Posts Tagged 'simon morris'

BitTorrent Inc. Releases Dummy Proof Download Client

No comments 03 March 2011 Under: Torrent News

chrysalisOver the years BitTorrent Inc. has acquired a dominant position with their two BitTorrent applications, uTorrent and the Mainline client. The two clients have over 100 million active users a month and this number continues to increase.

There is no doubt that BitTorrent’s user base is impressive, but there is still a lot of untapped potential. Both uTorrent and BitTorrent’s mainline client have a relatively large bounce rate. That is, a large number of new users try the software a few times, but don’t become regular users.

“During 2010 less than a third of new client downloads resulted in a new monthly active user,” BitTorrent’s Simon Morris told TorrentFreak. “Plenty of people download and install the client, but can’t figure out how to use it, and then uninstall it very quickly,” he added.

To change this, BitTorrent Inc. have been working on a new project with the aim of keeping those users on board. Today marks the release of the first Alpha version of this new client – codenamed project Chrysalis.

“The best products out there don’t have any significant educational hurdles – it is just obvious how they work. This is what we’re ultimately aiming for with this new project, although it will take time to get there. The client we’re releasing today is just a starting point,” Morris told us.

Chrysalis interface

chrysalis

Today’s release is a very early Alpha, but it should give a good indication of where BitTorrent Inc. is going with their new client. By default it is filled with several prominently placed ‘apps’, such as those from TED and VODO, which provide access to downloads. This means that users will see content right away when they start the client

One of the main reasons why some users don’t come back to the client is a perceived lack of content. New users sometimes don’t know where to find content so the current version of Chrysalis should address this issue to some degree. In addition, the simplified user interface should be more welcoming to people who are new to BitTorrent.

Overall the Chrysalis client behaves quite intuitively. Downloads are added by a single click and show only basic information. Once a download is finished media files can be launched in a media player directly from the app. Starting, stopping and removing files can be done with a single click as well.

The client is built on the uTorrent v3.0 codebase but in the future new and unique features will be added as well.

“The first project Chrysalis beta is aiming at cleaning up the overall user experience and transforming a technical and data-rich experience into a cleaner more media-rich experience. This in itself will not be sufficient to solve the attrition problem, but we hope it will establish a new platform on which to build,” Morris said.

Chrysalis download

chrysalis

Another subtle change compared to the BitTorrent Mainline client is the more prominent placement of the search box. Users can type in search terms here and are, interestingly enough, redirected to a Google search for torrents. A surprising move, since Google just banned the words ‘uTorrent’ and ‘BitTorrent’ from some of its services.

Chrysalis is not intended for the more experienced BitTorrent user, but BitTorrent hopes it will appeal to a wider audience than their other clients do now. If all goes well, the dummy-proof client will completely replace the current Mainline client, which currently is a clone of uTorrent.

Time will tell whether this approach will be effective. Luckily, uTorrent users don’t have to panic as TorrentFreak is assured that their favorite client will always be available and developed separately. The Alpha release of Chrysalis is available for download starting today, currently limited to Windows operating systems.

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Why uTorrent Collects Info From Its Users

No comments 22 February 2011 Under: Torrent News

utorrentWith 100 million active users every month, uTorrent and BitTorrent mainline have close to a 50 percent market share of all BitTorrent clients. Both pieces of software are based on the same code, which is developed by the San Francisco based company BitTorrent Inc.

A few days ago FastCompany reported that BitTorrent Inc. has started work on a new and quite intriguing project. The company has been gathering detailed statistics reported by uTorrent users in order to create an overview of the network speeds of nearly all Internet providers worldwide.

BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management Simon Morris explains it as follows:

“We have download traffic, upload traffic, BitTorrent traffic, and we have HTTP traffic. So we can answer questions like: I live in this city in the world–it could be anywhere, literally anywhere–which ISP should I use? Which is the fastest? Which ISP is messing with BitTorrent traffic? Because we have this data, we can see the difference in speeds by time of day.”

For now, the results of this huge dataset are only visible to the BitTorrent team, but in the near future they might decide to open them up to the public. This would then allow people to look for the most BitTorrent-friendly ISPs in their area, and potentially avoid those providers that throttle traffic. A very rough graph is provided below.

BitTorrent speeds per ISP in San Francisco

speed

Although this kind of data can actually benefit BitTorrent users, the revelation by the BitTorrent team also raised concerns among a sub-group of naturally paranoid file-sharers. Graphing data by ISP and region requires uTorrent to send the IP-addresses of users to the San Francisco headquarters. This, in addition to detailed info on transfer speeds and download times.

