The first dedicated EZTV app has arrived in the Android Market this week. EZTV Droid is a free Android app that enables users to check for the latest TV-torrents and send the ones they wish to download to uTorrent. EZTV is excited about EZTV Droid and other similar apps and has announced that it will release an API for 3rd party developers in the near future.

It is no secret that Apple notoriously bans all applications that have anything to do with BitTorrent from their App Store. Luckily for torrent users and developers, Google’s Android Market doesn’t have such a restrictive policy yet.

This week a new application surfaced in the Android Market which aims to make it easier for users to add TV-torrents to their BitTorrent client on the fly.

The free app, named EZTV Droid, displays a list of the latest TV-torrents on EZTV and allows users to add the torrents to uTorrent straight from their Android device.

In addition users can use the app to search for older torrents listed on EZTV. They can also use the app as a remote interface for uTorrent and start, stop, pause or check the status of their current downloads without being near their computer. This only works for users who have the uTorrent WebUI enabled of course.

TorrentFreak got in touch with EZTV Droid’s developer Roy Besiera, who told us that this was his first effort at coding for the Android platform.

“I decided to code the app because I am a huge fan of EZTV. I am actually a web programmer but recently I was able to get a hold of an Android device so I decided to make an app. Actually, EZTV Droid is my first app,” he said.

The current version of EZTV Droid is limited but very effective. In the coming weeks Roy hopes to add several new features, such as the ability to add ‘favorite’ shows and get notifications on new releases based on user preferences. Support for other torrent clients than uTorrent is also high on his list.

“I am planning to add support for other torrent clients as well, first Transmission and the rest,” Roy told TorrentFreak.

The EZTV team is equally excited about the Android app, and encourages developers to come up with more solutions to integrate their site into mobile devices.

“EZTV Droid is a great application showing the versatility of the internet and gadgets available to people in today’s day and age,” EZTV’s NovaKing told us. “With the increase of smart phones and people not being able to watch their shows while they are out they are now able to remotely go in and get the shows they miss.”

“We like apps like this so much that we are starting work on a new API which will allow 3rd party developers to access our data much more easily,” NovaKing added.

The API, which will be released in the near future, will open up a lot of possibilities for developers. It will undoubtedly result in many more dedicated apps and services for the popular TV-torrent site.

Meanwhile, version 1 of EZTV Droid can be downloaded from the Android Market for free. The latest stable version of uTorrent (with the WebUI enabled) is recommended as it’s currently not working correcly on all the latest Beta releases.

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Today BitTorrent Inc. announced two new Apps for uTorrent, one in collaboration with the organization that hosts the TED conferences and another that allows users to discover free music. The latter App is the winner of the uTorrent App developer challenge. It’s coded by Steven Viola who happened to have just released a TV-app through which users can download and subscribe to shows published on EZTV.

A few months ago BitTorrent Inc. debuted their torrent App platform in the experimental ‘Griffin‘ client, which is currently in use by a few million users. Two weeks ago the company announced the next big rollout of the Apps platform with integration into the Mainline client, and later this year it is expected to be added to a stable release of uTorrent.

Thus far there are only a handful of Apps listed in the official store and not all of them are equally usable. To stimulate the development of uTorrent Apps, BitTorrent Inc. started a developers challenge in August, awarding a $1000 prize to the best App to be submitted. Today the winner was announced.

The winning App is called Zulu Music and was developed by Steven Viola. The HTML and Javascript-based App enables users to search for and discover new artists among the 39,229 free albums that are currently available on the music sharing site Jamendo. All albums can be downloaded directly in uTorrent in high quality MP3 and OGG formats.

Zulu Music is a prime example of how free and legal content can be embedded in uTorrent. However, the developer of the App also released another, very similar App that might be of greater use to the average BitTorrent user – Zulu TV.

Zulu TV offers uTorrent users an easy way to find the latest TV-shows, without having to visit a torrent site. The App pulls torrents from EZTV and uses artwork published by TheTVDB and combines them into a nifty TV-torrent guide. With a single click users can subscribe to shows or download individual episodes.

