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uTorrent Opens Up Apps, Starts Developer Challenge

BitTorrent Inc. released the SDK for uTorrent Apps today, allowing developers worldwide to code their own Apps for the popular BitTorrent client. To motivate developers into contributing their creations, the company has also announced a challenge with a $1000 prize for the best App to be submitted during the coming month.

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

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  • Huggybaby

    I hope someone makes a cool animated seed/peer map like Azureus has had for so long.

  • Joe

    This is gonna make uTorrent bloated and a memory hog. The best thing about this client has always been its compactness and sparce use of system resources. I guess not anymore.

  • Anonymous

    how about some apps that actually do something. Something that keeps IP’s more secure.. working in that direction is the way to go.

  • in.cog.nito

    @2: Just because there are apps, does not mean you need to download them. uTorrent can still remain a lightweight contender when it comes to system resources.

    @3: The only way to make IP’s more ‘secure’ is though a VPN / Proxy service.

  • T

    “Creat your first app” – that’s a typo, I guess

  • Joe

    in.cog.nito: point taken. Also the VPN thing is correct. Peerguardian/IP blockers do virtually nothing for your security.

  • Daiode

    Can someone enlighten me why this is useful? What kind fo apps would you actually need for your Torrent client?

    I can only think of one and that is meta-tagging stuff you are downloading before it has finished.

    Seems like a gimmick to me…another lets have an app store bandwagon piece.

  • Gargamel

    helloooooo bloatware

  • hazbhahazbhazhazbhagf

    I don’t want this.

  • Freeleech

    Good news. Hope we’ll see something really useful like plug-ins for other P2P protocols (and perhaps internetwork search.

  • Zaeed

    To anyone complaining about increased memory usage, simply don’t download the apps?

    Or just use the 20$ it takes to buy a few GBs more of RAM.

  • Danny

    I’m no coder but $1000 seems kind of low for a prize. Won’t it also be pretty difficult for coders to integrate with a program they’ve never coded for before?

  • ballbag

    Lame. They should open source uTorrent instead, and invite extensions that do useful things.

  • Anonymous

    ratio cheat app?

  • Anonymous

    Can’t believe the amount of idiots complaining that uTorrent will become bloated. I’m no genius but err… you don’t have to download any apps if you don’t want to? Idiots.

    As if it’s going to become a memory hog simply because they released the SDK.

  • Anonymous

    Bells and whistles.

  • Anonymous

    @Danny: It won’t really be much harder to code for uTorrent, as I believe it says on their website JavaScript and web technologies are used to make the addons. $1000 actually seems very generous to me for a BitTorrent client addon. If you are to get paid $50 per hour, that’s 20 hours worth of work – assuming you actually work for that long by yourself. $1000 is the type of money freelancers would be looking at to build whole websites.

    “Apps” consist only of HTML and Javascript packaged together and displayed using an embedded browser window after being added to the client.

  • 5318008

    Will it run Tetris?

  • Danny

    @17 Thanks for the info!

  • Anonymous

    There’s a huge flaw with the API provided. We can fetch all the peers of a torrent automatically, making possible to block all the leechers while keeping the seeders with some external firewall filter script. This bt-apps API is bloated in every way and will soon result in some really bad sh*t for everyone.

  • Torin050

    @2 Another one? Did you not read all the other articles. You don’t bloody need to download the apps. Hell you can stay on 2.0 if you want and not even have the ability.

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  • X

    As with what everone else said if you don’t want utorrent to become bloated just don’t download the apps.

    Utorrent is a great program but its only drawbacks have been the lack of extra features. Useful extra features that is.

  • Spind

    i just hope that those apps will be an optional thing… not like Vuze (why on earth do i need a Vuze player?? when i have KMPlayer)

  • theamp

    You guys are retarded. If you don’t want the app, don’t install the app.

  • Anonymous

    @20 are you sure about this?

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  • nonW00t

    An auto ip blacklist updater would be best use of this disaster waiting to happen. LOL

  • Anonymous

    @18 It already runs “Tetris”, check out the “Tetronimoes” app.

  • In Other News

    RIAA secretly writes useful app for utorrent that passes all your copy write infringements to RIAA torrent peers.

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  • Harry

    Here is an app that I want:
    I tell him where I keep my movies
    I tell him where I keep my finished torrent files
    On demand, in background, the app will do : scan and compute the hashes of all my unidentified movie files, compare with the hashes in the finished torrent folder, and reseed the movies that I downloaded and that I moved or renamed (for my clarity) and which had been deseeded because of move/renaming.

    Without this, I am mostly a leecher because I need to move the files to another disk after finished.

  • Anonymous

    This is the response I got on the utorrent forum:
    http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=497642#p497642

  • Gaval Johansen

    uTorrent is da bomb dude, plain and simple.

  • Anonymous

    I say go for it. Make a peer map and other peer tracking apps. Hopefully this will finally kill uTorrent’s popularity.

  • james brown

    This is awesome. It would be great to have even more control of your torrent client and be able to do stuff like auto download, auto upload, mass search, and so many other different things that im sure will be developed

    http://www.seed-bytes.com/signup.php

  • Kaptain Krunch

    $1000 bucks to the first app that can blow up the mafia!

  • R

    The idea is awesome, but the implementation of the SDK is retarded.
    First of all, they’re using a Linux-based SDK for a program that doesn’t even have a native Linux client (yet). They should have just gone with a Linux virtual machine instead of Cygwin, since Cygwin can be a real pain to get working properly, but a virtual machine is as simple as starting an application. You can’t even use it on Linux because the they packaged it as an MSI.

    Oh, and I doubt that all the apps will be pure HTML+Javascript – there will definitely be some apps that are just a wrapper/interface layer for exes that do performance-sensitive stuff like converting videos.

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  • 5318008

    @27 sorry, didn’t even look at default apps, just went straight for the obvious troll.

    After all, what apps platform is complete without a Tetris port?

    I guess they got us covered right out of the box. Sweet.

  • expert01

    I agree – What the hell were they thinking? Why in god’s name would they have a full cygwin development environment for an HTML/JS based app?

    This is retarded. I could make a batch script in under 100 lines (being generous) that would download the same files off their server and package them up into a compressed file using 7z (just like extensions for other web content systems, like the MS sidebar or Firefox, are archives (zip?) containing some HTML and misc. ascii files).

  • Anonymous

    Maybe an app to reverse check that your real IP is not showing up anywhere…
    something to test a ping or a traceroute onto yourself.
    I can see it only be a security check, but not a real security improvement by itself.

  • QuadSlacker1313

    I ban all uTorrent ips.

    Sharing 100,000 copyrighted files and counting.

    Fuck you, idiots, for all your arrogance.

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  • SoDeMaCome

    I like the seedbox ip blocking plugin.

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  • someone

    great now you can tweet and like things right from utorrent and share what you are downloading as facebook status. and in addition to that set rotating background pictures for utorrent and sound effects.

    seriously who needs apps? just make a simple, lightwegth torrent program and make it work well.

  • jkl

    Everyone on the bloat.

  • old timer

    SHIT!

    prepare for MASSIVE cheating, and the beginning of the end of torrenting…

    trackers will not be able to keep up with the piles of poorly coded plugins coming- both official and unofficial…
    doomdoomdoom….

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  • in.cog.nito

    @39 QuadSlacker1313

    Eat a dick. Nothing you have can’t be found on a public or private tracker.

  • Luis Arqueros

    We´ve an interesting oportunity to develop an improve in the original software that can help us to do the usuary experience more satisfied.

  • Anonymous

    This is not bloatware, it’s optional to download.

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  • Anonymous

    App means application. Weird terminology!

  • MoTo

    Tiny little process…bye bye

  • Cujo

    vpn.btapp ,, surely would win lol

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  • Elite Born Metro Type

    Apps will not bloat uTorrent. Ironically, its just te opposite,
    Apps are rolling out to keep uTorrent small, but offer many
    optional, open source features shared in the community.
    BitTorrent just posted a blog explaining:
    http://blog.bittorrent.com/2010/07/14/reflections-on-apps/

    @1 uMap – its in the Griffin alpha now

    @7 Why is this useful? See the blog post above.

    @10 Great idea! please submit an app, and get into the forum and
    the IRC and people will help you make it happen.

    @12 the SDK is just javascript.
    see http://btapps-sdk.bittorrent.com/doc/api.html

    @18 it already does.

    @20 access to peers ip and %complete are an integral part of the
    BitTorrent protocol. Anyone that wants to can code a
    solution that talks to any other node in any way they want.
    If you “block all the leechers while keeping the seeders”
    this will not help your download experience – it will have
    the exact same effect as setting your upload bandwidth to zero.
    if you are concerned about number of TCP connections and congestion,
    uTP fixes this.

    @25, no, @20 is not correct.

    @26 Great idea! please submit an app, and get into the forum and
    the IRC and people will help you make it happen.

    #35 the SDK is writting in Python, which run on all modern OS The
    reason to support Windows is the first apps-enabled client
    will come out on Windows. All the tools for app building
    will work on linux and osx. the MSI is really just a
    convenience wrapper for windows people, the actual SDK is on
    Github and you can check it out anywhere.

    @37 there is no cygwin development environment for the SDK.
    Using cygwin simply makes the dev tools work better on
    Windows.

  • cajones

    Hey maybe they will actually have a half-way decent Mac client now!

  • Pulsed Media

    I am wondering how this would relate to seedbox business, and what kinds of apps does this spur. Might we see soon seedbox services working like rTorrent offers, and as lightweight.

    Or maybe control like with TFlux based offerings so a lower price point can be met.

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

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