Settlement filing states that Google must do more to educate users about privacy policies

Rejoice all you μTorrent fans! The bittorrent download manager isnow also available for the Linux platform. With the release of the Macclient a while back this means that μTorrent is now available for allthree major platforms.

For those who haven’t heard of μTorrent, you either don’t use bittorrent at all, or you’ve been missing out on one of the best torrentclients available for Windows. μTorrent is possibly one of the lightesttorrent downloading applications available, and even now the windowsversion is a mere 321kB. In this small package lie some very powerfulfeatures. μTorrent has a large list of features which you can find outmore about here.

The μTorrent client for Linux however is currently only a “server”which has no UI at all. So what use is μTorrent without a UI? Well,first of all, this is just an alpha version, and a UI may come withtime. Even without a UI there is much that can be dont with this Linuxrelease of μTorrent server. So what can you expect today? We’ll tellyou.

For quite a while now μTorrent has offered a feature called WebUI.This feature enables an alternate remote control interface of μTorrentwhich allows you to control you μTorrent client from anywhere in theworld. μTorrent sets up a server on your computer which you can accessfrom any other computer if you have your computer’s IP address (and youare not behind a firewall). The web UI of μTorrent offers nearly allthe features of the main application interface, however it isaccessible though a browser.

The Linux version of μTorrent includes only this WebUI forcontrolling the application. You can launch μTorrent, have it runningin the background, and you will be able to connect to it through yourbrowser and add / remove torrents and manage your downloads.

What lies ahead of μTorrent is even more exciting. In the comingversion 3 of the application, we will see possibly the biggest updateyet. By version 3.0 μTorrent will integrate three core new technologieswhich will completely change the μTorrent experience.

The first major new technology is μTorrent Web. What if you couldaccess your μTorrent interface from anywhere without worrying aboutconfiguring firewalls and NATs? The new service at web.μTorrent.comoffers just this service. You simply need to configure a username andpassword in your μTorrent configuration, and use the same credentialsto log in at web.μTorrent.comand you are set! You will see your μTorrent interface no matter whereyou are as long as you have access to a standards compliant browser.

Not only can you control your downloads remotely, you can evenstream any media files in your download list from you computer, so youcan play it back anywhere. You can even use the “Get File” function todownload non-media files from your μTorrent list.

Another useful feature to come by μTorrent 3 is sharing torrents. Ifyou are a seasoned torrent user, you will often have difficultyexplaining the —often rather convoluted— means of downloading torrentfiles. For those used to downloading files by simply clicking on a linkand waiting while the browser download manager saves the file, themultiple steps involved in downloading a torrent client, finding thetorrent for what you want, downloading the torrent, loading the torrentin the torrent client and downloading the contents of the torrentitself can be a little daunting. With the new “Send Torrent” feature ofμTorrent, you can simply right click on a torrent click on “SendTorrent” and you will be taken to a page from where you can download aversion of μTorrent which comes prepackaged with the torrent file youchose. You can then simply share this link with a torrent novice, andhe will be able to download the torrent client, and the torrent, in onestep. If the client was already installed, the download will simplystart off, else the user will get a small wizard for installing theμTorrent.

Another major feature in μTorrent is the addition of a new Apps framework codenamed Griffin.This new framework is light, with apps built using HTML and JavaScript.A number of applications are already available for μTorrent, whichinclude games, an antivirus application to check your torrentdownloads, and a number of networks which provide free contentdelivered using torrents. Quite obviously all of these networks arepurely legal torrent sources.

Besides the major features, a number of small improvements are alsoon the way. For one, the icons and looks of μTorrent have changedcompletely giving it a sleeker modern look. UDP support is another niceaddition to μTorrent. One of our favorite new features is the additionof fine-grained priorities. Till now μTorrent supported four modes forfiles, HIgh, Normal, Low, and Don’t Download / skip. Now you will havea range of priorities from 15 (highest) to 1 (lowest) with 0 forskipped files. This makes it easier to ensure that files from amulti-file torrent are downloaded in exactly the order you want themto. An additional option available is to “Prioritize by File Order”which will automatically assign decreasing file priorities to theselected files, ensuring that they download nearly in the order theyappear in the list.

For such a small torrent application, it seems like μTorrent’s aimsare certainly giant. We look forward to what this brilliant applicationwill bring in time.

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For most people who use email it is clear that even the spam filtersare not enough to ensure that you get the most relevant email. GMail’sspam filter works very well, perhaps better than any other, howeverthat won’t stop your important email  from getting lost amongst tons ofnewsletters, updates and offers which you yourself subscribed to.

Ever faced this scenario? You check your inbox, only to find dozensof unread emails. You scan through them and decide to archive them allrather than read them. Unfortunately, in the process you archive arather important email.

GMail’s new “Priority Inbox”aims to tackle that problem. GMail will learn over time which emailsyou open, read and reply to, and accordingly automatically sort youremail to display relevant, important emails first. Email is then putinto different sections, important unread email, starred email andeverything else after that — these sections can be customized.Just likeGMail’s spam system, this too can be trained over time, by marking anemail as less or more important.

This reminds us of Mozilla Messaging’s Raindrop projectwhich had a similar noble goal. While GMail will obviously providethese features in their web interface, Mozilla Messaging’s Raindrop isa mail client application — although it runs its own server and has tobe accessed via a browser — which can aggregate details from multiplesocial networks to figure out which email is more important to you.

This feature will be rolled out over a week for both GMail andGoogle Apps mail users, so keep and eye out. You can try “PriorityInbox” by visiting it’s new home at Google.

Check out Google’s video explaining their newest feature:

[TUBE]5nt3gE9dGHQ[/TUBE]

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First devices should start trickling in soon

It’s been four years since AMD bought ATI,and almost anyone who had apprehensions about the deal then, have bynow resigned themselves to the fact, and for the most part, are happyabout the way AMD has maintained ATI’s gamer quotient till this date,and how they saved it from Nvidia’s ruthless market tactics. While manyindustry experts felt $5.4 billion was simply too much to invest in agraphics company when with a similar amount of money AMD could havebuilt its own, the popularity of the ATI brand was perhaps the numberone factor in favour of an acquisition over internal development.Things are different now – ATI is at the top of its game, it has evenedged out Nvidiaas the market leader in discrete GPU shipments, and AMD is doing reallywell with its chipsets and integrated graphics. Things will apparentlychange some more soon, as AMD has revealed it will soon be doing awaywith the ATI brand.

Surprised? Well, not everyone is, as AMD has certainly been busythis past year, wresting the crown from Nvidia, and, also trying tosimplify its brand structure in the form of AMD Vision, which is a logoa PC gets if the CPU and GPU are manufactured by AMD. Vision, VisionPremium, Vision Ultimate, and Vision Black are the price progressions,from entry-level to top-end.

AMD says it has some solid market research (at least as solid marketresearch could ever be) to show why it has made the decision to phaseout the ATI brand by Q1 2011, and retain only the Radeon/FirePro brands(thus making it AMD Radeon, or AMD FirePro).

Here is a look at AMD’s internal research:

These points all certainly make sense from a marketing point ofview, but what will really connect to gamers’ hearts, is the realquestion. One thing is for sure though, AMD certainly benefited fromATI’s expertise and brand name, and, for gamers, it was a win-winsituation, with AMD-ATI and Nvidia competing head to head to producesome seriously killer architecture. ATI will live on in the massconsciousness, leaving a tangible vacuum as it is going out at its veryzenith.

Let us know what you think about AMD’s move, in the below comments section.

Do also check out some more research below from AMD that apparentlyjustifies the move, as well as the new logos of AMD’s graphics products: