vuze

In the complicated and legally dubious world of file sharing, news that a service is being forced to close down is nothing new. LimeWire is the latest to come under fire from the music industry - at the last count, the company was being sued by no fewer than 8 different labels! Whether or not they'll actually manage to take the giant down remains to be seen, but so you can relax, safe in the knowledge that even if it does go under, you'll still have plenty of options, we're rounding up the best of the rest.

Alternative P2P clients

Ares is a P2P powerhouse. Incredibly popular in Europe, but a great app anywhere, Ares is even a Softonic Award winner. With a giant preview screen and simple, user-friendly configuration options, this app would definitely be my first choice.

Frostwire is the go-to app for LimeWire fans. Built around LimeWire's code, but open-source, it manages to be familiar and ad-free at the same time - sounds like a good option to me!

eMule certainly seems like it has been around for forever. That's pretty much because it has, but that just goes to show that it does a great job. It can be slow for new users, but it's open-source, solid and secure, so it is easy to see why it remains a hugely popular application.

Vuze is an application that takes a very different approach to the P2P market. Apart from incorporating a filesharing app that was previously known as Azureus, it tries to integrate social media and legal download options. Some purists will laugh at the idea, but the truth is that P2P filesharing is one of the web's grandmas. Wasn't about time for a makeover?

Windows: If you ever need to create a PDF document, you don't need to pay for an expensive application. Use doPDF and you'll be able to create PDF documents from any Windows application, as long as it has support for printing. Just select the doPDF virtual driver as your default printer and you'll be able to convert your document to PDF in two clicks.

iPhone: Fly Kiwi, Fly! is a simple arcade game where you help a flightless kiwi to soar across the world from New Zealand to the USA. Kiwi's can't fly, but this one saw the Space Shuttle, and dreams of nothing else. Starting with no help, in Fly Kiwi, Fly! you'll guide kiwi as he jumps off a cliff, and attempts to fly as far as possible.

Mac: Vuze (formerly known as Azureus) is a bit-torrent client which follows a similar format to eMule but it's makers claim it can offer significant improvements in terms of hits, download times and navigating available material. There's no doubt that Vuze offers some spectacularly fast download times but this comes at a price - mainly the fact that it squeezes so much out of your bandwidth that surfing the net becomes painfully slow.

Windows: Safari started out as the standard web browser for Mac, but now you can also use on a PC. Its latest version, Safari 4.0.4, features a few improvements to JavaScript performance, history search and stability of third-party plug-ins, while maintaining the browser's amazing speed at rendering web pages.

Mac: Formerly known as Azureus, Vuze (now updated to version 4.3) is a bit-torrent client which follows a similar format to eMule but it's makers claim it can offer significant improvements in terms of hits, download times and navigating available material. There's no doubt that Vuze offers some spectacularly fast download times but this comes at a price - mainly the fact that it squeezes so much out of your bandwidth.

iPhone: Of course, none of us need reminding as to when Christmas is. But if you're the kind of person who likes to feel the magical day getting ever closer then Christmas Countdown! is the app for you. Christmas Countdown! provides a festive background with a countdown timer showing you the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds until the big day.

Windows: after months of development, a bunch of betas and a couple of RC versions, Firefox 3 is finally here. The latest version of this great browser includes many exciting new features: a revamped interface, an optimized bookmark manager, a powerful address bar with search capabilities and greatly improved managers for downloads and add-ons.

Mac: To this day Azureus, now also known as Vuze, still remains one of the best Bittorrent clients for Mac.  Multiple downloads, advanced seeding rules and adjustable disk cache are just some of the many many features that it offers. If you want to get your hands dirty with Bittorrent, Azureus is the client to have.

Symbian: Why not do something a bit special with the pictures on your phone today? PanoMan allows you to make and view panorama images on your mobile phone. The innovative, fully automatic stitching-algorithm of PanoMan composes the captured photos to an impressive panorama, in realtime and up to 360°!

Downloading copyrighted content via peer to peer (P2P), like Bittorrent, is obviously illegal, but if you're sharing legal and open source content there's no reason why you should be blocked. Unfortunately though many internet service providers (ISPs), particularly in North America, have for a while now decided to "throttle", or disrupt Bittorrent traffic. Rightly so, Bittorrent client developers and the whole peer to peer community has risen up against this method, which it considers to be illegal.

Azureus, famous for its excellent Bittorrent client of the same name, decided to fight back and petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US, managing to obtain a hearing back in December. Azureus were looking for more information about Bittorrent throttling to be made available. And because you can't trust anybody better than yourself, Azureus have also decided to create a plugin which works with their Vuze client (also known as Azureus 3) "to gather information about potential interference with your Internet traffic." You can also find a full list of Bittorrent-throttling IPSs worldwide on Azureus' wiki.

One of the best ways to counter Bittorrent throttling still remains to encrypt your connection, however it's not guaranteed to work everytime. The very practice of Bittorrent throttling by ISPs is quite disturbing as it can be interpreted as an act of defiance against anybody using P2P. It's understandable that ISPs want to fight illegal downloading, but what about people who use Bittorrent legally? It's good to see such a strong member of the P2P community like Azureus, intent on defending their users.

[Via: TorrentFreak]