Hamachi is a great app. So is VNC. Torrents are great, too. You see where I'm going. These are all great on their own - so when Remobo rolled them all in to one, tasty package, I was pretty excited.
Set it up, add your buddies, and you've got an instant, private P2P network. Click the My Shared Files link and create torrents of your folders and files with two clicks. When your buddies view your shares, they'll see a simple web page with links to the torrent downloads. It's simple, and it works quite well.
Clicking windows file sharing on a buddy will display their Windows file and printer shares (like Hamachi does). File access speeds (even over my sluggish DSL) are good, and at least on par with Hamachi's free offering.
Wuala is a social file storage application that we first looked at back in February. At the time, Wuala was in private beta, but starting today anyone can sign up for an account.
Unlike other file storage/sharing services, Wuala doesn't provide you with web space. Rather, your files are encrypted and then stored on the computers of other Wuala users. While this might sound a bit scary, the upshot is that you can store large amounts of data. The more space you allocate for Wuala on your hard drive, the more online space you can access. And your files are duplicated on multiple computers so that you shouldn't have problems accessing your files even if some of the folks in your network have turned their machines off for the night.
Wuala has a desktop client for Windows, Mac, and Linux that you can use to upload and download files. Or you can access a web interface. The service is still in beta, so nobody's promising that all the kinks have been worked out. But as of today, Wuala is in public beta, not private.
There are plenty of great places to upload and share files, so why not use a bunch of them all at once?
Rapidspread is a a simple file upload site that automatically forwards your files to as many as 10 filesharing sites. From the upload page, simply browse for your file(s), agree to the terms of service, and click share. Once the upload is complete, RapidSpread displays a URL to send to your friends as well as direct links to your file on the supported hosts it's been transferred to.
My test rar file successfully uploaded to eight of the ten possible hosts - not too shabby. When I chose to upload several images, RapidSpread was even smart enough to limit mirroring to the media-sharing services (ImageShack, Badongo, ZShare, and ZippyShare).
Anyone that uploads files on a regular basis will appreciate the simplicity and power of RapidSpread. If the developers would just intergrate a short URL service like bit.ly, this would be a truly killer service. Give it a shot, and see how it stacks up against your favorite service.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is protecting your rights online again, this time with a tool called Switzerland. Switzerland lets you check your ISPs compliance with net neutrality, making sure they're not trying to shut down specific kinds of traffic, like BitTorrent and VOIP. Naturally, Switzerland is Open Source.
It's also a command-line tool, and still in alpha, so it's not necessarily for everyone. If you're comfortable with this kind of app, and you're concerned about your ISP's behavior, definitely give it a go. How exactly does it know whether your ISP is fiddling around with your bandwidth? The EFF says, "It will spot IP packets which are forged or modified between clients, inform you, and give you copies of the modified packets." It recognizes packets injected or modified by some of the most popular tools ISPs have been using to mess with p2p traffic, including SandVine and AudibleMagic.
Bittorrent has become pretty popular as an efficient, decentralized way of distributing large files, and now the same technology is being applied to streaming. P2P-Next is working on an experimental .tstream format that will share streaming video using a minimum of bandwidth. It works like a regular torrent -- users who have part of a file 'seed' it for download by other users -- but with a twist. Each user grabs the blocks of data that make up a video just before they need them to play the next minute of content, upload it to the next user right away, and then "undownload" it.
The undownload functionality turned out to be the key breakthrough for this project, since part of the appeal of streaming is that you don't have to keep a massive file on your hard drive all at once. The Tstream format has a little help gaining widespread adoption: one of the organizations currently testing it is the BBC. If you want to try it for yourself, check out this trial run of SwarmPlayer. Windows and Linux versions are out right now, and the Mac version is due next week.
Attention, law-abiding citizens! If you believe in BitTorrent as a means of distribution for large files, but you're concerned about the claims of piracy that are often associated with it, you should take a look at YouTorrent. Despite having to shut down for a while because of legal issues, YouTorrent is back in operation, with a reported 67,170 torrents that are all legal to share.
YouTorrent is a meta-search that can find verified torrents across a number of popular torrent sites, including Jamendo, Vuze, BitTorrent, Legaltorrents, Legittorrents, Gameupdates, Wortharchiving, BT.etree and Mininova's featured torrents section. With all those sites combined, you can use YouTorrent to search over 6TB of data. This is a very good thing for the torrent community in general, as it shows how widely BitTorrent is used for non-piracy purposes.
We've tried plenty of Gnutella clients that just aren't any good, and usually end up back with Frostwire or Limewire by default. Thankfully, Cabos has an excellent alternative for Windows and Mac users.
