of the video gaming music site, Overclocked ReMix, worked on Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption; all of them half musician, half gamer. Together they played the 46 arrangements of the soundtrack, each artist giving his or her personal touch to the score.

“[The] album is divided into three acts: Betrayal, Strife, and Redemption. We aspire to recreate the journey from darkness and evil to light and redemption, a recurring theme of the game. (…) The tracks are not arranged in chronological order of release in the game’s original soundtrack, but appear in a new order, to further heighten the drama of the music.”

The result is a wonderful soundtrack, with 46 fan-made songs. A complete double-CD, as well as a work of art.

Sample

Below is a sample, to whet your appetite and awaken your curiosity. This is the first song of the soundtrack, the opening of the Betrayal act — Full of Courage, arranged by Nutritious.

Full of Courage is based on the Nobuo Uematsu original song, The Red Wings.

Free Download

The complete soundtrack of Final Fantasy 4 : Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption can be downloaded for free. That’s right, you don’t even need to sign up!

The easiest method would be to download it via the Torrent file. Due to the participation of the community, the torrent is more than well-seeded, and even though you’re looking at a total of 413 MB (if you prefer mp3) or 1.3 GB (if you’d rather have lossless flac), downloading should go past in a flash. If you don’t know how to use torrents, check out The Big Book of BitTorrent by Saikat Basu, an extensive PDF manual featuring everything you need (actually, really ought) to know.

If you don’t like torrents, you can also download the mp3’s straight from your browser. There’s a page on the website here, featuring http links (and mirrors) to all the individual tracks. This is however not recommended. Although you might avoid torrents, you’re looking at the tedious task of downloading each song individually, or having to deploy a site grabber on the mirror directories.

If you used the above torrent link, be sure to pay a visit to the site as well. There’s a lot of interesting stuff on there, including cover art and more information on the subject.

Any questions or comments you have can be directed to the comments section below. Don’t be shy, we’d love to hear from you.

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I could hear the murmurs among the members of the DD – Downloadaholic D’Anonymous. My heart beats faster. Still I continued, “I tried to stop, believe me I did. And I almost succeeded. You see, I’m crazy about downloading, but I really hate everything I had to go through to download the files.”

I paused again and glanced at the group leader. He nodded as a sign for me to continue. I cleared my throat and said, “What I really hate about this whole thing is that I had to manually manage all the downloaded files individually. And if there were hundreds of new files every week…”

Several people nodded, understood.

“Then why didn’t you stop?” asked the lady with a ponytail on my right.

I looked at her and said, “I met Folx Beta.”

An Automatic Download Manager

Even though each and every new modern browser has its own download manager (or plugin), nothing can beat the flexibility of a stand alone application. There are plenty of options for Windows, but for Mac users, Folx might be the best answer to the need for a free stand-alone download manager.

The first thing to do after downloading and installing the app is to go to the adjust some preferences. Go to Preferences (Command + Comma).

There are several tabs. We’ll start from General. Here, users can set things like the maximum active task, user agent, and connection type.

Then there’s the Folder tab where users can set the location of the downloaded files.

Unless you connect through proxy server(s), you can skip the Proxy tab and go directly to the next tab. The Scheduler tab would be very useful if you only connect at certain times or want your downloads to be active only at specific hours.

You can use the Speed tab to set different speed limits for individual browsers. To do that, you must set the Speed limit type to “Auto” because the options are greyed out when set at ‘Unlimited’.

From this Preferences window, we can see that there are two future download abilities that are still unavailable in this beta version: Torrent and ed2k.

Do the Download, dude!

Now for the fun part: downloading the files. If you set Folx’s preferences to automatically catch the download from your browsers, it will do just that. Another way is to select then drag and drop the link to the dropbox. You can move the location of the dropbox easily by dragging it.

By default, a New Task window will pop out every time a new download about to start. Users can adjust individual settings for each download – including adding tags to the file – from this window.

Everybody knows that tags are an important factor in good file management. It also opens other possibilities in managing the downloaded files, such as assigning Automator Actions to automatically move series of files with the same tags to a certain folder.

The New Task window is also the place to set how many segments (threads) of a file to be active at one moment. This option is important because some download servers only allow one active download segment.

This window may be deactivated in the preferences

For further information on the features, please read the Documentation.

Personally, I think this app is a nice free download manager and has the potential to be better.

Do you have alternatives to a free stand alone Mac download manager? Or do you prefer to use the built-in (or plugin) download manager in your browser? Share your thoughts below.

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After Karl’s latest article about Rapidshare123, I was stunned with the number of comments that claimed BitTorrent as the ‘now‘.

True as that might be, a statement like that closes more doors than it opens. Although torrents are indeed great, the presence of other worthy protocols can’t be ignored. Free file sharing networks such as FastTrack, Ares and Gnutella still cover millions of files and are – in my honest opinion – still the easier way to search for, and download some types of files.