Since the announcement a few concerned users asked TorrentFreak what data BitTorrent Inc. actually stores. A good question. The privacy policy posted on uTorrent.com says the following on the data collected via uTorrent.

“We also aggregate some data from our software applications (including µTorrent) regarding total traffic flows and content delivery performance of our Applications as well as other data collected in the use of our products or services in order to understand usability and monitor network conditions and compare the performance of Bittorrent and HTTP protocols on the public internet, it reads.

It further states that end users may opt out of providing this information through a preference setting in uTorrent (“send back detailed info”).

What’s not apparent from reading the privacy policy is what kind of data is sent back to BitTorrent Inc. In an attempt to find out more and address the concerns of some users, we contacted BitTorrent’s Simon Morris, who assured us that they value the privacy of their users.

“We restrict our technical performance monitoring to data which tells us how well our BitTorrent clients are behaving – we have no interest in and do not collect any more private data about what people are doing with their BitTorrent clients,” he said.

We wouldn’t expect to hear anything else, of course, but it still says little about the kind of data that’s collected. Morris said that a fuller technical disclosure may be an option, but that this has to be discussed internally first. He was willing to share 4 broad categories where the collected data falls into.

* Software and system configuration (client version, country code, OS version, etc.).
* Bytes transfer details (how much, how fast, what time of day, etc.).
* Software feature usage stats (transfer cap, scheduler usage, labels usage, etc.).
* Other technical protocol details (TCP connections, closes, resets, UT connections, etc.).

The above also includes the IP-address of the sender, which is used to compare the data across cities, countries and ISPs. To the more paranoid BitTorrent users this might sound worrying, but it is not much different from the type of data most websites on the Internet collect. If BitTorrent decides to post anything in public – which is not certain yet – all data will be aggregated and no individual information will be revealed.

Although we believe that every BitTorrent client should ideally provide a transparent and full disclosure of the data being logged, we are rather excited about the possibilities BitTorrent Inc’s plan offers. At the moment most ISPs are rather secretive about their bandwidth management practices. A speed comparison tool for BitTorrent users can therefore be a great help in choosing an Internet provider.

TorrentFreak will keep an eye on the developments, and provide an update and hopefully a preview of the project when more information becomes available.

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Google Starts Censoring BitTorrent, RapidShare and More

No comments 26 January 2011 Under: Torrent News

Check out TorrentFreak‘s new News Bits feed! .

google censorshipThe entertainment industries’ quest to root out piracy on the Internet has yet again resulted in commercial censorship. A few weeks ago Google announced that it would start filtering “piracy related” terms from its ‘Autocomplete‘ and ‘Instant‘ services and today they quietly rolled out this questionable feature.

Without a public notice Google has compiled a seemingly arbitrary list of keywords for which auto-complete is no longer available. Although the impact of this decision does not currently affect full search results, it does send out a strong signal that Google is willing to censor its services proactively, and to an extent that is far greater than many expected.

Among the list of forbidden keywords are “uTorrent”, a hugely popular piece of entirely legal software and “BitTorrent”, a file transfer protocol and the name of San Fransisco based company BitTorrent Inc. As of today, these keywords will no longer be suggested by Google when you type in the first letter, nor will they show up in Google Instant.

All combinations of the word “torrent” are also completely banned. This means that “Ubuntu torrent” will not be suggested as a user types in Ubuntu, and the same happens to every other combination ending in the word torrent. This of course includes the titles of popular films and music albums, which is the purpose of Google’s banlist.

TorrentFreak contacted BitTorrent Inc. for a reaction, and Simon Morris told TorrentFreak that he believes the scope of this filter is too broad.

“We respect Google’s right to determine algorithms to deliver appropriate search results to user requests. That being said, our company’s trademarked name is fairly unique, and we’re pretty confident that anyone typing the first six or seven letters deserves the same easy access to results as with any other company search,” Morris said.

“A quick search for ‘BitTorrent’ currently returns a variety of legitimate and useful links, including company information, our software, our open-source protocol, and more. What Google may not realize is that our technology is used for many purposes that provide significant value to the technology industry, companies, artists and consumers at large,” he added.

Google’s new “Piracy” filter (no autocomplete)

google piracy filter

What is most surprising about the new filter is that the keywords appear to be picked arbitrarily. It includes BitTorrent clients such as uTorrent and Xunlei, but not BitComet and Vuze. While cyberlockers such as RapidShare and Megaupload are banned, prominent sites such as 4shared, HotFile and MediaFire are not.

