The recent (June ‘07) article over on TorrentFreak about uTorrent for Mac doesn’t seem hopeful or at least soon coming. They do have another article explaining ways to run uTorrent on your Mac via Crossover Office (beta) or Parallels.

As I migrated away from Windows I bought a copy of Parallels thinking I’d run them side by side so I could use some of those Windows-only apps like XnView and my old copy of Fontlab Using Windows apps so seldomly, I don’t like the idea of installing (and making me buy) a whole copy of Windows onto my Macbook Pro for an occasional use.

Enter uTorrent.

I had been using Azureus for my torrenting needs until Comcast started blocking resetting my upload transfers. I read that uTorrent was so much better but alas, Windows only. Well, after trying the ie4osx kit, I ended up not using the IE part so much as the intel native Darwine kit and it’s accompanying WinHelper.app. I gave it a try, downloaded the uTorrent installer, ran it through WineHelper.app and seconds later, a successful install. The real test was would it launch and better yet, access the internets? It does.

Required Parts for uTorrent on the Mac:

1] Install X11 from your Mac OSX install CD or DVD. This is necessary for running any Windows apps without using Parallels.

2] Download and install Darwine for your Mac’s CPU architecture
Mount the DMG and drag the “Darwine” folder to your “Applications” folder. Run the various wine* apps in the “Sample Applications” folder inside the “Darwine” folder. These will help better configure the environment.

Links to both Intel and PowerPC builds of Darwine:

Darwine for Intel Macs
Darwine for PPC Macs

3] Download the install package for uTorrent.
Run the install.exe and let uTorrent install to the “Program Files” directory (a hidden “.wine” folder within your home folder).
uTorrent

4] Launch WineHelper.app from the “Darwine” folder then go to File > Open, Program Files > utorrent > utorrent.exe
This will launch X11, a log window and a terminal window. You can safely close both the log and terminal windows without hurting the uTorrent process.

5] Open a torrent from uTorrent’s File menu, point it to where you want to save the file and you’re off!

Note: You can’t hide uTorrent like a normal Mac app, you can hide X11 but not the uTorrent window itself. However, you can minimize it like a normal Windows app, except it will minimize down to the bottom left of your screen, sort of hovering near the top edge of the dock. Clicking the reduced title bar will present you with a pop-up menu of options like “Restore”, “Close” “Maximize” and a few uTorrent specific options.

Note2: If the option “Minimize uTorrent to tray” it checked, uTorrent will disappear to a tiny rectangular window and icon at the top left of your screen, directly under the menu bar. This icon can be right-clicked to access all of uTorrent’s system tray icon options.

Hopefully, the uTorrent for Mac project will continue but this works (for me) in the meantime.

After having comments set to “always moderate” for a while, I’ve gotten tired of deleting the spam comments bots dump on my blog so I turned on Askimet once I realized it wasn’t on and installed the reCaptcha plugin for Wordpress.

On every other site, captchas are a pain for me. I usually type the image letters in a few times since it usually tells me I’m wrong even though it looks right to me. Most of the time I push through just to post that comment. Sometimes I just leave the site in frustration.

ReCaptcha seems to be a little nicer to use. It’s based on words (or parts of words) scanned out of books and visually altered a bit to defeat spam bots while maintaining readability for us lowly humans. The letters or words you type in are used to digitize public domain books so your typing isn’t done in vain. Also available is an audio clip you can play that speaks some numbers aloud instead of typing the letters. It can be refreshed without having to reload the entire page, which is nice if you’ve written a long or link-heavy post and don’t want it to get lost.

I may try a couple other plugins if the spam comments don’t slow down. What’s working on your site and how difficult is your method to implement?

[update] I am still getting spam comments and didn’t understand why, so I wrote a gibberish comment and tried submitting it without typing in the captcha. It was accepted and I was confused. I went to the reCaptcha site to find out why and it seems the plugin works by marking a comment as spam when the captcha isn’t correctly typed in. So the comment is still accepted but when it’s marked as spam, Askimet immediately dumps it into the Spam Comments box and neither you nor your reader ever sees the spam. Pretty slick! I’d say reCaptcha is a good alternative for those looking at anti-spam solutions who dislike the “normal” captcha software.

I keep seeing it on the internets, this is Verizon’s “iPhone killer”. Please, not even close.
I am currently a VZW customer who’s stuck with the original LG Chocolate (vx8500) and dissatisfied more every day. It’s not a bad phone, it just doesn’t suit my needs anymore. I have grown to need a full (qwerty) keyboard, a bigger screen, full HTML web browsing and a better camera. I am willing to pay for these features. Since I am locked into a contract for another year, I am looking at paying full retail price for ANY device I want. When the phone’s price becomes a non-issue, the playing field levels out considerably when comparing devices, regardless of carrier.
This is my personal review and partial rant about the new LG Voyager (vx10000) and Verizon. Weighing in at $469 retail, it doesn’t offer much outside of looks that other, less attractive devices like the Samsung i760 do for slightly more money without being crippled by the always disappointing Verizon interface.