Unlike with Zulu Music, not all copyright holders have given permission to download the content that’s linked to on Zulu TV, and this is most likely the reason why the App has not been given a mention by BitTorrent Inc. People who are interested in trying the App can add it to uTorrent manually by going to the developer’s site.

A third App that came out today is released in collaboration with the organization that hosts the TED conferences. This App enables users to browse through and download high quality copies of all the latest 18-minute TED talks.

“We’re thrilled to collaborate with BitTorrent to bring TEDTalks to millions of new viewers,” June Cohen, Executive Producer of TED Media said. “TED’s mission is to spread ideas, and BitTorrent’s new apps platform will amplify our work really powerfully, reaching a large and engaged audience who may be new to TED.”

A representative from EZTV informed TorrentFreak that he was thrilled about Zulu TV as well, but thus far he hasn’t heard anything from BitTorrent Inc. yet.

“EZTV’s mission is to spread TV-shows, and BitTorrent’s new apps platform will amplify our work really powerfully, reaching a large and engaged audience who may be new to EZTV,” we were told.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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The popular micro-blogging service Twitter has had a love/hate relationship with BitTorrent during the first few months of the year.

Early February Twitter attributed a phishing attack to an unnamed torrent site script, blaming a torrent site developer for intentionally installing backdoors into his code. The backdoor was then allegedly used to steal passwords and hijack Twitter accounts.

A few weeks later Twitter itself called in the help of BitTorrent to optimize the site’s backend. With BitTorrent, Twitter is planning to distribute files faster and more efficiently, saving time and precious resources and improving the scalability of its operation.

It is great to see that Twitter recognizes the value of BitTorrent since many BitTorrent sites also appreciate and use Twitter’s service to communicate with followers. Last week, however, two torrent sites were suspended by Twitter without prior notice.

YourBitTorrent and TorrentSurf both ‘lost’ their accounts and followers. The reason cited by Twitter was ‘abuse’ but no further details were given. The owner of yourBitTorrent told TorrentFreak that he contacted Twitter over a week ago to find out more, but he hasn’t heard back from them yet.

Although it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that the sites have been suspended for copyright related issues, another plausible explanation is that the mass tweets of links to torrent files were seen as a violation of Twitter’s terms of service.

“If your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates,” say Twitter, your account could be suspended for spamming. Since both sites were doing just this, this mass posting might have triggered the suspension. If this is indeed the case, other accounts including nearly all popular news feeds are at risk as well.

It seems unlikely that simply being torrent-related makes an account a target for suspension. The account of @EZTV which also lists thousands of torrents, and the highly resourceful @isoHunt and @TorrentFreak are still up and running.

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“In contemporary North America, an object returns to Earth. A government agency recovers what appears to be a lost Soviet-era space capsule that disappeared decades ago. Inside they find the impossible — something that will have ramifications for the whole world.”

The paragraph above sets the stage for a brand new sci-fi series that will debut not on TV, but on BitTorrent. Titled Pioneer One, the series is a project from Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith who have collaborated before on ‘The Lionshare’, a BitTorrent-exclusive film which was released on VODO earlier this year.

Rather than the traditional path taken by most TV-makers, they do not plan to pitch a pilot to the studios. Instead, they are making the series on their own backed by donations from the public. The result will premiere exclusively on BitTorrent where it will instantly have an audience of hundreds of thousands of viewers.

The previous releases on VODO, a novel BitTorrent-powered distribution platform for indie filmmakers, have been a massive success as they were downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people. VODO is fully supported by The Pirate Bay, EZTV and many other well known file-sharing partners that help to promote the releases.

Josh Bernhard, who wrote the script for the upcoming TV-series, sees VODO as the ideal distribution channel for ‘Pioneer One’ and hopes that it will equal or exceed the success of the film they released late last year.

“Because of our success with The Lionshare, we think we have a novel incentive to give potential sponsors,” Bernhard told TorrentFreak. “With the number of people who downloaded Lionshare, and the demographic they come from, we think that forward-thinking companies would see the opportunity in associating their brand with a unique show like this.”