KCeasy

KCeasy is an application that does its utter best not to let this form of file sharing die. It’s based on the giFT protocol, which allows it to connect to several file sharing networks such as Ares, Gnutella and OpenFT – developed by the guys behind the giFT engine.

Back in the old days – which is actually just a few years ago – KCeasy also worked out FastTrack compatibility through reverse engineering. This is the network used by Kazaa. Unfortunately, Sharman Networks weren’t all too happy about it, and threatened with court and the takedown of KCeasy.

This doesn’t much hurt KCeasy as a viable file sharing application, though. Even with the current decrease in popularity, Ares and Gnutella protocol still serve hundreds of thousands of people, and passively host a good petabyte (a full million gigabytes) of files and information.

Read on for some of the best KCeasy features.

The Web, Integrated

KCeasy has an integrated web browser, based on Internet Explorer. It probably won’t replace your current web browser, but it does allow you to go for a quick stroll on the net, or look things up.

From the application’s start page, you can instantly perform some of the more popular searches, such as regular Google queries, IMDB movie lookups, file information with Bitzi – inluding specific dimensions, qualities and reviews – and Lets Sing It music lookups.

Media Playbacks and Previews

With the KCeasy media player, you can listen to, or watch downloaded music and videos. You can use this to check the quality of your files, even when they haven’t finished downloading yet – or, when you haven’t even started.

You can keep controlling playback, even when you’re navigating other sections of the application. The little console at the bottom does for KCeasy what FoxyTunes does for FireFox. This one can also be accessed while you’re browsing through the results of a file search.

There are other features that characterize KCeasy, like access to the oldschool IRC, but that isn’t how we should remember this application. KCeasy is simply a wonderful and easy to use file sharing application that shows us there’s still some life in this niche of the internet – that although torrents are absolutely great, they shouldn’t be considered both beginning and end of the availabilities.

So, what do you think? Let us know your thoughts, remarks or questions in the comments below.

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So, we might just have to find other methods of searching for and downloading files like television shows or movies from the interweb. I have been using a website called www.RapidShare.com for a while now to trade files with friends who don’t know what FTP is. Now, I found a neat search engine that will let you search what other people are uploading!

In the past, I’ve shown you a Rapidshare search engine but this new one is even better. It’s called RapidShare123 and is located at http://www.RapidShare123.com. RapidShare123 collects Rapid Share downloads from sites, forums, blogs and portals. Don’t have something to search for? Come on, all you need to search is a little bit of imagination – and if you don’t have any of that, RapidShare123 lists the most recent search terms on their homepage.

In the past, we have showed you how to make use of your Rapidshare account with some free Rapidshare tools that you should definitely check out if you haven’t.

Enough shameless promotion, let’s take a look at how RapidShare123 works.

After browsing over to their website, you will see a big old search box followed by a big blue Find button to find rapid share downloads. That’s all there is to it! I decided to type in something that would not bring up copyrighted materials for this article but hey, you can do whatever you want. I tried and I tried but all of my searches kept returning copyrighted information. I won’t download the actual file but I will walk you through how it works.

I settled down with the search term Simpsons and got a lot of results.  Some times RAR files are broken into multiple files. This is denoted by the “part01″ before the file extension. Using this search, I try to stay away from them but your results may vary. I hit the link 7 items down for The Simpsons Season 19 Episode 10.

That took me to another page that returned this information:

It has the actual Rapid share download link as well as its file size. Click the link to start the download. Below, it lists the most recently downloaded files through their service. The site was just recently released so this info should improve over time. Long story short, RapidShare123 is awesome and can be used to kill some time searching for keywords and then watch what you get. It is almost like looking through someone else’s files.

Do you use a RapidShare search engine? Is yours better? Then, you should definitely share it with us in the comments!

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There seemed to be no way to play Kongregate games offline. Until now.

We’re going to show you how to download Kongregate games and play them locally on your computer.

This tutorial requires Firefox with the Live HTTP Headers addon. Get them before moving on.

Download Kongregate Games

1. Open up Firefox and head over to Kongregate. Click Tools > Live HTTP Headers. In the resulting window, switch to the Generator tab. Check request and uncheck images and CSS on the right  side. Make sure Capture is checked at the bottom.
   
2. Load game you want to download, and watch the Live HTTP Headers window fill with entries. Uncheck Capture when the game starts to load (or you’ll be bogged down with a large number of irrelevant entries). Look for the following pattern:
   

   #request# GET http://chat.kongregate.com/gamez/[numbers]/[numbers]/live/[game-name].swf?kongregate_game_version=[numbers]

   For our example, we’re going to use the Little Wheel game. Our entry appeared like this:

   #request# GET http://chat.kongregate.com/gamez/0004/8108/live/littlewheel.swf?kongregate_game_version=1244712350

3. Right click and Copy the entry.
   

   Paste it into Firefox, remove #request# GET from the URL, and when the page loads you should be greeted by the Flash game filling the whole window. Hit File > Save Page As and select a location to download. It should save as a swf file.