In addition, all the names of popular torrent sites including The Pirate Bay are not included in Google’s banlist either. BitTorrent’s Simon Morris agrees that this is odd, to say the least.

“There’s no reason for Google to throttle search results for our trademarks, including BitTorrent, µTorrent and torrent. Indeed, they do still enable autocomplete for many third-party clients that use the BitTorrent protocol, including BitComet, BitLord, and even sites like The Pirate Bay and Isohunt.”

Morris further points out that the inclusion of Xunlei is a little hypocritical since Google is one of the investors in the Chinese BitTorrent client.

“We’d also like to point out that while Google doesn’t enable autocomplete for Xunlei (China’s largest software client that uses the BitTorrent protocol) Google did invest $5 million in the company in 2006, according to reports,” Morris says, adding, “We sincerely hope Google will recognize the value of BitTorrent and reevaluate this decision expeditiously.”

RapidShare is not pleased with Google’s new filter either, at least not with its current scope in today’s roll-out.

“We knew about Google’s plans for quite a few weeks now. We embrace that certain search suggestions will not put a wrong complexion on RapidShare anymore, but we are concerned that at the same time the legitimate interests of our users will also be affected. We believe it was the wrong decision to remove the term ‘RapidShare’ from the search suggestions,” RapidShare told TorrentFreak.

RapidShare is one of the most popular websites worldwide. Every day hundreds of thousands of users rely on our services to pursue their perfectly legitimate interests. That is why Google has obviously gone too far with censoring the results of its suggest algorithm. A search engine’s results should reflect the users’ interests and not Google’s or anybody else’s,” the company added.

Indeed, RapidShare has certainly touched a nerve here. It is clear that this filter is the result of pressure from the entertainment industries, which is not at all in the interests of users. Now that Google has begun proactively censoring their services for commercial reasons, more companies will demand the same. At the same time, the entertainment industries will continue to pressure Google to go even further, and censor the actual search results.

Apparently Google has decided that its users should not be searching for the keyword BitTorrent, so why list any results then? It’s the beginning of the end.

Jamie King, the founder of Vodo – a platform where artists can share their work with million of people at no cost – agrees with this assessment. Searching for one of their perfectly legal releases on Google used to suggest the word “torrent” with a link to the download page, but not anymore.

Google already showed it will censor for the highest bidder — China Inc. springs to mind. Now it’s doing it for MPAA & Co.,” King told TorrentFreak.

“I guess it’s simple: our favorite search monopoly cares less about helping the thousands of independent creators who use BitTorrent to distribute legal, free-to-share content than they do about protecting the interests of Big Media in its death throes.”

Indeed, Google is going down the wrong path by willingly and broadly censoring its services to please a few big companies. This is not the way to get rid of piracy, it’s the way to a corporate controlled Internet. Google may have been proud to leave China because of its political censorship, but it should be ashamed of promoting commercial censorship worldwide.

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uTorrent Linux Server Released, Client Coming Soon

No comments 02 September 2010 Under: Torrent News

Earlier this year BitTorrent Inc. promised they would release a Linux client this summer, and today they are one step closer to achieving that goal. The company just released uTorrent Server for Linux, a daemonizable 32-bit binary of the uTorrent core, suited to those familiar with running programs from the command line. A full Linux client is expected to follow in the coming weeks.

nullEver since uTorrent was first released back in 2005, Mac and Linux users have been begging the developers to code a version compatible with their computers. In 2006, when uTorrent was sold to BitTorrent Inc., the company promised that a Mac version was coming, and in 2008 it was finally released.

Fast forward another two years and a Linux version was announced. Voted as one of the top suggestions for uTorrent in the client’s ‘Idea Bank‘, the massive demand from users for a Linux client was impossible to ignore. In June of this year BitTorrent Inc. officially stated that it was working on Linux programs, and today the first one was released.

BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management Simon Morris realizes that the company pretty much owed this release to the community that played such a vital role in popularizing the protocol.

“If any group has embraced the possibilities and power of BitTorrent for distribution, it is the Linux community. Virtually every distribution is available via torrent download and many even ship with a BitTorrent client in the default configuration,” he says today.

“This morning, we are announcing a preview release of the first of two new products for Linux users,” Morris added. “uTorrent Server, an alpha version available immediately for download, is intended for users seeking a fast, powerful and lightweight BitTorrent client without the need of the full features and complexity of the native GUI.”

