Category: Updates

On ads, open-source and Transdroid development

As most of you Transdroid users have noticed I experimented the last few months with advertisements in the non-donate version. To be honest I never liked them myself and in a final attempt to make something out of this I changed ad provider last week. Well, the results were pretty obvious. Since MobFox, that was the new provider, requires to read your phone’s unique ID users littered the Market comments with bad reviews, low star ratings and e-mails asking why. So I removed them.

Transdroid is, and will always be, open-source and free to use. If you love Transdroid, please consider donating by buying the donate version form the Market or making a direct PayPal donation. It keeps Transdroid development going.

Transdroid has become a mature product but I will keep on fixing bugs, tweaking the UI, adding small features and providing support for (new) users.

I’ll end with a word on 2312 development’s newly release app ‘Control Panel for cPanel’. If you own a web server that uses the cPanel tool to manage files, e-mail, domains, etc. then get the free or donate version of the app from the Android Market.

SeedM8 seedboxes

With the release of the (now already in beta) 0.20.1 release 0.21.0 release, Transdroid will offer a new partnership. SeedM8 offers inexpensive GBit seedbox hosting:

Since December 2007, SeedM8 has been providing users with ways to use the BitTorrent protocol to it’s full potential with unparalleled support and inexpensive solutions. Today, SeedM8 is one of the largest seedbox providers with over 375 members and 30+ servers. Our servers pack new stable processors with plenty of RAM and harddrive space to insure your files are getting to their peers. No waiting lines, no subscription requirements, no costly accounts, no weary privacy policies and no unfair agreements are what you are guaranteed with SeedM8.

Users of SeedM8 can start using Transdroid very easily: filling in your server, username and torrent client password(s) and you’re set! If you like, you can use all of Transmission, Deluge and rTorrent (with your RPC password) at once. See what the speed of SeedM8’s hosting can do with the magic of Transdroid: see the offered monthly plans.

Did I already say that Transdroid finally supports The Pirate Bay as in-app search site? 😉

Xirvik seedbox partnership

Seedboxes are servers dedicated to one thing only: torrenting. No need to keep your home machine running all the time and amazing transfer speeds. And it isn’t only for die-hard torrent users as well; new users can benefit from the easy setup. No more need to forward ports on your router and other complex installation tasks!

And from the next release on connecting to your seedbox cannot be easier. Transdroid partnered with Xirvik to offer even easier setup. Depending on your Xirvik server plan (starting at $4,95 a week), you can connect to rTorrent, Torrentflux-b4rt or uTorrent with on 4 simple setttings. Moreover, Xirvik will sponsor Transdroid development to build new features and improve existing ones. Are you a Xirvik user? Make sure to pass them your Transdroid feature requests so they get pushed forward in the work queue. 🙂

New look and icon

When I started development on Transdroid back in May 2009, I stole Transmission‘s icon to feature my application. IT was an innocent choice since Transdroid  would support nothing but that torrent client. Skip ahead 7 months and so much has changed since. Many new torrent clients and many new features were added. So for the app to get its own icon is really overdue already.

Glad to present you Transdroid’s new logo! It is right here next to you. The idea came from the gears in a transmission together with the obvious download arrow. So the logo, as well as the name, still hint at its Transmission-tight past. On the other hand, I think its a fresh start as well.

Although some comments in the Market already explained they miss the old icon, others seem to approve of it. I hope most of you will enjoy it. Leave comments here or twit me at Twitter.

Finally, if someone ever wants to download the new logo, here it is:
PNG logo — PNG icon — PNG tiny icon — PNG promo — PSD logo — PSD icon — PSD promo

Website problems

I am trying to get the site back online as soon as possible. Sorry for all the inconvenience the website downtime causes.

UPDATE: Most of the stuff is back online, like posts and pages. The install guides are still missing the images – this will be fixed soon as well. The translation tool should be working again. Missing something? Mail me about it!