Playing the Game

Head over to where you saved the Flash game and Open With… > Mozilla Firefox. There are two possible outcomes:

1. The game opens fine and perfectly. You’re at the end of the article. This is the case with Little Wheel.
2. The game opens, but the game doesn’t work or a message displays telling you to go to Kongregate. You’ll need to follow the next part of the tutorial, which requires XAMPP. XAMPP will emulate a web site so we can trick the Flash game into believing it’s operating on Kongregate.com. In the video tutorial below, we’ve used the Fantastic Contraption game, which doesn’t work without this following step.

The Workaround

1. Grab the Self Extracting ZIP Archive from the XAMPP download page. Double-click the extractor, and let it place the files at C: (it’ll create a folder called “xampp” automatically). Don’t be creative with the path, by sticking to a top level folder you skip a step.
2. Head into C:\xampp\htdocs and create a folder called kongregate.com
3. Move the Flash game file (swf) into the newly created folder (C:xampp\htdocs\kongregate.com)
   
4. Run C:\xampp\xampp-control.exe and fire up the Apache server by clicking Start next to where it says Apache. It should say Running once you click it, as seen in the screenshot below
   
5. Direct your browser to http://localhost/kongregate.com/. You’ll be greeted by minimalistic list of files in the directory. Click on the Flash game you put into the folder. If all goes well, it should work perfectly – the game should fill up the Firefox window.

To further clarify the steps above, I’ve prepared a short video tutorial:

That’s it for saving Kongregate games to your computer and playing offline. If you have any questions or aware of any easier way to download Kongregate games, feel free to tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

For more post on flash games, check out:

MUO Games – The Best Websites to Play Flash Games
4 Web Flash Games to Kick-Start your Brain
The Best Online Flash Games
Orisinal.com – Cute Flash Games For All

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The use of Flash plug-ins in browsers is now almost obligatory. Yes, it’s easy to view and enjoy the rich media content delivered by interactive Flash embedded pages. But what if I want to download some of these files as keepsakes? The greatest benefit – I can watch them offline in my own jolly time. Convert them to a format of my choice. Or embed them again in a PowerPoint presentation. Or even transfer them to my mobile phone.

Flash animation files are embedded as SWF (Small Web Format) files in webpages. Rather than depending on any software or a third-party website, downloading Flash content is dead simple. The only tool required is a browser and a bit of patience to do the rummaging around.

Just one note: As we will be heading into the internet cache folders of the respective browsers, it pays to clear it of all old files before navigating to the desired page. It makes the Flash file search a lot easier.

So, here’s how to do it in three of our popular browsers.

Download SWF files using Firefox

1. Fire up Firefox and browse to the page which contains the embedded SWF Flash file that you are eyeing to download. Let the SWF file stream through once completely.
2. On any empty part of the page, right-click and select the Page Info context menu option. Or alternatively, go to Tools – Page Info.

   

3. Select the Media tab. The Media tab lists all image formats, icons, style sheets and flash files that were rendered by the webpage.

   

4. Look amongst the items to find the particular file with the SWF extension. The type column will show up with an Embed filetype. Highlight the file and click Save as to save the file on your hard drive.

Download SWF files using Internet Explorer

In IE8, we have to head to the Temporary Internet Files folder which stores all rendered files during a browsing session. (It can be directly accessed from here in Windows XP – C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files.)

1. Go to the IE Menu bar. Click on Tools – Internet Options.
2. On the General tab, click on Settings under Browsing History.
3. The Temporary Internet Files and Browsing History box opens up.

   

4. Click on View Files. You will get all the rendered webpage elements in this folder.
5. To rummage about effectively amidst the mass of files, choose View – Arrange by Type from the menu. Also go to Tools – Folder Options, and uncheck the Hide extensions for known file types option.
6. Seek out your SWF files, copy and then paste it to your preferred location.

   

Download SWF files using Opera

In Opera, downloaded SWF files can be accessed in two simple ways –

• Type opera:cache in the address bar.
• Go to Tools – Advanced – Cache from the toolbar.

Either way, a huge list of downloaded page elements opens up with their URLs. Search for a file with the .swf extension. Alternatively, you could search (Ctrl+F ) and hunt it down, with swf as the search query.

Right-click on the particular file and choose either Saved Linked Content As or Save to Download Folder to save the SWF file on the hard disk.

After downloading the SWF file, one can use the Adobe Flash Player to view the Flash file or a supported media player like Media Player Classic. Or, an easier way would be to just open it in a browser by right-clicking it and selecting the browser of choice.

These are the ways we can use to single out the Flash files from a webpage. In my experience, I personally have been more comfortable with Firefox than the other two. I am still searching a way perform this in Chrome but it is proving impossible without third-party support. Numerous third-party tools can do the same job better by converting it to a format of your choice. But it always pays to know that you can fall back on a browser alone.

