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Blog Archives
How Can I Find Out If My ISP Is Limiting My Download Speed? [Ask Lifehacker]
Posted on November 16, 2010
How to Boost Your BitTorrent Speed and Privacy [BitTorrent]
Posted on October 27, 2010
BitTorrent's been around for a whopping ten years, but it continues to evolve and remains one of the best file-sharing tools available. If you really want to make your downloads soar—and keep Big Brother out of your business—this guide's for you. More »
Folx is a Feature-Rich Download and Torrent Manager for Mac [Downloads]
Posted on April 16, 2010
Mac only: When it’s time to download something via BitTorrent, most Mac users manage their torrents with the popular client, Transmission. Folx offers almost all of Transmission’s features, but adds quick torrent adding and a download manager for your browser. More »
Nerrot Is the Simplest, Least Spammy Torrent Site You’ll Ever Use [BitTorrent]
Posted on December 21, 2009
If you’re a BitTorrent lover but aren’t too keen on all the pop-ups, racy ads, and clutter that’s everywhere on most torrent sites, new BitTorrent site Nerrot is the cleanest, most bare-bones torrent site we’ve ever seen.
Just head to the homepage (this is also the only page on the site), type in the most accurate search you can come up with, and submit your search. Nerrot searches for the closest match with the highest ratio of seeders/the healthiest swarm, then automatically downloads what it determines to be the best torrent file for your search.
Nerrot is refreshing in its simplicity, but the fact remains that for a lot of torrents, it’s still going to be worth your time to read through comments and check different versions yourself before downloading. For those times you don’t really care, Nerrot is like the Google “I’m feeling lucky” search of BitTorrent sites.
Nerrot [via TorrentFreak]
TorrentFreak’s Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2009; Demonoid Returns [BitTorrent]
Posted on December 14, 2009
All-things BitTorrent weblog TorrentFreak broke down the numbers and rounded up the 25 most popular torrent sites of 2009. The results represent several best-known sites (like The Pirate Bay), but also probably a few you're not all that familiar with. Incidentally, number 20 on the list, Demonoid—a hybrid public and private tracker that we've always liked despite its recent downtime—is back up and running. And while we’re on the subject, feel free to share your BitTorrent search engine of choice in the comments. [Top 25 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2009 (Warning: Link contains one very small but NSFW thumbnail image of one of the sites)]
uTorrent 2.0 Beta Brings Fixes and Improvements, Adds UDP Support [Downloads]
Posted on August 10, 2009
Windows only: uTorrent, the most popular BitTorrent client on the planet, has released a new 2.0 beta complete with bug fixes and new features, including UDP tracker support.
UD-wha? As all-things-BitTorrent weblog TorrentFreak explains, UDP trackers are much less resource intensive than HTTP trackers, and most torrent sites out there support UDP—meaning that if uTorrent, the most popular torrent client, were to support it, that's great news for all the torrent trackers out there. On the surface that might not seem like the most exciting news, but it will likely mean browsing your favorite torrent site in a browser could be significantly speedier now that your BitTorrent client isn't slowing down the tracker with all those HTTP requests. Hit up the uTorrent forum for a list of all the changes and fixes in the beta if you’re ready to try it out.
uTorrent 2.0 Beta is freeware, Windows only.
uTorrent 2.0 Beta [uTorrent Forum via TorrentFreak]
ezRSS Provides BitTorrent Feeds of Your Favorite TV Shows [BitTorrent]
Posted on August 4, 2009
Web site ezRSS is yet another web site designed to help you “subscribe” to your favorite TV shows via BitTorrent so your download automatically starts as soon as a new episode is available (known as broadcatching).
We’ve seen a couple of similar offerings in the past, including previously mentioned FeedMyTorrents (now dead) and tvRSS (which is also defunct and now actually redirects to ezRSS), but ezRSS comes from the folks at EZTV, probably the most popular TV torrent release group.
Need a little help setting up broadcatching with your BitTorrent client? Check out ezRSS’s guide to using the RSS feed with uTorrent, or follow our previous instructions on how to get your TV season pass (substitute ezRSS for tvRSS in that post and you should be good to go). In the meantime, let’s hear how you automate your downloads in the comments.
ezRSS [via TorrentFreak]
ShowRSS Automates Your TV Show Downloads [BitTorrent]
Posted on May 27, 2009
If you’re missing the now defunct FeedMyTorrents and its awesome duplicate-free RSS based automation, showRSS offers the same functionality and integration with RSS-enabled BitTorrent clients.
Founded by a refugee from FeedMyTorrents, showRSS has shielded itself from the same fate by setting up camp in Spain where torrents have been ruled legal. The site collects torrents from a variety of sources and weeds out the duplicates. You pick from shows you want to keep an eye on and showRSS adds them to your personal RSS feed. From there you can load the feed into a feed reader and manually select links to shows as they appear or you can plug it into a BitTorrent client with RSS support like µTorrent to automate the process.
ShowRSS [via TorrentFreak]
Move Half-Finished BitTorrent Downloads to Another Drive [BitTorrent]
Posted on April 16, 2009
If you’ve ever run your drive out of space while a long-running download is still going, the Online Tech Tips weblog writes up a simple solution to change your download location to another drive.
The solution is easy enough: With uTorrent, just stop the torrent, change the download location to another external drive, and then move the half-finished files to the new downloads folder. Once you choose to restart the download again, uTorrent will detect the half-finished files and pick up where it left off. It’s a simple solution, but might come in handy.
Hit the link for the full walk-through, or for more on BitTorrent, check out our beginner’s guide to BitTorrent, go through the intermediate guide, and then check out our top 10 BitTorrent tips and tricks.
On the other hand, if you’re on OS X or Linux using Transmission, this process is even easier. Just click the folder icon for your current download and select the Move Data File To option, choose where you want it to save, and you’re done.
How to move a half-finished download in uTorrent [Online Tech Tips]
Vertor Verifies, Previews Torrents Before You Download Them [BitTorrent]
Posted on January 14, 2009
Ever spend hours downloading content off BitTorrent to find that what you downloaded wasn't close to what you wanted, or—worse yet—it contained a virus? Wouldn't it be nice if your BitTorrent tracker verified every torrent?
BitTorrent tracker Vertor verifies, scans, and previews BitTorrent downloads so you don’t end up with viruses or bum downloads. It does so by downloading every torrent it finds and scanning the files for viruses. If the download is a video, Vertor takes extracts stills from the video and posts them on the site so you can get a better idea of the content and quality of the download in question.
According to the Vertor stats, the tracker has processed 418,000 torrents in change. Of those 418k, 133,000 are verified, 2,930 were infected, 5,585 were password protected, and 257,000 contained some sort of download errors. Of course, you'll never see the bum torrents on Vertor, which is the whole point. The site is brand new, and though it appears to be working through some growing pains—they're updating their antivirus software for more accuracy, for example—it's a great idea. Previously mentioned Seedpeer took a similar approach to eliminating bad torrents, but Vertor’s larger feature set looks promising.