Things have come a long way since the days of Wayne's World and now anyone can broadcast their own TV channel. In fact, I think it's one of the truly great things about the internet than anyone can now broadcast their own content to the world absolutely free. I decided to set one up using TVUPlayer because a) It's the best P2P TV streaming app out there in my opinion, b) The player (but not the broadcaster yet unfortunately) works on Mac and c) It has the best English language support of all the P2P TV apps out there with a thriving forum of users.

Here is how you do it. I recommend you do all of this in Internet Explorer because TVUBroadcast doesn't work as well in Firefox for some reason.

1) Download and install TVUPlayer for Windows or Mac.

2) Sign-up for a TVUPlayer account

3) Click here to create a new channel

4) Download and install TVUBroadcast. Only Windows and Linux are available but a Mac version will be available soon. Note that on Windows, you'll need Windows Media Encoder 9 or above to use TVUBroadcast in your browser. You should be prompted to install it automatically, but if you're not, install it first.

5) TVUBroadcast will then open automatically in your default browser and you'll be promoted to Sign-in to your account.

6) Go the "Source" tab at the top of your screen. You've now got three options to broadcast your media:

• You can capture it from a video device attached to your computer (such as a webcam or video camera)
• You can capture it from a live internet video stream
• You can upload a recording you prepared earlier but this must be in WMV format. This uploading process doesn't work in Firefox either. You'll just get an annoying "File error: wmv does not exist" message if you try. You should also ensure that the Bitrate of the file is as low as possible for successful broadcasting. For most broadband connections, anything below 500Mbps should work. Anything over that will probably stream very poorly.

I chose the third option by using a sample WMV file. Simply browse to the file you want to broadcast.

There are a handful of P2P TV streaming apps out there but only a few available with interfaces in languages other than Chinese. These two monsters of the P2P TV streaming world offer exactly that with excellent streaming stability and good image quality to boot.

As a big soccer fan, I find myself naturally gravitating towards SopCast. Even though you can select 12 different languages for the interface, most of the channels are Asian but it's these channels – such as Star Sports, ESPN Asia and CCTV5 – that broadcast most international soccer league matches. However, SopCast is for much more than just watching TV – it's also for creating your own TV content, as embraced by its slogan "Deliver your media to the world!". To do this, you need to complete a simple registration process on the SopCast website (if you just want to watch, you can log on as an anonymous user). To broadcast, you simply upload your video to one of their servers via an easy interface.

So another decade is coming to a close and I think it's safe to say it's been the most exciting one ever for downloads. A top ten list of the past decade reads like a "Who's Who" list of the download scene today. Almost all of the most downloaded apps on Softonic today were released within the past 10 years. During that time, I've converted from a frustrated Windows user to a dedicated Mac fan so here is my selection of apps for both platforms that I think should grace any 2009 Christmas stocking:

Firefox Released 2004: Surely the undisputed number one application of the decade. Ever since I ditched Internet Explorer for Firefox, I've never looked back. The sheer amount of customization possible with Firefox is staggering. From integrated FTP clients to the best bookmarking system out there, Firefox remains an indispensable tool to me.

Skype Released 2003: Before Skype came along talking with friends and family abroad was always costly involving annoying pre-paid calling cards or ludicrously expensive phone bills. Skype came along and changed all of that allowing users to talk for free and eventually, amazingly cheap calls to landlines and nowadays, webcam chats.

VLCPlayer Released 2001: Playing video files always has been, and still is, a pain sometimes due to the huge number of different codecs out there. Gone are the days when you needed several different players to play different types of media thanks to VLCPlayer. If there's a video format out there, chances are VLCPlayer can play it.

uTorrent Released 2004: Before uTorrent, I used eMule for my P2P file sharing needs. But in the search for something faster and more lightweight I discovered uTorrent and have never looked back. Now finally available for Macs too, uTorrent is everything a P2P file sharing client should be and more.

Picasa Released 2000: My photos used to be as organized as a jumbled mess of thumbnails stored in crudely labeled chronological folders. Then Picasa came along (although not until 2009 on Mac) and made browsing through my collection as absolute pleasure. Not only that, it eventually enabled me to instantly upload and share them with friends and family.

Adium Released 2001: There was a time when I had to have different Instant Messenger clients installed in order to chat to different contacts. Adium changed all that by allowing me to bring all of my IM client needs under one lightweight and easy to use application. It's just a shame Windows users can't enjoy it too.

Spotify Released 2008: A relative new kid on the block but what an app this is. I test a lot of applications but the first time I tried Spotify, it was obvious that this was something special. Spotify instantly struck me with its ease of use, the huge range of music available and potential as the future of music distribution.

TVUPlayer Released 2005: While many of the first P2P TV apps consisted of difficult to understand Chinese interfaces and instructions, California based TVUPlayer distinguished itself by not only being easier to use, but filled with hundreds of channels around the world. Now finally available on Mac, it remains my most used P2P TV app.

Google Talk Released 2005: I was an enthusiastic early convert Gmail and so it was no surprise when Google Talk turned out to be just as good. Using a clean interface, tabbed conversations, and crystal clear voice calling, I've used it many times when audio quality on Skype was bad. Just a shame there's no standalone version for Mac yet.