Aibek had the same idea about offline Flash files when he covered How To Download and Play Flash Games Offline in a previous post. That post extends the possibilities of the fun we can have with Flash files.

What about you? Do you let it play on the webpage or do you dig under and take a Flash file offline?

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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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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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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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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!

• Top 4 Sites To Download Free, Legal Concert Recordings (6)
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As all of you probably know, torrents make every user into an uploader as well as a downloader, sharing the load amongst peers instead of burdening one server.

Most people only know torrents as a program for piracy though, used for downloading games, music, and music. Torrents are all that, agreed, but also so much more.

OneSwarm

OneSwarm is a project of Tomas Isdal, Michael Piatek, Arvind Krishnamurthy and Tom Anderson, students at the University of Washington. They’re trying to renovate the concept of Peer-to-Peer, introducing increased privacy and user friendliness.

Welcome to Friend-to-Friend.

OneSwarm is a web-based F2F (read more below) client, that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. Scroll down for a more extended function overview.

Increased Privacy with F2F

The Peer-to-Peer protocol relies on everybody for both uploading and downloading. Although this makes for an incredibly efficient way of file-sharing, it also buries your privacy-bucket deep in the backyard.

Perhaps you don’t know, but while connected to other peers, everybody can see your (raw or resolved) IP address, allowing them to track you and your online actions.

OneSwarm resolves this by deploying a net of trustees, ‘friends’ as one might say. This way, you can choose to connect only to the people, who will be the only ones able to view you connected and your IP-address.

That doesn’t mean you can only access packages from friends, though. When a friend doesn’t have what you’re looking for, OneSwarm triggers a domino effect, and will start looking with your friend’s friends, and their friends after. Each level you further will exponentially increase your results.

It is said that two random people can nearly always be connected in under eight steps, a principle which OneSwarm puts to good use with its F2F protocol. Because all packages get passed on by friends, and nobody can see past the next link in the chain, no one knows what is going where, only in what direction it’s heading.

User-Friendly Through The Roof

All of you who’ve ever tried cooking up a torrent know it’s not an easy task by far. Especially a beginner can easily get lost in this intricate maze.

OneSwarm reintroduces userfriendlieness to Peer-to-Peer (or Friend-to-Friend). Sharing files or folders is as easy as selecting them in the application, and choosing who to share it with; no more digressions for you, sir.

Check the embedded video below for a complete overview.

Make sure you’ve got the right files. By using OneSwarm’s Media Preview, you can watch parts of a video or collection of photographs even before it finishes downloading.

All content is transcoded real-time in OneSwarm, so you don’t need any additional applications or even codecs. And we’re not only talking flv’s here, but also non-web encoded content like avi’s!

If your computer is turned on, you can remotely access OneSwarm and your files through a browser. Just log in with the right username and password, and you’ll feel like you’re sitting behind your system.

Perhaps the most interesting feature is that you can use this to stream any downloaded media directly to the another browser.

Check here for a video tutorial that will walk you through the process.

Conclusion

To be honest, F2F isn’t ready to replace P2P yet, for the simple reason that this cancer hasn’t spread far enough yet. For the moment being, OneSwarm’s F2F is best used as a simple file-sharing system amongst friends, but as more and more people install the software, the available content will surge as well.

However, as OneSwarm is able to double-function as a regular P2P agent, I’ve already made the switch. Have you? Drop a comment below.

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Amazon.com

Surprised already? Amazon has become a major player in the arena of online music sales, with one of the first stores to sell music files without any digital rights management. If you dig deep enough (or just click the above link), you can find many tracks available for free as album-samplers. At the time of this writing, I’m looking at 768 songs available for $0.00 on Amazon, and many of them are artists you may have actually heard of, like Neko Case, Death Cab for Cutie, or Louisville’s own My Morning Jacket.

South by Southwest Torrents

On this site, you’ll find BitTorrent downloads of music from the SXSW Conference’s Music Showcase, from 2005 to this year. The 2009 collection is 5GB large! Once SXSW 2010 rolls around, music from there will likely be up on this page, too.

The Live Music Archive/Etree

This archive is a collaboration between Internet Archive and etree.org, a live-concert-trading community. The list of available artists is ridiculously long, and includes The Grateful Dead, but unfortunately, not Phish or Widespread Panic, two bands who are traditionally OK with live-concert recording. Additional Etree trading posts include Furthurnet and Etree’s BitTorrent tracker.

OverClocked ReMix

OC ReMix, which offers streaming, direct downloads, and BitTorrent downloads, is “dedicated to the appreciation and promotion of video game music as an art form.” Game music has been, for some time now, far beyond blips and beeps. The amount of music here is staggering (1687 remixes at this writing), and many remixes come from professional-level composers. To give you an idea of the quality, Capcom commissioned OC ReMix members to create the soundtrack for a recent update to Street Fighter II.

ccMixter

ccMixter features remixes licensed under Creative Commons, which allows others to sample, chop up, and rearrange these works. You may browse full remixes, or collect samples, loops, and a-capellas, to create your own masterpiece. The community offers advice on how to edit the sounds together properly.

