File Sharing

A pre-release alpha version of a Mac version of uTorrent, the popular BitTorrent client for Windows, has been leaked to the public.

Available from the Swedish torrent Web site The Pirate Bay, the Cocoa-based client has been expected since 2006 when BitTorrent bought uTorrent and promised to develop a Mac version. There was little said since then, until this past August when uTorrent developer Greg Hazel announced that a Mac version would be ready ''in a few weeks,'' according to the torrent news Web site TorrentFreak.

Simon Morris, BitTorrent's vice president of product evelopment, responded to the leak by … Read more

Undoubtedly one of the best apps to come out of Redmond, Windows Live's freeware FolderShare is a fantastic tool for keeping folders synchronized across multiple computers and multiple platforms. Although we're just getting around to the product review now, for people who don't know what the program can do I figured this would be a good time to highlight some of the more useful and interesting features.

Also important: FolderShare is still in beta, but sported none of the bugginess that plagues most betas.

While both the PC and the Mac versions do the same thing, which … Read more

FlashGet looks and feels like a download accelerator worth paying for, which makes it all the more appealing since it's free. (But you knew that, this being the Featured Freeware and all.)

After installation, a small, dark icon with three lightly-colored triangles will appear in the upper right corner of your monitor. Until you drag it elsewhere, the FlashGet icon will live there permanently, and is always "on top" of whatever program you're using at the time. Simply drag the link you want to download onto the FlashGet icon, drop it and hit the Okay button; … Read more

Part community and mostly file sharing, DC++ occupies an unusual niche in the P2P game. Unlike torrents, which are direct peer connections, or centralized networks like LimeWire, DC++ manages connections to hubs. Most hubs are built around an interest, such as science fiction or movies. From there, you can chat and share files with other peers who are connected to the same hub.

However, many hubs place restrictions on connections to ensure that users are devoting their attention to the hub. The number of hubs you can connect to depends on how many Upload share slots you give, and you … Read more

Comcast has thrown down the bandwidth gauntlet. Starting in October, Comcast broadband users will be restricted to 250GB worth of downloads per month. When asked whether the cable company was planning on offering a bandwidth meter to customers, a Comcast representative stated that it hopes to, eventually, but until then Google would be a nice place to find one.

So, I've come up with a list of free bandwidth monitoring software for Windows and Mac that should tide you over until Verizon brings some Fios action to your hood.

First off, let's look at BitMeter. When running, it … Read more

Thursday's news about the upcoming 250 GB monthly cap for Comcast data subscribers left some questions unanswered. I shot a few of my own, as well as some from readers over to Comcast to get them answered. These are mostly items that did not appear in both the post about the amendment, or the otherwise comprehensive FAQ page.

Update at 5:05 p.m. PDT: In a bizarre twist, the previous answers to my questions were answered by someone named Bill G., who Comcast says is not an authorized spokesperson for the company, despite answering my e-mail sent through … Read more

Starting October 1 customers of Comcast's residential data services will have an invisible barrier on their monthly data usage. Under the new guidelines of Comcast's Acceptable Use Policy announced Thursday, that cap will be set at 250 gigabytes per month, per account.

Users who go over the limit will get a courtesy call from Comcast's customer service for the first instance. However, under the new policy a second-time offense means the service is immediately suspended for an entire calendar year.

Surprisingly the company is not providing any tools to help users monitor their current usage. An FAQ on Comcast's support site … Read more

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released an open-source, cross-platform program designed to track your packets and determine if your ISP is throttling your connection to torrents, VoIP, and other legal, high-bandwidth consuming communications. Called "Switzerland" and licensed under the GPL, it's very much in an alpha state and is only a command-line tool at the moment. Also, you're going to have to compile it yourself--that's not the most challenging task, but this isn't a simple self-extracting app.

According to the EFF, Switzerland works by spotting IP packets that have been forged or modified between … Read more

Once upon a time, Mac users got the short end of the stick when it came to BitTorrent clients. Those days are gone, thankfully--and Transmission is a perfect example of that. This excellent open-source client is one of the very best choices for a BT client on the Mac, being both extremely lightweight (some users even manage to run the Ubuntu version on their cell phones) and fairly feature-packed.

Transmission's interface is easy to use--and easy on the eyes. The layout should be familiar, even to PC users, with torrent controls like stop and pause on the top, and … Read more