µTorrent and What is Torrenting.

Okay! I’m going to try my best to talk about what is torrenting and what program I like to use. Now, torrenting is a type of P2P file sharing meaning the network is made up of a bunch of people sharing files. It’s a great way of getting your file out there for everyone to download without going to and uploading said file to a file hosting web site like MediaFire, 4Shared, or the now dead Megaupload. No, instead you are hosting the file from your own computer. While the previously mentioned sites are used to download a file straight from them, when it comes to torrents you are actually grabbing the file from multiple people who have already downloaded or are downloading the file, you can imagine that if you are downloading a file like this is would usually be much quicker since you are downloading from many sources. The torrent file itself is only a couple KBs big because the file is only telling your torrent program where to find the file from which users. That’s the basic of it.

Something you might ask later on about Torrenting will probably be: what are seeds/peers? Seeds or seeders are the users who have already finished downloading, they are uploading the files to those torrenting it. The peers are people who are downloading the file as well as uploading what they have too.

When you finish downloading a file you have been torrenting don’t just delete the torrent! When your file has finished downloading it will automatically be set to seed. It’s is proper netiquette to seed the file you have downloaded for a while though you might have to decide how long “a while” is. For myself it is usually until I have uploaded twice or trice the size of the file. 

You might have heard of torrenting before in a negative light and are wondering "is this legal?". Yes it is!- but it depends on what you are downloading. If you are downloading something that you could not obtain other than from paying for it- like movie, music or video game than yes- though there are indie developers who simply want to get their product out there for the world to see, who are giving their movie, music or game for free.

I recommend that you trust the source of your torrent, you never really know what your getting into since your sharing with other users. Some sites that I recommend are:

• http://www.clearbits.net/
• http://www.jamendo.com/en

I really recommend the free short films Big Buck Bunny and Sintel too!

Now if that wasn't a good enough explanation; here is a video that might do a better job.

The torrent program that I use and recommend on Windows is µTorrent. This program is simple and light. You can also stream video from right in the program; this is a useful function in that you can preview a file before it is done. You can also view comment on the torrent file as well, which can be a real useful feature, though honestly I don't see it used too often. Creating a torrent file is also very simple, just go to File> Create new torrent, choose your file or directory and that is it, it takes care of anything else for you such as trackers. This is a free program, though, there is a premium version of the program that carries with it extra features for a the price of

I hope this helped, you can download µTorrent here.

MyFaves! Your New Home Page!

Hey! Long time no Blog! Sorry about that! Anyway...!

I wanted to share a website that I have fallen in love with and have made my homepage! It’s MyFaves! It’s a great, simple, and customizable website that you create with links to your favorite pages! My favorite part is how it’s customizable and simple it is! You don’t see that too much. Usually you may receive too many options services like this and create something that looks ugly, but I’m getting ahead of myself!

This is a site that you create but adding links of the sites that you frequent as your homepage. The links are set up in the form of icons. MyFaves will give you a list of popular sites to choose from whose icons will appear on the page. If for some reason they don’t have the site that you are looking for you can choose from a catalog of icons those which you believe best symbolizes the website you wish to add and simply attach the URL to it. MyFaves has a decent choice of backgrounds to choose from as well, making your page feel a bit more personal. The site works so well that creating an unpleasant looking page is very difficult- in fact I dare anyone to try, because the results are always gorgeous!

Signing up doesn’t require much, except that you have to sign in with using a Twitter, Facebook, Google, or OpenID account. Afterwards you can easily access your page by simply using the URL you create. My page for example is http://myfav.es/lucky_azazer

The site can be found  Here

Enjoy!

Lost a File? Recuva It!

Have you ever accidentally deleted one of your files? Maybe the before that file you deleted is now for some reason the one you need today! Well than no problem, because there is Recuva!

Recuva is software made by Piriform, which makes some great PCsoftware, this specific piece of software will help you find your deleted files very easily! When the program is opened you will be guided through a wizard which will ask you a couple of questions to try and give you better results when looking for you file the first questions you will be asked will be what type of file. The choices range from pictures, music, documents, video, compressed, emails, and if you are not searching for any of those types of files you can click others. Once you know what file you are looking for you will then be asked where the file was last stored. You are able to choose from a group of locations such as external hard drives, my documents, your recycling bin, or even choose a more specific location, though, again if you are not sure where you can always choose the “I’m not sure” option. It might take a little while but when the scan is complete you will get a list of your deleted files from which you can choose where you want your recovered file to be saved. 

 Now when lists the files you will notice a color ranging from green, yellow, and red. These colors are the status of your file Green being the best case scenario for recovery and red being the worst. For an improved chance of recoverability it is also recommended that the file location of the recovered file you pick be in a separate hard drive, but you don’t have to if you cannot. Now if for some reason you did not see the file you were looking for, what you can do is go back through the wizard and after going through the same questions there will be a check box called “Deep Scan”. If you do choose the Deep Scan option though, the time for the scan can take much longer, but might prove worth it

You can download your own copy of Recuva from Piriforms website here (I suggest the free version!)

Lefora, Start Your Own Free Forum Community

Lefora.com is a great way to host your own Forum! Do you want to start your own community? Have a rather large group and are growing than you will want Lefora! Lefora is a service that will allow you to host your own forum for free. There a ton of features to use from this service. When you start out you will have to find a name for your forum. After you name your forum you will have some choices of looks for your forum: Juice which is a more modern looking feel, which just looks extravagant! The second choice is the Classic feature which has nice clean simple look to it, and is more reminiscent of the forum look everyone is familiar with. If you are not happy with the look of your forum, no worries, you will have even more options for themes and colors in the options! 