The series, described by its makers as a “political drama, part procedural drama, with a tinge of sci-fi”, has the potential to revolutionize the TV-business. By taking the show directly to the Internet where it will build an online fanbase, it goes directly against traditional TV-making procedures.

The production of ‘Pioneer One’ is already well underway. The casting for the pilot has been completed and the crew will start shooting in 4 days. In order to produce a high quality pilot the makers are running a Kickstarter pledge drive through which they hope to get at least $6000 in funding from contributers who support the project.

If you want to be part of TV-history, we recommend that you send a few bucks over. At TorrentFreak we will definitely keep you updated on the project’s progress.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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TorrentFreak TV covers some of the best, most interesting or remarkable stories from the wonderful world of file-sharing. An (ad-free) HD version of this episode is available on EZTV.

As always, we’re looking forward to your commentary. For questions or suggestions, feel free to contact the crew at tv@torrentfreak.com. We encourage contributions from viewers!

An iTunes feed is available here, and a regular RSS feed here.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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TorrentFreak TV covers some of the best, most interesting or remarkable stories from the wonderful world of file-sharing. An HD version of this episode is available on EZTV.

As always, we’re looking forward to your commentary. For questions or suggestions, feel free to contact the crew at tv@torrentfreak.com. We encourage contributions from viewers!

An iTunes feed is available here, and a regular RSS feed here.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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For those not familiar with the term, RSS is an acronym for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. It’s a really convenient mechanism which allows you to receive regular automated updates from your favorite sites.

Most news sites have RSS feeds that let you automatically receive updates when a new article is published. Similarly, most BitTorrent sites also publish RSS feeds for their content, allowing users to download or receive notifications on new torrents without having to search for files manually.

Most of the popular torrent clients support RSS downloading which works well with the RSS feeds produced by most torrent sites. However, nearly every site uses a slightly different format which doesn’t do the usability of the RSS feeds much good.

Dave Winer, the original designer of RSS, has noticed this ‘mess’ as well and has opted to change it. Although Winer saw BitTorrent winning at the 2003 Wired Awards where RSS was also nominated, he doesn’t hold a grudge against the popular file-sharing protocol.

“After Mininova shut down their main service, I decided to look into how BitTorrent might be better decentralized,” Winer told TorrentFreak.

‘One of the keys to that will be to improve the RSS the various sites produce. It’s pretty much a mess, but that’s understandable because there have always been good search engines to do the centralization. Now that that’s in doubt, let’s clean it up,” Winer added.

To help BitTorrent’s move forward, Winer started by reviewing the RSS output produced by a few torrent sites and wrote up some comments and suggestions on how the various implementations can be improved.

His writing was soon picked up by isoHunt’s Gary Fung and EZTV’s NovaKing, who have already implemented some of Winer’s suggestions and started discussing a more standardized RSS output, as well as a BitTorrent RSS namespace.

Although the technicalities may not be of interest to most users, everyone who uses RSS feeds on BitTorrent sites will eventually benefit from standardization. Winer encourages torrent site and application developers to join the discussion, add comments and come up with suggestions.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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EZTV was founded in the spring of 2005 after some prominent TV-torrent sites were shut down. With relatively little competition it soon grew to become the leading TV-torrent release group.

Today the group serves more than 16 million visitors a month on its website alone, and a multiple of that on the other torrent sites they distribute their releases on.

Several days ago EZTV’s website suddenly went offline without prior notice, something that usually leads to wild rumors about what the cause. Luckily EZTV’s problems are due to technical problems and they are currently working on a comeback.

EZTV’s Novaking told TorrentFreak that a rebuild of the servers stuffed up and they are currently waiting for some tech people to look into it. It’s not clear when the site will return, but it’s safe to assume that it will be a matter of days, not weeks or months.

This is not the first prolonged outage the popular TV-torrent site has suffered this year. During the summer the website was down for six weeks. It went offline because of hardware problems, but EZTV decided to take advantage of the situation and relocate all hardware to a new datacenter while implementing several new features.

Even though the website is currently offline, EZTV’s releases are still widely available though a number of sites. “You can still get our stuff from Mininova, The Pirate Bay, Twitter and Zoink,” Novaking told TorrentFreak.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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