Free Music Archive

The FMA is assembled from the archives of nine “curators” such as radio stations. The simple design allows you to get to the meat of the site quickly. Songs are can be browsed by genre or curator, and new tracks are added constantly. You may sign up to create mix playlists or full-blown ‘blogs of FMA content.

Legal Torrents

LegalTorrents hosts downloadable collections from share-friendly creators as well as entire record companies (“netlabels”) who offer their catalogs for free. If you like what you hear, you are encouraged to create an account and donate directly to the artists and labels, or to the site itself, which seeds all of its own Torrents.

For some more sources of free, legal, music, check out Simon’s article from this past January. I’m sure that there are more free music archives which we’ve missed. Shout-out your favorites in the comments.

• Top 4 Sites To Download Free, Legal Concert Recordings (6)
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• Final Fantasy IV : Free ReMix Music Album (2)
• Coda.fm – Music Album Torrents (14)

1. View high quality videos

Youtube gives you the option to switch to high quality videos for some of the videos, however you can check if a video is available in high quality format by appending ‘&fmt=18′(stereo, 480 x 270 resolution) or ‘&fmt=22′(stereo, 1280 x 720 resolution) for even higher quality.

2. Embed Higher Quality Videos

While the above trick works for playback, if however you want to embed hig quality videos you need to append “&ap=%2526fmt%3D18″ and “&ap=%2526fmt%3D22″ to the embed url.

3. Cut the chase and link to the interesting part

Linking to a video where the real action starts at 3 minutes 22 seconds, wondered if you could make it start at 03:22? You are in luck. All you have to do is add #t=03m22s (#t=XXmYYs for XX mins and YY seconds) to the end of the URL.

4. Hide the search box

The search box appears when you hover over an embedded video. To hide the search box add ‘&showsearch=0′ to the embed url.

5. Embed only a part of Video

Just append ‘&start=30′ to skip first 30s of the video. In general you can modify the value after start= to the number of seconds you want to skip the video for.

6. Autoplay an embedded video

Normally when you embed a Youtube video and load the page, the player is loaded and it sits there waiting for you to hit the play button. You can make the video play automatically by adding ‘&autoplay=1′ to the url part of the embed code.

7. Loop an embedded video

Append ‘&loop=1′ to make the video start again without user intervention after it reaches the end.

8. Disable Related Videos

Publishing your content in the form of Youtube video? Don’t want people to see other people’s content that may be related but may as well be in competition to you? Just add ‘&rel=0′ to the end of the url part of the embed code and you just turned off the related video suggestions!

9. Bypass Youtube Regional Filtering

Some videos are only available in certain parts of the world. Your IP Address is used to determine your location and then allow or deny access to the video. Change the url from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<somecode> to http://www.youtube.com/v/<somecode>

10. Download Video

Although not inherently a youtube trick but useful all the same for downloading videos. Just change youtube to kickyoutube in the url of the video and it will take you to kickyoutube.com with all the options for downloading the video you were watching.

Do you know of some similar Youtube URL tricks and hacks? Fire them in comments!

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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

• How To Cheat With Your BitTorrent Ratio (35)
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Well I don’t know about the later (I tend to skip browsing these types of sites) but when I am downloading files using a free account on RapidShare I can tell you I hate staring at the screen for those 30-50 seconds before I can continue and start my download.

I have walked away from the machine to come back a few minutes later only to find out that my download had expired and I had to start all over again!

I know I mentioned that popular file sharing site called Rapidshare but I am also talking about MegaUpload, Zshare and loads of others.

Now I found this great service that gets added to your FireFox by browsing over to Skipscreen and clicking the link to “Add to FireFox”.

Take a look at the video below for a detailed explanation of how SkipScreen works. Or continue on for my ‘how to’.

When you first arrive at the SkipScreen site you will see this screen:

Simply click the button that says ‘Add To FireFox’.

(First and foremost you need to be running Firefox for this to work, so I don’t want to keep getting questions on why it doesn’t work in Internet Explorer or Safari.)

You will be taken to the Firefox add-ons page. Here you click on the same ‘Add To FireFox’ button and this time you will see this screen:

Click on Install Now. You will see your progress followed by this screen:

You know the drill – hit the Restart Firefox button and you are now loaded and ready to go.

Now to give it a shot.

Normally I go to download a free RapidShare link and I have to wait to click my link and then wait some more. Now I simply click my link and continue on with what I am doing and SkipScreen does its magic. When my file becomes available it grabs it and starts my download.

I visited this Rapidshare link to grab a copy of Windows Mobile 6.5 for my ATT Fuze.