As your forums Admin you will be given a lot of power! You can choose to have other people become Admins or Moderators, even Banned those pesky trolls and trouble makers too. If you are making a forum for a specific group you can make it so that anyone who wants to join your forum has to get permission from, you, the admin first, even control if you will allow anonymous people to reply to threads on the forum or who can post in what thread. As the Admin you will be able to see a list of your users and warn them if they are close to being banned, you can also invite others into your forum and send a mass email to all your members in case there is something you want them all to know. 

One of my own favorite features is the rankings your posters will get for being active on the forum. When reaching a certain amount of posts they will be given titles, it gives a little incentive for users to be active. These titles can be anything you want them to be, and the goal for the title can also be set by you as well. One example is that you can set it so that when they reach < 50 posts it says “Great Poster” and when they reach <200 posts the rank would change to “Respect me! I'm a forum veteran!”

I’ve already said that Lefora is a free service, but there is an upgrade service. On the forum there will be adverts (In my opinion they don’t bother much) regarding the type of content on the site. But when you upgrade there will be no more adverts on the forum. You will also be given 5GB of storage and 50GB/month Bandwidth as opposed to the 2GB of storage and 10GB/month Bandwidth. The upgrade will also allow you to have a custom domain name (Your default is a YOURNAMEHERE.lefra.com) and customer support through email, not only that but you will be given $25 worth of Ad promotion from Yahoo and something called a VIP Badge which I imagine is simply a title thing to let others know you have upgraded.

I personally think that the free package is enough and if you want a domain name to simply go with a free .TK domain name.

A link to the Lefora site can be found here.
And for more information on the free .TK Domain name visit my old post here.

Ubuntu, The Free OS!

Need to install a new operating system (OS)? Maybe you're selling an old computer of which you have wiped everything off of, or maybe you want to try something different from you Windows OS? Well than I have some good news for you! There are free alternative OSs for you to use, there's many! But We'll focus on one called Ubuntu! 

Ubuntu is a free Linux-based operating system that is quick and secure! There are many updates and restrictions that wont allow virus to just enter your system, and should you share files with another computer running windows, should you bring in a file that is not so trust worthy you're Ubuntu OS will not be infected, but bringing it out and back to another Windows OS will infect that OS!

The Ubuntu OS has also been going down new designs of late, and they're pretty good! The designs are getting better and better (My own opinion). There is a icon bar (Which some people will be reluctant to tell you is similar to Windows 7 "Super bar") to the left of the screen and will hide when coming into contact with a window to allow you to focus on the task. There is also a nice feature called lenses which is organized into categories such as applications or music in a full screen manner which is (Again in my opinion) really nice.

 

 They also have a their own software center where you can get a bevy of applications to download be it free or for money (Just about all of it free). The software center is... the closet thing that come to mind in comparison at the moment is the Android store. 

 Ubuntu isn't risky to try either! You can download it burn it on a DVD, and try it from the disk as demo before you install it (Live CD). The Live CD is also useful because you can also access files from you hard drive regardless of the permissions Windows has put on it. So if your Windows OS shouldn't work one day, and wont let you into the computer, you can recover your files with this. 

You can also run it besides Windows to keep both OS (maybe to play around with it more, or use one OS for one thing, the other for another, your choice). The OS will be installed in Windows and can be uninstalled like a any other program in Windows.

Now the only problems with Ubuntu is that many of your Windows applications will not run on this OS (Windows programs run on Ubuntu run through a program called Wine, which is a free download through the software program). It's not too much of a problem though, since there are many free alternatives available (MS Office does work though!). Another problem is you can't play mainstream games, while there are great games on Ubuntu, chances are you wont be able to play that newest title you saw in "Insert gaming magazine/show name here". This isn't to big of a problem unless you are a PC gamer. After 4 great years with Ubuntu I ended up going back to windows to play computer games on Steam (I don't own those new gaming consoles).

>>You can download the OS here.
>> And if you would like to see the OS in play you can see OMGUbuntu's Video here.

Youtube's Cosmic Panda!

For those who do not know and love to spend their time in Youtube, there is a new theme Google is coming out with. I believe everyone is aware of Google grand theme reformation on all their services, creating a cleaner more unique look, First it was Google Plus, Google itself, it's email service and now Youtube!

I personally love it! It's not perfect (My opinion, than it might be that I was too accustomed to the old YouTube feel). But everything is a bit more organized, and the there seems to be more focus on the video player (and advert right next to it) which I love! Right now you can take a look at theme and even send feedback to Google as well!  If you do use the theme clearing your cookies will remove it.

You can try theme out for yourself here!

Free Photo Editing Software, GIMP!

Does image manipulation/editing fit your fancy? Do you want to try your hand at it but don't want to pay for such expensive software, such as Adobe's PhotoShop? Well than, I have some good news for you! There is free software for download called GIMP, which stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program. The program is very powerful for anyone's image editing needs whether it be someone who's been doing so for a long time, or an amateur who wants to dip their foot into the water. With tons of filters options, and tools GIMP will serve its users well! Don't think just because it's a free program that it can't stand up to the big names like that of Adobe PhotsShop or Corel Paintshop.

The link to the GIMP webpage is right here!