Bitcoin, the decentralised digital currency, seemed on the verge of disappearing after every scandal, crash or hack. But eight years later, it's not only growing but accelerating, with the price of a single BTC "coin" recently climbing above $5400.
And it isn't the only cryptocurrency; competitors include Litecoin, Dogecoin and Ethereum (a currency that supports "smart contracts"). These graphs, videos and explainers contain everything you need to know.
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.
Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): Alliance, a free, open-source, cross-platform peer-to-peer application, takes nearly all of the security and privacy concerns out of peer-to-peer file sharing by putting you in charge of your own network. The dead-simple interface lets you add Alliance-using friends to your network and files on your system to share, and you can search, chat, and download like any other peer-to-peer app. The traffic between clients is encrypted at a low level, but you can apply an experimental SSL layer if you'd like a bit more protection from snooping. For trading files with co-workers or friends, it's a nice no-overhead solution. Alliance is a free download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux systems.
Web application Glasnost simulates BitTorrent downloads on your computer to determine whether or not your internet service provider (ISP) is throttling your BitTorrent transfers. It does so by measuring the difference between your regular download speed and your BitTorrent download speed, testing against different ports and other variables to get a better idea of what exactly is being throttled. The tool is aggregating the results of the test, which the site is publishing to encourage greater transparency among ISPs. If your ISP turns out to be throttling your BitTorrent traffic, you can still avoid the throttling if you know the right tricks.
Web site LegalTorrents is a BitTorrent search engine designed to distribute Creative Commons-licensed content. Each torrent submitted to LegalTorrents is reviewed by moderators for the proper licensing and then posted to the site. Additionally, LegalTorrents hosts a high-speed seed for each torrent, guaranteeing that you should always be able to get fairly high-speed transfers; in my tests the downloads were indeed very fast (downloading over 400 KB/s). As is the case with many Creative Commons distribution sites, LegalTorrent's biggest hurdle is populating the site with content people want—but as more artists embrace BitTorrent as a distribution platform, LegalTorrents might be worth keeping an eye on (and may help you avoid getting caught downloading copyrighted material). Then again, if you don't feel like sticking to sites like LegalTorrents, there are other ways to protect your downloading privacy.
New BitTorrent search engine PizzaTorrent is a meta-search engine that scours the most popular public torrent trackers and sorts the results by the health of the torrent. Very similar to previously mentioned YouTorrent, PizzaTorrent adds a nice categories feature that sorts results one step further by the result type, which makes finding that special download that much easier. PizzaTorrent
BitTorrent tracker SeedPeer ensures quality torrents by verifying downloads before it seeds them in its verified torrents section. That means that if you've ever spent hours downloading a torrent to find that you'd been duped by a fake download, you should be able to download with confidence from SeedPeer's verified torrents. Of course, with a little know-how you can eliminate most bad torrents and avoid downloading fakes from any tracker. SeedPeer: Verified Torrents
Windows only: Want a place to stash your files but lack a home server or need more than Mozy's free 2 GB? Zoogmo, a peer-to-peer file backup program, lets you utilise your buddies (the ones with huge hard drives, anyways) for reciprocal backup. After you both install the client software, you can search each other out and trade files back and forth in an interface familiar to anybody who's done some file-sharing. Each file, however, can only be 50 MB during Zoogmo's beta period, so don't expect to trade many video files (or large databases). Zoogmo is a free download for Windows systems only, requires a free sign-up to use. Zoogmo
BitTorrent is the go-to resource for downloading everything from music and movies to software and operating systems, but as its popularity continues to grow, so do the number of tools available for making the most of it. Some are must-haves, while others are a waste of time. Climb aboard for a look at 10 of the best BitTorrent utilities, tools, and resources for finding and managing your BitTorrent downloads quickly and efficiently.
All platforms: Free, open source application FrostWire is a peer-to-peer file sharing program built from the popular LimeWire client that handles both Gnutella (one of the pre-BitTorrent standards) and BitTorrent protocols—makes it sort of a P2P fusion application. Granted, FrostWire isn't the best BitTorrent app you'll run across, but if you are the type who just can't cut the strings form those pre-BitTorrent days, FrostWire may be the perfect app to get you up to date with file sharing. If you are ready to dive head first into BitTorrent, this guide should help you get started. Otherwise, FrostWire is free, works on Windows, Mac, and Linux, requires Java.
FrostWire
Seamlessly download BitTorrent files using previously mentioned browser-based BitTorrent client BitLet with the new BitLet Bookmarklet. After dragging the bookmarklet to your browser toolbar, just head to your favourite BitTorrent site (most popular trackers are supported), search for a torrent, and then click the BitLet Bookmarklet. Direct BitLet download links will appear next to each download link, and clicking them will open the BitLet applet and automatically start your download. Granted, BitLet isn't really for regular BitTorrent use, as desktop clients like uTorrent are lightweight and much more feature-rich, but it's a very handy tool for those times you can't use or install your favourite client.
An always-on server can come in all kinds of handy for running automated tasks, syncing your data, remote controlling downloads and acting as a proxy. Lot of us have access to a remote computer—if not a hand-rolled home server, most Lifehacker readers said they couldn't live without their hosted web space—but most of us probably aren't getting everything we can out of it. Check out our top 10 ways to put your remote server to best use.