Labeled as an Alpha release, uTorrent Linux Server precedes a client with a full featured UI which is expected to be released in the coming weeks. Today’s release is aimed at more Linux users, who are encouraged to leave feedback so the development team can prepare releases for specific Linux distros in the future. The server can be managed through an HTTP API or the uTorrent Web UI pictured below, which is included in the release.

uTorrent Server for Linux (Web UI)

linux server

“Today’s version is only the first step, and we will continue to support the Linux user community with new versions in the near future. If you prefer to stick to more conventional user experience, rest assured we are working hard to build a full-featured client, coming soon,” Morris announced. There is currently no update on whether the company will make the “summer” deadline they set earlier.

With uTorrent Server, BitTorrent Inc’s main brand is now supported on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms in common with its main competitor, Vuze. Whether it will reach the massive marketshare it has on Windows with the two latter platforms has still to be seen though. Considering the late entrance, uTorrent has a lot of ground to make up.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 3% [?]

uTorrent’s New Privacy Settings Cause Confusion

No comments 23 August 2010 Under: Torrent News

A few days ago the uTorrent team updated the 3.0 release with several privacy features. Due to some unfortunate wording, the new feature caused confusion among users. One of the new options, “do not share your IP with peers”, led some to believe that uTorrent had implemented a new feature that makes BitTorrent transfers anonymous.

utorrentA day before we published an article on how BitTorrent users can hide their identities from the outside world , the uTorrent development team released build 21340 of the uTorrent 3.0 client.

Aside from the usual changes and fixes, there was also a new feature listed in the changelog that piqued the interest of several uTorrent users who were looking for increased privacy.

In the last days multiple TorrentFreak readers informed us about this new feature that could, according to their understanding, make BitTorrent transfers completely anonymous. If true, this would be a breakthrough for BitTorrent and render our earlier article useless.

In the changelog the new feature is listed as “added privacy options to BitTorrent settings” and the screenshot below shows three options under the new privacy heading. The first one reads “do not share your IP with peers”, which does indeed suggest some form of anonymity.

uTorrent’s new privacy settings.

utorrent

Unfortunately the reality is not as exciting as the wording of the new option suggests. After conducting some tests it seems that for regular BitTorrent users this option does very little. When downloading a torrent file, other people in the swarm still get to see the IP-address of users who have this option enabled.

From our testing it seemed that the option was only effective for peer-to-peer communications that go beyond the downloading process, such as DHT and PEX. The new privacy features do not eliminate the need for an anonymizing proxy, on the contrary, they are specifically there for people using proxies.

This was confirmed by BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management Simon Morris, who told TorrentFreak. “This is actually related to not ‘over-communicating’ IP-addresses with other peers – for example when connecting to clients using a proxy, peers might have a habit of forwarding on their IPv6 address.

“This option is intended to simplify privacy settings in some edge cases. Actually I’d agree its not ideally worded right now – we’ll probably clarify the label shortly,” Morris added, noting that the new feature is only implemented in the 3.0 ‘alpha’ client, so it doesn’t affect the largest part of uTorrent’s users.

For those who do use the latest 3.0 version of uTorrent and those who plan to use it in the future, please be aware that “don’t share your IP with peers” doesn’t equal anonymity. For those who already use anonymizing software, the new options prevent their real IP-address from leaking, for all others the new options should be left untouched.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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uTorrent Wants Torrent Sites to Adopt Torrent Tweet

No comments 06 August 2010 Under: Torrent News

BitTorrent Inc. has released a new App for uTorrent that allows users to find out what others people are saying about a torrent they’re downloading. Users can also join the discussion and use uTorrent to tweet about torrents. With the new App, BitTorrent Inc. hopes to streamline discussions about torrents on Twitter, and encourage torrent sites to adopt the new standard to make it a success.

One of the latest additions to uTorrent’s App directory is ‘Torrent Tweet’. Via the Torrent Tweet App, uTorrent users can follow relevant tweets thanks to a unique Twitter hash tag that is generated for each torrent. The hash tags are based on the torrent file’s infohash, so discussions about the same torrents can be easily aggregated.

BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management Simon Morris announced the App earlier today and hopes that it will centralize discussions about torrents that are currently scattered across hundreds of torrent sites.

