In the first quarter of 2011 BitTorrent Inc. will replace its mainline client with a brand new all-in-one solution for media entertainment. The new software will be part of a BitTorrent Certified technology ecosystem which includes TVs, mobile devices and other consumer electronics. By eliminating many technical hurdles the project, codenamed Chrysalis, is an attempt to cater to a wider range of consumers than uTorrent currently does.
uTorrent’s parent company BitTorrent Inc. just announced that the BitTorrent Mainline client and uTorrent combined have hit the milestone of 100 million monthly users. On an average day 20 million users from over 220 countries fire up one of the two BitTorrent clients. If that’s not enough, the company also reports that 400,000 new clients are downloaded every day.
uTorrent’s parent company BitTorrent Inc. recently signed up with a new toolbar partner. Last week millions of users got the offer to install this new addon with the upgrade to uTorrent 2.2, but it appears that it wasn’t that optional for everyone. Several disappointed users report that the Conduit toolbar was installed without notice, or even when they explicitly opted out. The uTorrent team regrets the dissatisfaction and is trying to get to the root of the problem.
For a while now, the popular BitTorrent client uTorrent has been marketed as a “an organization with a slight craving for power” to Italian users. A sentence that is as weird as it sounds in this context, even to Italians. Is there something evil about BitTorrent Inc. that we don’t know of, or is there a logical explanation?
The BitTorrent Inc. team has just added two of the most interesting apps yet to the popular uTorrent client. The first one allows users to integrate the all-round media player VLC to uTorrent, making it possible for users to play media files from within the client. The second is uCast, an exciting new app which enables users to share a ‘live’ RSS feed of selected torrents with friends.
BitTorrent is a great technology to share files both quickly and efficiently, but like most other P2P-technologies it has an Achilles’ heel. The download process relies in part on central servers that can crash or go offline for a variety of reasons. To address this vulnerability the first truly decentralized BitTorrent/P2P client has been developed, meaning that no central trackers, or even BitTorrent search engines are required to download movies, software and music.
A new BitTorrent client called zButterfly saw the light this week. Based on the Vuze source code, the new client sets itself apart from the competition by offering a searchable catalog of movies in various qualities. The developers of zButterfly are convinced that the movie centric approach will be appreciated by users, but it’s doubtful that Hollywood will be happy with this latest innovation.
The uTorrent team has rolled out the stable release of uTorrent 2.2 today. The highly anticipated release is the first to open up BitTorrent’s App Studio to uTorrent’s 65 million users and introduces optimized proxy privacy settings. To emphasize the collaboration with independent artists, the launch of uTorrent 2.2 coincides with a promotion of the free-to-download film ‘Four Eyed Monsters’.
Last month, the Gnutella-based file-sharing client LimeWire was effectively outlawed after a U.S. federal judge granted a request from the RIAA to shut the software down. Now, not even a month later, LimeWire is back as good as new. Not only has a secret dev team reanimated the hugely popular client, but they have also made a few significant changes which make it better and more streamlined than before.
Streaming capabilities have been added to BitTorrent via the Tribler client, and more recently uTorrent. Thus far the implementation of these technologies into major websites has been lacking. That position changed this week as the Wikimedia Foundation partnered with P2P Next to use BitTorrent-powered streaming for their video content.