

uTorrent Opens Up Apps, Starts Developer Challenge - pyronicide
http://blog.bittorrent.com/2010/07/12/announcing-apps-for-µtorrent-developers-challenge-and-sdk/

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thwarted
"apps" are the new "extensions" which were the new "plugins" which replaced
"skins" which supplanted "themes". Or something like that.

How long before have to have this conversation:

"Our product needs to support user customization. We need apps!" "We have an
extension framework." "But that's not apps!"

From <http://www.utorrent.com/labs/griffin>

_The Griffin project introduces a web-based extensions framework for µTorrent
to allow for easy extensibility by 3rd party developers through a simple API
... What we came up with is a web-based extensions framework where "Apps"
which consist only of HTML and Javascript can be added to the client and
displayed using an embedded browser window._

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PidGin128
µTorrent (many torrent clients infact) have long had their own web interfaces,
for managing downloads thru a browser from afar.

It sounds like these Apps/Extensions are simply a tidier bundling of the long
present webgui [webgui.zip ?]. Technically, I bet all this was possible
already, but this likely makes the use more conventional, supported, & easier
to setup.

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Groxx
Must everything become a platform?

~~~
pyronicide
Once you get down to it, all code is written on top of a platform. Why not use
the wisdom of crowds and open it up to everyone so that they can contribute
their ideas?

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Shorel
Yes, I want for example that my context menu becomes a platform of sorts,
where they can show me good offers on any word selected in any software I use!

We can make it optionally purple and add bananas, if desired.

~~~
pyronicide
Man, now I want a context menu that gives me bananas! Brilliant.

~~~
Groxx
How about a context menu that _drives_ you bananas? I'm sure I can find one of
those...

/me is glad I bought bananas a while ago. * nom nom nom * .

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adbge
I can see it now:

Would you like to install WeatherBug uTorrent edition along with this program?

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martythemaniak
What's an example of a useful thing you can write?

~~~
niyazpk
Probably a web server which stores data in a distributed (and fault tolerant)
way in all these clients. There will be no central point of failure. This will
be really worthy of being called "cloud" as opposed to a bunch of servers put
together in a farm.

In addition to the advantage of being fault tolerant, a system like this will
be able to balance the load in such a way that the website never goes down in
case of a traffic surge.

Another benefit (or not, depending on how you see it) will be that a website
hosted in a torrent cloud will be difficult to take down by anyone.

