Windows only: Free, open-source application Halite is a BitTorrent client with a focus on a small memory footprint. With Halite running and actively downloading on my system, I never saw the memory usage crest 10MB of RAM—which, as BitTorrent weblog TorrentFreak points out, is about half the memory consumption of the popular-for-its-small-footprint uTorrent. Granted, Halite doesn't have near the advanced features of uTorrent, but it does support most basic features, like encryption and selective file downloading. If all you want is a no-nonsense BitTorrent client that can grab your downloads with the best of them, Halite may be just what you need. Halite is free, Windows only.

The TorrentFreak weblog wants to speed up your BitTorrent downloads with practical advice for getting around your firewall and managing your upload speed. They're mostly beginner tips, so you may also want to try more advanced techniques as well.

YouTorrent, the BitTorrent search aggregator with a great interface that proved too popular to stay online with a, er, laissez-faire attitude about legality, has re-launched as a meta-search for legal downloads. Grabbing results of verified legal or open-licensed downloads from Jamendo, BitTorrent, Mininova, and others, the site moves as quickly as ever, lets you sort results by relevance, date, or feed statistics, and offers previews of audio files through the Bitlet streaming tool. It's not quite the hyper-organized bazaar of torrents it once was, but if you're looking for something that might be genuinely free to grab, YouTorrent seems like a great place to start.

Web site Speckly is a barebones BitTorrent search engine that scours multiple popular torrent trackers and returns the results in a simple interface. In fact, you'll notice the site's design is a direct knock off of Google, but it has a few subtle tweaks for BitTorrent. Like previously mentioned torrent aggregator PizzaTorrent, Speckly also allows you to sort results by file type, and according to weblog Mashable, the ad-free site will remain ad-free—an accomplishment for the often pop-up-ridden world of BitTorrent trackers. If you need more robust filtering, we'd recommend PizzaTorrent, but if simplicity is what you're looking for, Speckly looks like a winner.

Popular BitTorrent tracker Mininova has unveiled a new bookmarking feature that makes it easy to start a BitTorrent download on your home computer from anywhere. The new feature works by creating a personal RSS feed of all of your bookmarks. Since most popular BitTorrent clients support subscribing to an RSS feed of torrents, that means that each time you bookmark a torrent on Mininova, your BitTorrent client will automatically start downloading it. All you have to do is subscribe to your personal feed and get bookmarking. This is a very clever feature, but if you'd prefer even more control of your BitTorrent downloads when you're away from your main PC, check out how to remote control uTorrent or Transmission over the internet.

Google is developing a tool to detect whether your ISP is throttling your bandwidth, according to web site HotHardware. Can't wait for Google's tool? Check out previously mentioned BitTorrent throttle-detector Glasnost.

Windows/Mac/Linux: Freeware application Deluge is a lightweight, cross-platform BitTorrent client. Aside from the standard BitTorrent functionality (you know, downloading), Deluge has a—dare I say—flood of great features for such a young client, including a web interface (like uTorrent and Transmission), full encryption, RSS support, and a plug-in system for adding even more functionality. In fact, if anything Deluge is an attempt at building a cross-platform BitTorrent client with the chops of the popular Windows-only uTorrent, and so far it looks promising. Deluge is free, open source, works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Facebook application Morrent controls your uTorrent BitTorrent downloads over the web through your Facebook profile. Through Morrent, you can start, stop, remove, or add new torrents remotely, and since it's happening through your Facebook profile, it's really simple to set up. In fact, the site has excellent installation instructions to walk you through it. On the other hand, if you're not keen about passing your BitTorrent information through a third party, you can set up uTorrent's WebUI to remote control your torrents entirely on your terms.

Tim from the Daily Cup of Tech weblog has transitioned to an almost all BitTorrent TV diet, but the resulting disorganisation of files left him with an unsettled stomach. He prefers to archive everything he downloads to a system of folders, but while some video files he downloads hit his hard drive as plain AVI files, others are archived RARs, and manually organising it all became to much of a hassle. The solution: a saucy Windows batch script that automatically extracts RARs and sends all of his files off to the proper, well-organised folders. If you've got your own method of automating your file organisation, let's hear about it in the comments.

Windows only: Want to direct your non-torrent-savvy friends or relatives to a download they really need to check out? Free web utility Torrent2Exe takes torrent download links—the kind you'd normally pass to your favourite BitTorrent client—and creates tiny .exe programs that do all the download work for whoever double-clicks them. You can also grab a link to post on your own site (or Twitter stream) that lets others download the same self-running torrent grabber. Great for distributing your own files to a select group of downloaders, or helping Linux-curious friends grab the right disk images. Torrent2Exe's downloaders are for Windows systems only.