The screen I got looked like it normally does but on closer inspection it has a green banner at the bottom that says this:

I continued on to open another tab and after a short while of browsing I saw this pop-up:

This is awesome! I don’t know if it violates the TOS from any of the big download companies but it is making my life MUCH easier!

Anyone else have any tips or tricks on downloading what we want faster – without paying a premium? Hit us up in the comments!

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Q: How did you come up with the idea for a music album torrents site?

A: I’m a music lover, and I always use BitTorrent to get my fix. I was disappointed with all the public indexers and the private trackers. I found the experience of searching for music in the first ones very tiresome, always having to navigate through a lot of irrelevant search results and dead torrents.

I grew tired too of the strict rules of most of the private trackers, and the elitism of some of their communities.

Those reasons motivated me to create a new kind of music torrents site, open for everyone and that offered a user experience comparable to the best e-commerce websites.

We all who constantly seek new music deserve something better, so I tried to build a website I would enjoy using, a website where:

The main content is always the music, sorted accordingly by albums, artist, and genres. The torrent files is the way to get what you want, and not an end in itself. Search and download for music was a pleasant visual experience, and not a burden. You always have a lot of information about what you are about to download, to make sure that is what you are actually looking for.

It’s not only about the search, it should help you to discover new music, always offering recommendations of albums and artists similar to the ones you like.

And above all things, that is fun to navigate freely, exploring music by genre, artist, year, similarity, etc., and always one click away to download whatever you like.

I thought that many people would share my point of view, and appreciate this new approach for a music torrents site. Being an experienced web developer, I decided to make it real.

Q: Has the RIAA/IFPI threatened to sue?

A: Yes, they already threatened us many times citing the DMCA, a law that doesn’t apply in my country, and where no other legislation is applicable to what we do. [I won’t disclose my location or name because]

Sooner or later, the RIAA, IFPI or a similar organization will try to shut us down, so, the less they know about us, the better.

Q: What would you like to see from artists and labels regarding piracy?

A: They need to realize that their old business models won’t work anymore in the digital age, […] we are living a revolution in the way the music is being consumed and distributed. They will all need to think outside the box and be willing to take risks if they want to survive, trying new ideas in order to adapt to a scenario dominated by the P2P technologies, [which are] unstoppable […].

Trent Reznor is a fine example of how the embrace the internet and thrive as a musician without a label, a middleman that should be gone soon.

Q: How do you feel about the ongoing lawsuit against ThePirateBay?

A: The final verdict will be very important and representative, to be taken in consideration by all the admins of torrents sites […], and specially those who are based in the European Union.

And I’m afraid that’s the real goal of this trial, a political trial that has nothing to do with justice as trying to serve as dissuasive propaganda.

Personally, I think that any law that see as criminals nearly all the youths of today and those who give them what they want [..] is clearly wrong. […] Of course, we’re in the same side,I could find myself in the same place, eventually. I wish we where bigger and able to do something to help them.

Q: How hard was it to develop the backend code and how long did it take?

A: The coding wasn’t as hard as defining the UI design, layout and navigation, that took me many iterations to get it right. It took me a few months to get a working prototype, that showed that the project could be viable, useful, and worth to be finished. In total, the development of the platform took me one year, working the first seven or eight months part time besides my day job.

Q: Why not let users report bad albums rather than hand picking by administrators?

A: I believe it’s safer this way, stopping torrents with spam and viruses before they are available for download. Besides, although the process that gets the metadata for the albums is automated, it requires supervision and manual approval, and that could be tiresome and boring for the users, leading them to upload less torrents.

Q: How do you plan on monetizing the site?

A:  For now, we’re focusing on building a community, drive more traffic and add even more features that could put us ahead other competing websites.

I guess that the obvious choice would be putting ads, but I’m reluctant to do that. In the meantime I will try to find another way to monetize the website.

Q: Would you like to tell us about your favorite 3 albums of all time?

A: Wow, this is by far the most difficult question. So hard that I’m going to cheat, and list a few of my favorite artists instead:

• Johann Sebastian Bach, by far my most listened, since I was a kid.
• Other classical composers: Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Paganini, Vivaldi, Handel and a few others. Astor Piazzolla, Björk, Portishead, Nine Inch Nails, The Mars, Volta Morphine, Sonic Youth, Massive Attack, Thievery Corporation, Tricky, Death Cab for Cutie, The Decemberists, Mogwai, Tool.

Q: What can you tell us about your audio gear and listening patterns?

A: My gear is nothing too fancy, a moderately good sound system with the aux[iliary] input connected to my iMac, from which I play all the music with iTunes (I don’t use or buy CDs anymore, and I don’t listen to the radio either). I worry more about convenience and compatibility, than absolute sound quality, for example I don’t use lossless audio formats, and neither do I want the ultimate audio gear.