The Voyager does a good job in the looks department, it’s not a bad looking phone overall with gloss black and chrome trim, large front screen and a big keyboard. The branding is muted, small and stamped in chrome, similar to the original chocolate. Most LG devices are nice to look at, which is what initially roped me into the Chocolate, my first non-pay as you go phone. It stole enough look from the iPod to make it alluring. Same deal with the Voyager, steals enough of the iPhone’s simple visual design to warrant an immediate comparison. However, the front screen is smaller than it could have been, same with the second screen once flipped open. The front screen could have stretched farther, north and south, gaining about another inch of screen real estate. Inner screen could have been a tad wider also. Both screens are low res. I’m supposed to watch video and surf the net on this thing? Hey Verizon, bump up the number of pixels!
The overall size is smaller than I expected. It looked much bigger in photos I had seen. Then there’s the weight, it’s extremely light, which to me, makes it feel cheaply made. My chocolate phone weighs more than the Voyager and it’s tiny! The Voyager is strong on looks but skimps on quality of build parts.

The Voyager could have been all that without treading into smartphone territory, big touch screen, 2 MP auto-focus camera, html web browsing, full keyboard, mobile tv, music & movie playback and function as a mass storage device but no Verizon drops the ball again.

The touch screen is nice but it’s a gimmick. Same tired VZW UI, menus, and options. There is a virtual keyboard but you only see it when using the web browser, you can’t use it to write text messages. I have this giant screen and I have to use an alphanumeric keypad unless I open the phone? At least make using it an option.
The HTML web browser is decent but sluggish and I can live without Flash. No java since the phone runs on BREW, which sucks. Pages render s-l-o-w-l-y and navigating by dragging your finger is a joke since the phone takes at least a second to move the page after dragging. Drag, wait, drag wait. No thanks. After adding a full HTML browser seems like a waste when you have to switch to “optimized web” in order for it to perform reasonably well. Oh, and it’s EVDO is the slower Rev.0. Why no Rev.A? I have a side business selling online so more and more, internet access becomes important but I’m not ready for a (usually ugly) PDA with a slew of features I’ll never use.
Adding VCast for unlimited data is a must to get the full functionality out of this phone but it adds MobileTV. I haven’t tried this but it seems interesting. The camera is a mediocre 2 MP with slow auto-focus. For being a flagship phone, this thing should have had 3MP minimum AND a flash. The physical keyboard is similar to the enV but I like the rubber coating present on the Samsung i760 keyboard.

Expandable memory up to 8 GB microSD is nice but means I have to spend MORE money for moderate storage (internal 184 MB doesn’t cut it for a media-centric device). A better Mobile Email app is nice but I would prefer to install Mobile Gmail. Oh, Verizon phones don’t do Java, guess I’m out of luck.

In conclusion, the LG Voyager may be on a decent network and look nice but it’s a half-hearted attempt at capturing a burgeoning US market that wants more out of their phone without jumping into PDA/smartphone territory. LG needs to stop buckling to Verizon and crippling their phone to the point where they are practically useless for anything except making phone calls.

After seeing earlier today that Samsung’s recent F700 is coming to VZW under the model number U940 (it’s crippled too with a 2 MP camera instead of the original 5 MP or even later 3 MP, probably VZW’s awful UI instead of the slick Croix interface.. WTF?!?!) I will probably hold out for that phone and see if it improves in any of the areas where the Voyager has failed.

People like(d) to complain about the iPhone’s price but when you’re in a spot like me and forced to pay full retail so you don’t have to get another contract, the iPhone doesn’t seem so expensive anymore. Add to the fact that and SDK will be out for the iPhone in February 2008, this is just the beginning of what the iPhone is capable of offering customers. More and more it seems the iPhone is a platform and not just a phone/iPod. It would be nice if the big carriers (I’m looking at you, Verizon!) would learn to get out of the phone makers’ way so we could see some truly innovative devices hit the US market.

Switched to a new theme on my site, Simplicity by Karsten Kuhnen. It’s a german language theme which I have converted to English. I’ve posted the English version of it here. Should this upset Mr. Kuhnen, please send me an email (or post a comment) and I will remove it.

[update: June 29, 07] Mr. Kuhnen has approved my distribution of his theme in English, which I appreciate. I have made tiny modifications to the theme such as changing the font of headlines and subheads to a Georgia, a nice serif font, leaving the body copy and menus in Verdana. I feel it helps set them apart more to the viewer. I will be tweaking the theme more and updating the file.

Download the English version of Simplicity Dark.