With my recent Windows XP project box I have come to love uTorrent. I have always known it to be one of the best if not THE best torrent client for Windows but now have been able to contribute. Even if it’s as little as what I am about to show you, I am glad to help out.

I have always liked being able to add a web interface to programs so that I can access them from wherever I am. Torrent Clients are probably the most useful to have a WebUI for and the people over at the uTorrent Forums have done a very good job at doing that with utorrent. On top of that, David Raso has made an add on for it so that you can easily access it with your iPhone (iphone webui website).

This is a very polished and well written piece of software and does its job flawlessly but I immediately saw that it lacked progress bars. You know, those things that easily let you glance at your downloads and see which ones are further along. So I decided to do something about it.

I opened up the scripts.js file in Mr. Raso’s iPhone folder and started reading through it. Sure enough this guy isn’t new at coding and formats everything I have seen him do very well. So it wasn’t as hard as I would think to make this work for me. An extra function in his javascript file, some simple css formatting and VIOLA! Progress bars!

Now I know these aren’t all Web 2.0 savvy with cool glass looks and rounded corners but they get the job done and don’t look absolutely horrible. Oh, one more thing. I have NOT added any additional files, just modifed them, so to install simply use his instructions.

Download iPhone uTorrent WebUI Mod

The left is his original one, the right is mine. I feel that I can see my torrents much faster.

I was recently was given a Dell Dimension 8250(2.4ghz P4, 512mb, S-Video out graphics card) for free so I decided to dip into Windows again and try out their media centers. It’s been a long time since I have actually done anything in Windows but it hasn’t changed much…

Long waits for updating to SP2, installing all the necessary add-ons such as DirectX 9c, the .NET framework, and a ridiculously tedious amount of security patches and updates. Once I got through all of that I realized that a fresh installation of Windows XP is really not as bad as I remember, but then again I haven’t browsed any sites other than MediaPortal, Microsoft Update, and a few Dell Drivers pages so there’s not a chance of any trojans, viruses, etc… but I did spend about 6-7 hours installing updates.

MediaPortal is very nice, it reminds me of how much I liked XBMC. Maybe because a lot of the developers doing This application started out doing XBMC, lol. Plus they had drivers for me to use my old Xbox 1 remote control and it set up very easily. Again, other than the hours upon hours of updates so that I could get MediaPortal running, it has been a very smooth setup.

The thing that I am really glad to have again is the database that MediaPortal has so all you have to do is point it to your folder of movies and it automatically downloads all sorts of good Movie Covers, Actors, Summary, and more from IMDB.com. It really helps out the user experience when you can see the cover the of movie your about to watch instead of FrontRows’ method of just using Quick Look to preview a single frame a few seconds into the movie.

I did run into a few problems with trying to stream my movies and tv episodes from my MacMini using Samba but once I pulled my head out of my ass I realized it was a lot simpler than what I was doing. I think I was so caught up in the Windows mindset where I have to dig and dig for a preference file in the back corner of hell to make it work and when I tried to configure the mini I was still trying to dig instead of just going to the File Sharing and click the options button like it should be.

I also set up uTorrent so that I can have a little more reliable RSS torrentcasting for a free TiVo. Plus the new WebUI is fantastic and with the iPhone plugin for the WebUI I can check on all my downloads from anywhere. I give props to the WebUI and WebiPhoneUI guys, they did a great job.

I think I will do a series of how to set up a worry free MediaPortal setup with uTorrent, Making a Xbox remote adapter, installing MediaPortal, and explaining some of the problems I ran into so check back soon!

The main idea for a CarPC is to have a few set features. It usually consists of a Mini-ITX based computer and a touchscreen for easy navigation to at least a few basic features like Audio, Video, GPS/Navigation, Weather, and maybe a few more but those seem to be the most important ones out of the bunch. I almost bought a Mac Mini last year specifically for a CarPC but luckily enough… I bought an iPhone instead.

The iPhone is quite possibly the BEST platform for a CarPC. Not only does it have the features and services that you need but the multi-touch interface is incredible, its portable, and syncing is very easy. There are only a few advanced features of a CarPC that the iPhone can’t do right now and I am sure once the SDK comes out in February we won’t be lacking any iPhone apps. The stock iPhone actually comes with the basic set of features already and especially in the new firmware(1.1.3) with the update of Google Maps being able to pinpoint your location which will make Navizon obsolete also being able to save web clips to the front screen of your phone is going to help. That’s all fine and dandy but where will you truly get the most out of your little investment will be after you have JailBroken it.

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