Video

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

Formerly known as Azureus, Vuze is a mashup of the popular BitTorrent client, social networking, video publishing, and video discovery. Discover what's new with torrenting's favorite blue frog by watching this CNET TV First Look video.

One of the most effective computer crime-fighting tools in Power Downloader's arsenal is the screen capture. When Power D grabs a cap and uploads it to the Web for the world to see, he knows he's presenting advice to computer users in a very unimpeachable way. Effective screen-capping used to be a tedious multistep process, but the Jing Project streamlines it all for both Windows and Mac users.

From the team behind the screen-recording utility Camtasia, Jing is able to capture still images as well as videos. Once you've downloaded and installed the program, click the Capture … Read more

Along with VLC and the KMPlayer, GOM Media Player's support for a wide range of file formats has helped it stand out as a firm favorite. A pop-out playlist can save and organize your various media files, though the limited sort modes--two--hardly makes it a champ.

More impressive are the customizable settings on the control panel. Here you can adjust a video's image brightness, hue, and saturation. There's no preview window, and changes occur as the video runs, so unless you care for a rousing session of trial and error, be sure to tweak the settings after … Read more

YouTube isn't the only way to share video, and it's certainly not the way to store and share professional screencasts with hiked-up bitrates. After 18 months as a beta mewling, on Wednesday, TechSmith's Screencast.com graduated to a full-fledged release.

Version 1 of Screencast.com continues to receive screen recordings produced in the freeware Jing Project (for Windows and Mac) and premium Camtasia Studio, though it's available to anyone willing to register and pay for storage. It has come some distance from the site covered by Webware.com as part of a July 2007 review of … Read more

The New York Times has added a new feature to its Web site that takes a few cues from Facebook and Digg: TimesPeople, now in beta.

TimesPeople users can build up friends lists and can see a "news feed" of which stories their friends are recommending, sharing, and commenting on. Times online readers have been able to comment on stories, as well as rate reviewed restaurants and movies, for some time now, but recommending is new.

TimesPeople is currently available only as a Firefox browser plug-in, but software engineers told CNET News.com that it would eventually be … Read more

Making simple crop edits to videos of all formats shouldn't be tricky business, but most tools out there either do way too much or are so belabored with ads that no one knows what evil lurks within their code.

Open source on the GNU license, Avidemux for Windows and Mac is a breath of fresh air. Cropping a video is as simple as highlighting a section to remove and then hitting the Delete key. Re-encoding a video is equally painless: select the output format from the drop-down list, save the file, and you're good to go. When choosing … Read more

Jon Lech Johansen doesn't like DRM. His first public success at breaking it awarded him an indictment orchestrated by Norwegian and U.S. entertainment big-wigs. Though landing him in hot water with the authorities, it also landed him a job. "DVD Jon," who now works with doubleTwist Ventures, has turned his attention to iTunes (for Windows and Mac), and to a freeware application that wrests songs from iTunes control for delivery on a range of high-end mobile devices.

DoubleTwist desktop 1.0, released this week, does double and triple duty by converting any purchased iTunes tracks to … Read more

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