I listen to music every day, all day long, at home or on the road with my iPod: it’s the cornerstone of my life.

I hope I asked all the questions you wanted – but if not – leave a comment and I’ll pass along the questions. Visit Coda.fm music album torrents site and experience a new kind of music downloading – then come back and tell us what you think about it. We thank the Coda.fm Admin for this great interview.

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Never thought about that did ya? Well most of us wouldn’t – seeming as Flickr is a huge business that has been around for a while. But in this day and age it is possible for anything to go under.

Now let’s take a look at Downloadr. It can help us download flickr photos in bulk and backup our entire Flickr account. I started by downloading a tiny 20KB file called Updatr (you just have to love the naming convention right!?!?). Copy this file to a new directory, run Updatr and it will download the newest version of Downloadr.

Downloadr will then launch and you will see this screen:

I then typed in my username in the User field and hit search. DownloadR returns the first 10 items and 10 more for each subsequent push of the Search More button.

I highlighted one picture and clicked on “Download selected”. This allows me to grab the largest available file from Flickr of this picture. Once you click download selected you will get this normal “File Save” dialogue box.

That is all well and good when you have say 7 photos in your Flickr account. But let’s be a little more realistic. If you want to grab a whole bunch of images and save them all to your machine you will need to authenticate first by going to, Extras —> Authenticate:

You will get a few warning boxes asking you if it is ok to allow “Downloadr” access to your account. I saw two Windows Dialogue boxes followed by this web page opening:

I clicked “OK I’ll ALLOW IT” and I was ready to backup my images. I went back to my Extras menu and chose complete backup. I then got this window:

I hit the “Backup now” button. Downloadr got my Flickr ID# and then started downloading my images. In no time at all I had all my 200 images on my local machine.

I clicked OK and Downloadr showed me the folder that contained my images, A job well done!

Another app which you could use for your Flickr backup needs is FlickrDown which Mark profiled here.

Do you backup your online accounts? If you do – how? Share your brilliance with our readers…. in the comments! If you’re aware of any other tools to download Flickr photos in bulk, please post them in comments as well.

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Torrent users would attest to the fact that half of our time is spent looking for ‘healthy’ torrents and the other half trying to download (and a bit of upload too) at the maximum speed. The former is mandatory; the latter thankfully is within the realm of tweaking.

If you are the one who thinks that your torrent download speeds could do with a boost then keep reading. Below, you’ll find a few tips on how to speed up torrent download speed.

1. Your ISP is where it starts

Check the maximum download and upload speeds allowed by your ISP. Most ISP’s have specific bandwidths for both uploads and downloads. Obviously your torrent download speed won’t cross the cap set by the ISP. Go over to this article on Speed.io for broadband speed test and this one by Tina on ways to increase your connection speed. There are many other bandwidth testers like DSLReports which is included in the speed test within uTorrent.

2. Choosing the right BitTorrent client

Use the better clients out there like uTorrent, Vuze or the BitTorrent client itself. Wikipedia lists about 51 of them supporting the BitTorrent protocol. The choice of client used should always be updated to the latest version. The screenshots here depict uTorrent. The settings should be similarly configurable for other clients too. Mac users shuld also check our Transmission vs. uTorrent post

3. Go for healthy seeds and peers

A peer is any computer participating in the download and upload of a torrent file. A seed (or seeder) is anyone who has one complete copy of the file being shared across the torrent network. A leech (or a leecher) is the person who does not have the complete file yet but has joined the network to download it. A leecher becomes a seeder when he downloads the entire file and then shares it across the network.



For high torrent speeds, the best bet is in numbers. The greater the number of seeders, the healthier the torrent and the better the chance of higher speeds. The rule of thumb says to choose the torrent files with a high number of seeders and preferably lesser number of leechers i.e. a higher seed-leecher ratio.

4. Get through the firewall

Firewalls can block all incoming BitTorrent connections coming through. To ensure otherwise, a firewall should be manually configured to accept the connections and let it through the client. Windows XP has the Windows Firewall. Configure the firewall installed to accept the connections by checking the BitTorrent client on the allowed list i.e. Options – Preferences – Connection – check Add uTorrent to Windows Firewall. Also, check the Windows Firewall exception (if you keep it enabled) in your client too. Shutting down the firewall is not recommended as it leaves the computer open to attack.



Note: If the home computer is behind a router, it also should be configured through the feature called Port Range Forwarding to enable torrent traffic. The router documentation should have specific information on this.

5. Limit your upload rate

A peer to peer network is all about sharing alike, but an unlimited upload rate hits the download rate too. Using the speed tests, find out your maximum upload speed and then set your client’s upload rate (Global Upload Rate in uTorrent) to about 80% of your maximum upload speed. You can also try varying your upload speeds – keep it high initially and then gradually bring it down towards the middle of the download.