Google Earth Released 2005: Although I don't use it much nowadays, I won't forget the first time I used Google Earth. Suddenly it felt like sophisticated satellite mapping technology was available to anyone, anywhere at the touch of a button. Exploring cities, towns and landscapes around the world was never so much fun and it keeps getting better.

Some of you will no doubt argue there are a few major omissions here such as  iTunes, Windows Live Messenger and LimeWire but for me personally, the decade didn't get any better than any of the above.

Have you ever clicked on a link in Firefox that's supposed to open an external application but it can't for some reason? I recently encountered this problem when clicking on a link for TVUPlayer for Mac. The error message reported:

Firefox doesn't know how to open this address, because the protocol (tvu) isn't associated with any program.

I tried the same thing on Firefox in Windows however and got a helpful "Choose Application" dialog that allowed me to select the correct application to open by browsing to it's location on my hard drive:

The problem is when Firefox is asked to open something outside of the browsing environment on a Mac, it often needs a protocol which instructs it how to. This should be something that's easy to address in Firefox Preferences but unfortunately it's not. You have to access Firefox's hidden settings to fix the problem.

Yahoo have been in news a lot recently, especially concerning their potential takeover after an audacious bid by Microsoft. They're also hitting the headlines again for their new TV project Y! Live. Apart from sounding like it was named by a Geordie, what does it have to offer that other internet TV apps such as Joost, Sopcast, TVUPlayer etc don't?

Well, it's hard to say at the moment because the company claims that due to heavy traffic on it's launch, they're taking timeout to "tune it up" a bit. According to their blog however, the one big difference is that it consists of completely Live programming. The trailer for the application, which is on the blog, consists of an introduction by JT the "Bigga Figga" and then some hip-hop music with images describing how you can create your own live streaming channels and invite your friends to watch. In which case, it's completely different to Joost, which consists of pre-programmed content that's not generated by users. So the question is, how can it improve on user generated P2P TV apps such as Sopcast and TVUPlayer?

Well, certainly the problem for me with existing P2P TV apps is that the channels are usually a jumbled mess. Because there's no real rules and organisation to the way users can broadcast content, and because they're coming from absolutely every part of the globe, you end up with garbled channel names that often don't show what they claim to be showing on channels that are not in English. Yahoo can certainly improve the market in this respect if they can implement a more structured interface - such as that employed by YouTube - which makes the whole thing more usable. They seem to have taken a step in the right direction by issuing a standard API and tutorial for developers anyway.

The question is whether Y! Live will allow the broadcasting of Live streaming TV channels from around the globe or whether it will focus only on content generated by users. It would do well to concentrate on the latter because there's already plenty of aforementioned P2P apps that broadcast TV channels. However, there are few broadcasting applications that are user generated in real time. Video sites such as YouTube are obviously user generated but you have to wait for the footage to be uploaded - Y! Live is promising to allow you to broadcast your footage immediately.

Y! Live could go one of two ways. It could be a well structured user generated TV site with lots of interesting content if filtered correctly. Otherwise, it could be just load of people dancing around in their bedroom to music saying "Look at me". Until Yahoo have sorted out their "tuning" problems with the project, we'll have to wait and see although if current technical problems are anything to go by - albeit it's in experimental stage - I have a funny feeling this may be a short-lived project.

Over Christmas, I introduced someone to the wonders of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) TV. He couldn't believe that he could watch channels from around the world, in real time for free. His immediate reaction was, "Is it legal? Am I going to go to jail for this? Please switch it off and let's watch BBC1. Get out of my house."

For anyone like him, especially those of the older generation, it's an understandable reaction. You don't get anything for free in this life right? But P2P software allows you to do many things for free - make phone calls, share films, music and software, watch TV channels etc - all you need is an internet connection. It's increasingly used by research, medical, business and military institutions to improve data flow exchanges although for the purposes of this post, I'm only looking at the things that the average home user uses them for. Much of the the suspicion and fear surrounding P2P has also been generated by the furore in the media that's surrounded the "illegal" downloading of music and movies via P2P networks such as eMule and LimeWire. In a few cases, such downloading has been penalised with massive fines and even imprisonment under copyright laws so people are right to be concerned.

To understand the legality issue surrounding P2P, it's first of all useful to understand exactly how it works. It's really not that complicated. Peer-to-Peer means exactly that - P2P software enables your PC or Mac to link with other computers and share both bandwidth and the contents of your hard drive. A pure P2P system is incredibly democratic because since it's entirely interlinked and there is no gatekeeper such as a vendor or middleman. Nowadays, not all P2P systems are pure - they vary from centralised, such as Napster which effectively do feature a main server or gatekeeper, to completely decentralised such as Gnutella. But the principle - a user generated system of file sharing - remains. The result is that you suddenly have access to music, movies and virtually any other file that you never dreamed possible, or at least, would normally have to pay a small fortune to obtain. And the most amazing thing of all is that it's absolutely free. The beauty of this is that the more people that use it, the bigger, stronger and faster it gets.

The legality issue basically affects those P2P networks that are decentralised. Centralised systems such as Napster are subscription only. In other words, for a monthly or annual subscription, you can download to your heart's content without worrying about legal consequences. In these cases, multimedia corporations happily provide music and movies for download in the knowledge that they are making money from it. Meanwhile applications such as eMule, which are based on the Gnutella P2P network and its variants, are completely decentralised and so there's no gatekeeper to collect revenue. This is obviously a commercial broadcaster's worst nightmare.