New site, new release

Welcome to Transdroid’s new website: www.transdroid.org Glad you have found your way. The application is getting better and better and is also attracting more and more users. To fit this growing interest and more mature image, the logical next step was for the application to get its own domain name. Thanks so much to Travis, who provided the domain registration and hosting. The old blog will be there for a little longer, but only on this site you’ll find the latest updates and user support. All old posts and comments are moved here too.

More interesting for you as a users is that a new Transdroid version was just released! Version 0.12.1 had some nice updates, most of which were requested by users themselves. So what’s new?

  • Vuze (previously called Azureus) support. The most-used torrent client that wasn’t yet supported. You will need the XML over HTTP plug-in enabled in Vuze.
  • Swipe to switch. Switching between your server configurations now is even easier. Just swipe – or fling – your finger from left to right or right to left to switch to the next or previous configuration. No need to open up the menu.
  • Support for local .torrent file uploads. You will need a compatible file manager, such as OI File Manager. Hit the ‘add local .torrent file’ button in the torrent add screen to install. Other file managers may work, such as aFile when using the Send to… command.
  • Deluge support updated. Transdroid’s Deluge support is based on the not yet released 1.2 version. In practice this means that you will always need the latest SVN version. Transdroid is updated to reflect the recent (security) updates and should work again.
  • Updated translations, now including Romanian.

Get the new version from the market or download directly. More coming up!

Better views at your torrents

The latest and greatest Transdroid has just been released to the market, which mostnotably comes with an options to filter your torrents per status. Four views are available with a simple button press, which will filter the torrent list for a better overview of what is going on. There is still a main view showing all your torrents, but you can also choose to only display downloading, seeding or inactive torrents.

The new main views per torrent status
The new main views per torrent status

Hope you like this new feature. If you have other ideas on how to Transdroid, feel free to leave a comment, or even open an issue for it.

Multi-server support

Not only was support for multiple servers a personal nice-to-have, but it was also requested by some of the Transdroid users. So I finally had the time to build this very nice feature, which is in the newly released 0.10.1. It is now very easy to switch between set-ups. One of the main benefits: when you come how and connect to your local WiFi, a simple tap on your LAN server configuration is enough to connect to your torrent app again. Here are some screenshots of the new functionality:

The new preferences screen shows all server configurations
The new preferences screen shows all server configurations
Switching between server configurations is easy
Switching between server configurations is easy

And have you noticed that you can now not only search isoHunt, but BTJunkie and Mininova as well? I will build a web search feature in the near future.

New sites available, all with search results right inside Transdroid
New sites available, all with search results right inside Transdroid

Oh, and the nasty widget bug is also solved in this release. Sorry for any inconvience this may have caused. Hope the new features make up for it. 🙂

Want to follow Transdroid development and receive early updates? Join Transdroid on Twitter!

A quick overview of the Transdroid widget

Today I released the 0.9.0 version of Transdroid. It includes some bugfixes and an update for the Deluge daemon, but most importantly it now has a home screen widget.

It shows the status of all torrents combined: how many are downloading, at which speed and how long will it take to finish them all? The number of uploads and inactive torrents are shown as well. Finally, the Transdroid icon opens Transdroid and a refresh button is provided. To not drain your battery, the data is only updated when requested manually. Hope you like this brand new feature!

A side notice: since app widgets are Cupcake (Android 1.5) only, this is now the minimum required version. If you have any troubles with this, please let me know. Older versions are always available for download.

The user is always right

Le client est roi. The Transdroid userbase is still growing on a daily basis, having thousands of active installs on Android devices all over the world. But since there is always room for improvement, I regularly get new feature requests in the issue tracker. Although not all of them can be implemented, I am still trying to build in as much as possible. Most of the updates since my last ‘features’ blog post actually came from user requests. Here are the ones that made it to the new version:

  • rTorrent support (request 7)
  • Search term history (requested in a Market comment)
  • Starting and stopping of torrents, supported by uTorrent and rTorrent (request 11)
  • .torrent file uploads (currently only for Transmission) to handle password-protected torrent sites (request 29)
  • French and Italian translations (want to help? mail me a translated strings.xml)
  • Reverse sort order (requested in a Market comment)

Any requests yourself? Just submit them to the issue tracker! More to come.