FoxTorrent: Another BitTorrent Firefox Extension
FoxTorrent is a BitTorrent extension for Firefox, developed by the Silicon Valley based company RedSwoosh. The extension makes it possible to download .torrent files in Firefox, and integrates BitTorrent downloads with Swoosh links.
An internal beta version of the extension is available at the RedSwoosh website (whoops! not that internal anymore). This release is semi-functional, but it gives you an impression of what the final version will look like. It currently downloads only one file from each torrent, and hardly shares data with other users. You will also need the seperate RedSwoosh desktop application the get it working.
However, RedSwoosh assured us that future versions will embed perfectly within Firefox, more so than the open source equivalent BitFox. They see a bright future for the Firefox extension, as well as their desktop client. A RedSwoosh employee, who prefers to stay anonymous, told TorrentFreak that their client will be more popular than uTorrent, the popular Windows client that was recently acquired by BitTorrent Inc:
“One year from now, we’ll have the most popular torrent client on the planet. The fastest. The easiest. Hands down. We’ve basically rewritten the entire BT protocol. Bram [Cohen] is going to shit his pants when he takes our client for a spin.”
Personally I think that RedSwoosh is a bit overconfident. It might not be a good idea to downplay uTorrent and BitFox, before they have a working BitTorrent client themselves. Perhaps they are frustrated by the fact that BitTorrent managed to dominate P2P traffic in just a couple of years. I mean, stating that your company was founded before BitTorrent on your “about us” page wont impress many people. It might be a good idea to stop talking, and start coding. At least they will please Mark Cuban, one of the biggest investors in RedSwoosh, who doesn’t seem to be a BitTorrent fan himself.
It is hard to judge this extension from this initial beta version, but it’s good to see that people have started working on adding BitTorrent support to Firefox, something that Opera has had for months now.
In the meanwhile, feel free to test the internal beta release of FoxTorrent (Windows only).
Update: RedSwoosh CEO Travis Kalanick apologized for the statements released by one of his part-time employees.