Cabos doesn't support torrents, and it doesn't have a built in media player, but who needs that anyway? Most of us have favorite apps for handling those files anyways, and Limewire probably isn't either of them. It simply searches the Gnutella network, displays your results, lets you filter and sort them six ways from Sunday, and downloads them quickly. It even offers basic iTunes integration.
There's no lime green splashed around the UI, just a tranquil, muted gray, and 21 languages are supported. It's totally ad-free and there are no nags - Cabos just does what you want it to and doesn't get in the way.
Want to download popular music without paying and without breaking the law? Qtrax is a new advertising-supported service that lets you download music from two of the four major labels, Universal and EMI as well as several smaller labels. The service uses a modified version of the Songbird Media player to let you search or browse for music and download tracks. Some music willbe available through P2P connections while music from Universal and EMI will be hosted on Qtrax servers.
The files use Windows Media digital rights management and are designed to be played with the Qtrax media player. But once you play a song using the Qtrax software and acquire a valid license key, you shold be able to play it using the media player of your choice. The one thing you cannot do is transfer songs to a portable media device like an iPod. That makes sense, since Qtrax makes money by showing ads while you search for and listen to music. There's no particularly good way to do that on a mobile device.
The music selection is somewhat limited at the moment. Not only are Sony and Warner Music Group tracks missing, but there are plenty of albums that show up in the Qtrax interface even though the songs are not yet available for download. But since the service just launched in beta, we're willing to cut Qtrax some slack.
The Qtrax client is Windows only for now, but a Mac version is in the works.
Skype 4.0 beta for Windows is due out tomorrow. And this beta will represent a major shift for the VoIP client. While nearly a third of Skype calls are video, each version of Skype up until now has been designed with audio in mind. The client is small and easily resizeable and feels like an application for making phone calls. TechCrunch reports that Skype 4.0 beta will be a full screen application designed with video in mind.
The new version takes advantage of the larger window by spreading out the buttons a bit and adding support for new video features like picture in picture. There's also more room on the screen for text chat or for sharing files while conducting voice or video calls.
Skype 4.0 beta also features improved hardware deection and tools for testing your connection. But honestly, we're not convinced that this whole full-screen design is the way to go. There's no doubt that the updated Skype client looks like it will make video calls far more pleasant. But more than 70% of the calls placed on the Skype network are still audio-only. And we're guessing that a lot of the people placing those calls like to have a bit of space on their desktops to multitask while making phone calls.
Of course, if you're just using Skype for voice communication, you can always minimize the application while you're talking, web browsing, and playing World of WarCraft. Or whatever it is you do when you're on the phone.
When Azureus launched the Vuze desktop video player with built in BitTorrent support last year, a lot of folks shrugged. A few checked out the new Vuze client, but many kept using the company's trusty old BitTorrent client. Now the company is killing off the standalone client and changing its name to Vuze. There's also a new version of the Vuze client which adds a few new features.
Probably the most significant change in Vuze 3.1 is support for searching multiple BitTorrent tracking web sites. Previously if you wanted to find a video, you could only search through the Vuze catalog of free and for-pay downloads. Now you can find a whole lot of results from other sites including Mininova and Sumotorrent as well. You can also add other sites to search simply by clicking the add/edit button.
Vuze 3.1 also adds some basic social networking features. Users can create profiles, add friends, and recommend torrents that they think their friends would like. There's no way to chat or see if your friends are online, so these social elements feel tacked on rather than tightly integrated into the experience.
When you install Vuze 3.1 you'll be asked to install a browser toolbar as well. Feel free to uncheck the box next to this option. The wording is a bit tricky since it makes it sound a bit like you need to accept the terms and install the toolbar to continue the installation. But this is not the case.
Posted Jun 8th 2008 10:00AM by Brad Linder Filed under: P2P
It's no secret that people use peer to peer software like BitTorrent or Lime Wire to download copyrighted movies, music, and software. But that doesn't mean there aren't legitimate uses for the technology. Next time you need to explain to your ISP that while you've been using massive amounts of bandwidth, you haven't actually been doing anything illegal, you might want to check out this wiki listing legal uses of P2P software.
The wiki shows a rather impressive list of legitimate P2P applications, ranging from VoIP client Skype to FAROO, a search engine built using peer to peer technology. Of course, there are also plenty of sites offering legal music and movie downloads, including Joost, Babelgum, Miro, and the BBC iPlayer. And plenty of filmmakers and musicians including Trent Reznor and have decided to release free copies of their works over BitTorrent.
Since this site is a wiki, anyone can login and edit the list. So if you're aware of individuals or groups that are using P2P software in innovative ways, you can add to the list.
So in our last post about the P2P media sharing site CloudFire, y'all jumped in and answered our question about BitTorrent's Bram Cohen.
This time around, there are no questions to answer. It's first come, first serve.
We have 100 invites to the first lucky folks who use "downloadsquad" without quotes naturally to sign up here.
We've had a bit of a play with CloudFire and the things that jump right out to us is that it seriously is easy to share media files with people who might not be as geeky as a lot of us are. And you know what, us geeky people like easy things too, that's why a lot of us use Macs.
There are some random issues as expected, and you have to make sure that the person connecting to your media has the most updated version of Flash, but other than that it works nicely. A good amount of bandwidth on your end doesn't hurt either.
They're completely open to your feedback and have been asking us what we think.
It's still very pre-beta and stealthy so here's your chance to join in!
UPDATE: If the code doesn't work then you might not have gotten in on the 100 invites. If we get more, we'll pass along the word!
Just to refresh your memories, CloudFire aims to let you share photos, movies, music, from your desktop right to the web. And not just to the web, but in a very lovely and seamless way based on the screens we've seen. They really want to make P2P mainstream. This is quite a hurdle to jump.
Their "manifesto" states that media shouldn't be a chore. It should be easy to create and share everything that you make to show other people. They want to make the act of uploading media files to outside servers extinct.
Rock on!
But when will we get to see it and play around for ourselves?
Now's the time. We were able to sleuth some invites to their private beta. Ok, they emailed them to us.
Just for you guys, the DLS faithful.
"But what do we have to do to get such an invite" you ask?
Well it's quite simple. Be one of the first 5 people to correctly answer the following question and you get the invite.
Who wrote a parody of a manifesto in 2001 that also has their hand in P2P?
UPDATE: Wow, that was fast. All 5 invites gone. Correct answer? Bram Cohen, creator of BitTorrent! We'll let you know if we get some more invites.
DDoS attacks are hardly unusual. A site says something controversial that gets under the wrong person's skin, and it's not long before they get flooded with enough requests to knock out their servers temporarily. When an attack happened over the weekend at the popular webshow site Revision3 , they started to wonder what they had to done provoke it. Now Rev3 has found the source of the attack, and that's raising even more questions. Rev3 was hit by MediaDefender, the self-described "leading provider of anti-piracy solutions in the emerging Internet-Piracy-Prevention industry."
Rev3? Piracy? They're a site that produces original shows! Why would some kind of draconian piracy-enforcement have a bone to pick with them? Turns out that the attack was targeted at Revision3's BitTorrent ports. They've been using BitTorrent, a popular peer-to-peer sharing protocol, to push their shows out to the public more quickly and cheaply through a distributed model. It's good for business, good for their fans, and nothing at all like piracy.
Rev3 talked to MediaDefender and discovered that the anti-piracy company had been covertly using the Rev3 BitTorrent tracker to move its own files, quite without the knowledge of Revision3. The attack happened when Rev3 caught on and blocked MediaDefender's torrent traffic. This apparently caused the MediaDefender servers to go completely nuts with attempts to reconnect -- over 8,000 a second -- and took down the entire Revision3 infrastructure, including the servers for all their video content, their advertising, and their internal email.
MediaDefender claims it didn't intend to attack Revision3, but as for using Rev3's resources for their own torrents, it's going to be hard to call that an accident. Rev3 has involved the FBI at this point, and it looks like MediaDefender is going to have some explaining to do. Also this seems like a happy enough ending, we can't help wondering whether there are hidden MediaDefender torrents lurking on the servers of any other legitimate services.
BitTorrent tracker TorrentSpy may have shut down last month, but that wasn't enough to prevent a federal judge from slapping the site with a $111 million fine yesterday. While BitTorrent didn't host any copyrighted materials on their own servers, the service did make it easy for users to illegally trade files. And the judge ruled that TorrentSpy's operators should pay $30,000 for each of the 3,699 instances of copyright infringement shown in the case.
Anyone familiar with sites like TorrentSpy knows that it's possible the site got off easy, as there were probably far more than 3699 copyrighted files made available through the site. On the other hand, TorrentSpy has already declared bankrupty and is incapable of paying the high fine. If the site hadn't already shut down, this ruling would most certainly have forced it to do so. A lawyer for TorrentSpy says the company plans to appeal.
This case was the first major test of the legality of BitTorrent sites in the US. Something tells us it won't be the last.
Bittorrent has become pretty popular as an efficient, decentralized way of distributing large files, and now the same technology is being applied to streaming. 
So in our last post about the P2P media sharing site 
A while back we wrote about a new 