“In this case we are relying on the fact that torrents are indexed not by file name but by infohash, a digital fingerprint of a file. While you might find the same torrent on dozens of different torrent sites, and get pieces of the associated file from thousands of different peers, ultimately, you can be sure that you’re going to get the torrent you want, not something that shares the same file name,” he says.

Torrent Tweet

“The infohash is a key foundation of BitTorrent – referring to content by digital fingerprint rather than just a file name is a powerful way of referring to something,” says Morris. “Its like referring to a person by referencing their fingerprints rather than just their name. There are many people in the world called ‘Simon Morris’, but my fingerprints are unique.”

“We hope that torrent sites will adopt our convention of referring to torrents using a shortened hashtag prefixed with “#bt” and enhance comments systems that already exist on torrent sites so that discussions can be accessed and propagated there and everywhere that Twitter is available,” Morris adds.

TorrentFreak spoke to the owner of KickassTorrents, who told us that he will shortly implement the torrent referral system as proposed by BitTorrent Inc. If the idea catches on, it’s only a matter of time before other torrent sites will follow.

Although it’s certainly a good idea to have a central place where people can read what other people are saying about specific torrents, we’re not sure that Twitter is the ideal form of communication. In most cases, BitTorrent users would prefer a more anonymous platform. That aside, not every BitTorrent user has or wants a Twitter account.

Although Torrent Tweet is an interesting addition to uTorrent’s App directory, a central place where all comments from hundreds of torrent sites are aggregated might be an even better idea. Perhaps that’s something for BitTorrent Inc. to think about?

For those who want to give Torrent Tweet a spin, it is available in the App directory and can be installed in the latest Griffin release of uTorrent.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 2% [?]

uTorrent Opens Up Apps, Starts Developer Challenge

No comments 12 July 2010 Under: Torrent News

utorrent appsEarlier this year BitTorrent Inc. launched uTorrent Apps, a web-based extensions framework to add new functionality to the popular BitTorrent client without compromising the lightness most users have come to love.

uTorrent App files have a .btapp suffix and consist entirely of HTML and Javascript. The Apps can be added to the client with a single click and are displayed using an embedded browser window.

Similar to other apps, addons and extensions in today’s web browsers and phones, uTorrent Apps will allow 3rd party developers to create applications that will integrate seamlessly with the client.

Initially only a handful of Apps were included with the experimental ‘Griffin‘ client. This project merged with the latest uTorrent 3.0 alpha release last week and today BitTorrent Inc. made an SDK available that developers can use to code their own Apps.

“Apps for uTorrent is something that we are really passionate about. For us, it is a natural and important evolution of uTorrent,” says Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management. “It is a way for users to create a personalized experience by adding Apps that offer new features and services that are important to them – without compromising the lightness that they have come to love with uTorrent.”

“Another important component of Apps for uTorrent is the developer community. Apps that inspire new and innovative uses of uTorrent – built by developers – are an important part of our vision.”

To stimulate the development of uTorrent Apps, BitTorrent Inc. is also starting a developers challenge, awarding a $1000 prize to the best App to be submitted during the coming month. With the challenge they hope to encourage developers worldwide to create Apps that will highlight new use cases and redefine how uTorrent is being used.

The Apps bundled with the latest release of uTorrent 3.0 are far from groundbreaking, so it will be interesting to see what creative implementations other developers come up with.

Entries to the Apps developer challenge will be judged based on originality and innovation, quality of product, product or service appeal and technical expertise. The contest closes on Friday, August 13, 2010.

Creat your first App

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 4% [?]

uTorrent Takes a Leap to Version 3.0

No comments 10 July 2010 Under: Torrent News

utorrentBitTorrent Inc. has been very active with the development of uTorrent during the past months. Earlier this year the company pushed out two experimental clients, codenamed Falcon and Griffin.

The Griffin branch of uTorrent adds Apps for uTorrent support, allowing users to easily install extensions and add custom features. The Falcon project enables users to stream torrent video files and access their client remotely through a secure web-interface.

After having tested the two projects in the wild for a few months, the uTorrent team has now decided to integrate both projects into the alpha release of uTorrent 3.0. With this latest release uTorrent literally takes a giant leap from version 2.1 to 3.0, marking the significance of the fuller featured client.

Aside from merging the two experimental projects, the latest alpha of uTorrent has patched a major security flaw through which VPN users could have their real IP-address exposed. By default, uTorrent has disabled IPv6 which causes this vulnerability, while adding an option in the advanced settings to enable it for those who don’t use a VPN.

