ie8 fix

File Sharing

First Look video: LimeWire for Mac

LimeWire has spent a long time at the top of our Most Popular list for good reason--it's easy to use and gets the results people want. Though there is a certain amount of controversy surrounding file sharing, there are plenty of legal files that you can get through LimeWire. Once downloaded, you can even preview audio files with LimeWire's included media player.

Check out this First Look with Jason Parker from Download.com to get the lowdown on this extremely popular app for Mac.

Featured Freeware: Vuze

Formerly the feature-rich Azureus, Vuze takes Azureus' BitTorrent foundation and builds on top of it a network for video discovery and user-created video publishing tied together by social networking.

From XML torrent options to IP filters, firewall tests to UPnP plug-ins to baked-in social networking, Vuze isn't breaking new ground--the original BitTorrent client has gone this path, too--but it is doing it in an innovative and attractive way. When you install the program, you're faced with a Web 2.0-style interface from which you can get a general overview of your torrents and Vuze's latest media. Users … Read more

Slide show: Software for vacationing workaholics

For most of us, checking into work on your vacation isn't any fun, but if it's a matter of no vacation or a tampered one, we'll help you find the most efficient ways to do your duty, so you can get back to doing...well, anything else. For the rest of you who are prone to nervous behavoiral ticks if you're away from your work for too long, these tools will equip you with a mini mobile office for your own brand of paradise.

Memeo launches Share for sending photos to grandma

Tuesday morning software company Memeo launched a new product called Share. Aimed at people who don't use photo- or video-sharing sites, Share lets you take what you've captured on your digital camera and beam it to friends and family members without clogging up their e-mail in-boxes with full-resolution shots.

The product is not aimed at the Flickr crowd, but instead at people who want to create small circles of people to share their shots with. That's not to say there's not a social element, since it can be configured to automatically upload your shots to Facebook. … Read more

Azureus is dead, long live... Vuze?

The torrent client Azureus changed its name and added some nifty social-networking features with the release of its latest upgrade. Now called Vuze, after the name of desktop video player it launched last year, the new client bundles the two together and throws in some new features.

The two most notable things about Vuze 3.1 are the search engine and the social networking. It's rejiggered but still open source; users can spider across multiple torrent-tracking Web sites such as MiniNova while looking for content. The social-networking features let you share your favorite torrents directly with friends and create … Read more

Grab BitTorrent files in your browser with Torrent Relay

BitTorrent, one of the more useful file-sharing mediums out there is not without its complications. Software applications have come a long way, but there are still times when you want one less application running on your machine or simply want to grab a file without having to install anything.

Torrent Relay's got the same thing on its mind, with a browser-based BitTorrent downloader. Like Bitlet, which I checked out last year, Torrent Relay lets you plug in a download URL from any tracker site or a link from a friend, and it will convert it into a link you can simply click on to begin downloading it using your browser's download manager. This means the tool works on nonsoftware-friendly platforms too, such as game consoles (Wii and PS3) and mobile devices like the iPhone.

If a torrent file has multiple files in it, the tool will split them up. You can then click on the ones you want and download them one at a time. This works especially well for music albums where you might only want to grab a track or two (note: You could also just stream the music using this tool). One thing to note however, is that any single file is capped at 400MB, meaning you're going to have to rely on a software-based tool for those giant files.

[via TorrentFreak and Lifehacker]… Read more

Docstoc launches simple e-mail attachment replacement

File host Docstoc is releasing a solution on Wednesday for sending large attachments to friends, family, and co-workers. Called OneClick (download), the small application must be installed on your machine to enable right-click contextual menus that let you simply click any file on your hard drive and send it either publicly or securely to others.

Once the file's been transferred, you'll get a link to the Docstoc-hosted document inserted into a new e-mail message that your recipient can open and read without needing to install anything.

Like Scribd's solution, which launched last week, OneClick has been designed to entice business and casual users to start simply uploading their documents instead of e-mailing them for the sake of compatibility and size.

Not everyone has Gmail or Office 2007, which offer popular file compatibility. Nor have all users implemented the small software tweak on older versions of Office that will let you read those .Docx files with ease. Instead, solutions like Scribd and Docstoc are taking office software out of the equation entirely.

It's also a pretty simple way to get users uploading more of their documents from a local machine. Instead of having to go through Docstoc's Web uploader (which is simple and easy to use), you can get them uploaded with just two clicks whenever you come across something you'd like to upload.

The small application is PC-only for now, but I'm told a Mac version will be on its way soon. To see a video of the tool in action, click the link below.

Read more

Power Downloader e-mails large files

Summer is fast approaching, and Power Downloader is fielding lots of vacation-related questions. Kitty Kilobyte wants to know what's the best way to send her friends and family photos and video of her upcoming trip to South America. Pando for Windows and Mac is the way to go, says Power D.

Power then explains that with Pando installed, Kitty can drag and drop her large folder of images and WMVs into the Pando interface, which lets her send Power D, Francois Foto, and virtually anybody else in her address book a message with a link. When Power clicks that … Read more

First Look video: ?Torrent

Hard to pronounce but easy to use, ?Torrent is a renowned torrent client. Factor in its robust feature set and that it can run on an old USB key, and you've got yourself a must-have program. And now, with Morrent, ?Torrent can be monitored from within Facebook.

Still not convinced? Watch this First Look video to learn more.