Note: Mind the speed units – it may be given in kilobits per second (kb/sec) or kilobytes per second (kB/sec). 1 kilobyte = 8 kilobit

6. Go to a different port

The default port for the BitTorrent protocol is any between port numbers 6881-6999. ISPs throttle traffic on these ports as BitTorrent sharing involves high bandwidth usage. It’s easy to configure a different port in your torrent client. Use some number above 10000 to get around ISPs and also avoid problems with other applications. By default, the uTorrent port is randomized each time it starts. Set a specific port by not enabling the Randomize Port setting.

7. Increase the number of Max Half Open TCP connections

This figure specifies how many connections a torrent client should attempt to establish simultaneously at any given time. Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) or newer, limits this to a default of 10 as a barrier against virus multiplication. But that’s a bummer for torrent speeds as torrents too need a large number of simultaneous connections.

A patch has been available for a while from LvlLord which modifies the TCPIP.sys file in Windows to allow a higher number of TCP connections.



After running the patch, you have to set the number of connections in your torrent client. For example, in uTorrent go to Options – Preferences – Advanced – net.max_halfopen. Set any number from 50 to 100. But see that net.max_halfopen is set lower than the value set in TCPIP.SYS. Always check if it is still patched because Windows updates sometimes overwrite it.



8. Experiment with Protocol Encryption

Some ISPs love to act like Big Brothers and constrict bandwidth for P2P protocols. Protocol Encryption in most of the torrent clients helps to override this bandwidth shaping. Enable outgoing protocol encryption and put a checkmark on Allow Incoming Legacy Connections.



With protocol encryption, ISPs find it difficult if not impossible to detect that the traffic is coming from BitTorrent. Experiment with enabled, disabled and forced options because you could be getting better speeds with encryption disabled. Non-encryption makes a torrent connection compatible with someone who is not using encryption but as a minus it makes the torrent detectable to an ISP with a bandwidth restricting policy.

9. Bandwidth and connections

Your BitTorrent client’s settings options will let you enter figures for –

Global maximum number of connections gives the maximum number of connections that a BitTorrent client can make for any P2P exchange. Setting this too high does NOT mean higher speeds. Setting it too high would take up useless bandwidth and too low a figure would miss out on peers. For my 256kbps connection, I have a setting of 130.

Maximum number of connected peers per torrent gives the maximum number of peers that a BitTorrent client can connect to for any P2P exchange. Experiment by setting this number close to the available peers for a particular torrent. For my 256kbps connection, I have a default setting of 70.

Number of upload slots per torrent gives the maximum number of peers that a BitTorrent client will upload to for any P2P exchange. A low setting may affect downloads. For my 256kbps connection, I have a setting of 3.



uTorrent has a Speed Guide which handily calculates the figures for a particular connection.

10. Some common sense

Most BitTorrent clients allow us to view the individual files in a download. You can selectively disable the download of files you don’t think necessary.

Familiarize yourself with the customization settings of your particular client available in the Help files or at the website FAQs.

Some useful resources:

BitTorrent User Guide
uTorrent FAQ
Vuze FAQ

Optimizing the speed of torrent downloads is a lot of trial & error and a bit of patience. Do you have some tips to speed up torrent download speed? Any that you have successfully tried out? Maybe we can put some wind beneath the wings with your comments.

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Yup, you can now search for what you want and download it. I have used Google to find Rapidshare download links before but this site called RapidStack is just oh so much better!

Rapidshare does not maintain a directory of the files it hosts. It relies on users trading URL’s and bloggers posting them. But now this amazing site does what was impossible before.

(Just a FYI, I was not able to get to it using www.RapidStack.com due to some DNS issues but http://RapidStack.com works just fine!).

Let’s check it out. I will start off by saying there is no logging in, signing up or fancy options. But it does its job VERY well. I mean there is nothing else you need to do other than have a set of keywords that you want to search for. If you know the file name that you want, that will make it even easier.

You navigate your browser on any platform over to the site and type in a keyword just like any other search engine. I typed in Simpsons. I was looking for Sundays first High Definition Simpsons episode. I hit enter and got back this screen:

It took me about 40 seconds to get to 30% and about 2 minutes to get my full listings. But in all fairness their servers are getting bombarded by traffic from all the people catching on! You can jump in as soon as you see the first listing appear. Next to the title you will see how many Rapidshare links it found and in smaller text where they were snatched from.

Hit that “Extract Links” button.

You will then get a list of Rapidshare links to get each of your files. In this case the 6 files all make up a spanned rar archive that when combined and extracted – it will give me what I want!

You can copy and paste those links into your browser one at a time or even into a word editor that makes active web links from URL’s. Or, better use Linkrr to convert list of texh URLs to clickable links with a single click.

I have used a multiple file downloader for inputting long lists of URLs and it returns a page with clickable links. But when I went to grab the link for the site my Firefox told me that they have hosted malware in the past 90 days so I will not be sharing that link with you now.

Let us know what you use to search and find your Rapidshare downloads!

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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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