Together with the new 3.0 alpha, uTorrent has released several new Apps including µBrowse. “As before, all Apps are completely optional, so you can choose to add only the ones you like in order to keep your client as lightweight as possible,” Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management commented.

The uTorrent Apps specification is expected to be opened up to the public soon, so third party developers can create their own Apps for the client. Among other things this will allow torrent site operators to embed their website’s search functionality in uTorrent.

Although the new features in uTorrent 3.0 are for Windows users only, progress has been steady on the Mac side as well. After several years of development, a stable version of the Mac client finally came out two weeks ago. The Linux version of uTorrent is still a work in progress and will be released later this summer.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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uTorrent Expands, Launches Apps and Labs

No comments 14 May 2010 Under: Torrent News

utorrent labs uTorrent has come a long way since it saw its first public release in September 2005. Over the years it grew out to be the most widely used BitTorrent application around with more than 50 million monthly users worldwide.

On the development side the uTorrent team at BitTorrent Inc. hasn’t been sitting still either. Today they launchuTorrent Apps”, an exciting new project that could be considered another milestone. With apps, users can easily install extensions and add custom features to uTorrent.

“Apps for µTorrent is a brand new web-based extensions framework that makes it easy for users to get more and do more with µTorrent without compromising the client’s renowned lightness and speed,” Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management says.

Similar to other apps, addons and extensions in today’s web browsers and phones, uTorrent apps will allow 3rd party developers to develop applications that will integrate seamlessly with the client. At launch there are already four free apps available, developed in cooperation with uTorrent.

Among the apps that are currently available are a free virus scanner for BitTorrent downloads and the µGadget which allows users to monitor and control torrent downloads more easily from a browser. VODO, the BitTorrent powered distribution platform for filmmakers that is supported by all the major torrent sites, also has an app already.

For developers who want to code uTorrent apps there will soon be an SDK available. “Apps are a new type of file with a .btapp suffix that consists entirely of HTML and Javascript and can be added to the client and displayed using an embedded browser window, so very little extra code is needed,” Morris explains.

The apps can be added to uTorrent from within the client and take just a click to install. We expect that most torrent sites will soon release their own apps to complement uTorrent. That’s just the start though, the possibilities are endless.

The uTorrent Griffin release is part of the new uTorrent labs section where the development team is giving users early access to their latest projects. Besides Griffin, the remote access project Falcon and the live streaming project Pheon are also listed.

We have already covered Falcon in the past. Besides secure remote access, this client also enables users to stream torrent video files files. Pheon is BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen’s pet project and is expected to be released later this year.

uTorrent Apps

ut

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 1% [?]

uTorrent Idea Bank Taps Into the Wisdom of the Swarm

No comments 07 May 2010 Under: Torrent News

utorrentuTorrent is one of the most widely used BitTorrent applications. It is the client of choice for more than 50 million users worldwide and this number continues to rise alongside BitTorrent’s increasing popularity.

Over the years, uTorrent’s developers have received thousands of suggestions from users on how the client can be further improved. To streamline this process and to find out what the most wanted features and improvements are, the uTorrent team has launched an Idea Bank.

The Idea Bank is prominently featured on uTorrent’s website and allows users to submit and vote for ideas they want to see implemented. Users can vote for a maximum of 10 ideas, but are free to change their vote if a better suggestion comes along. Once an idea is completed, users will regain the vote they allocated to that suggestion.

With the Idea Bank uTorrent hopes to tap into the wisdom of the crowd (or swarm), which will hopefully lead to an even better product for the end user.

“We’ve actually wanted to do it for a while now and we’ve finally found resources to get it done,” Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management told TorrentFreak. “The point is to have a more structured way for users to contribute feature ideas and then vote on them – it is an attempt to engage the wisdom of crowds more directly.”

uTorrent Idea Bank

idea bank

uTorrent has always had a forum section with feature requests, but that was less visible for the average user and the progress of the requests was difficult to track. With the new Idea Bank users can see at a glance what features are being worked on and what has already been implemented.

“Although the Forums are popular, they tend to select a much more advanced community of enthusiasts. We felt it was important to put something as critical as feature requests closer to the mass of mainstream users,” Morris told TorrentFreak.

Those who have a feature suggestion or want to vote on one can go to the Idea Bank and participate. At the time of writing the bank holds 55 ideas, one of these is being worked on and three ideas have been implemented already. A Linux version of uTorrent is the top idea at the moment, followed by an email notification for completed downloads.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 1% [?]

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