Limewire

Downloading free music. Yup, it’s illegal, but people still do it. Once in a blue moon, I will download a song. New Year’s Eve I was introduced to a file sharing application I had never heard of called Limewire. I tried it out & it works good. There is a free version & a paid version. I used the free version and was able to download songs relatively quickly, despite my dial up connection. You can also download other types of media, such as videos. It is also open source. Limewire contains the following features:

NO BUNDLED SOFTWARE OF ANY KIND!
No spyware. No adware. Guaranteed.
Firewall to Firewall Transfers.
Since about 60% of users are currently firewalled, this feature greatly increases the amount of content on the network.
Faster network connections.
Using new “UDP Host Caches”, LimeWire starts up and connects faster then ever before!
Universal Plug ‘N Play.
UPnP support allows LimeWire to find more search results and have faster downloads.
iTunes Integration.
Windows users can now take advantage of LimeWire’s iTunes integration.
Creative Commons Integration.
LimeWire now recognizes OGGs and MP3s licensed under a Creative Commons License.
“What’s New?” feature.
Users can browse the network for the most recent content additions.
Search drill down results.
Searches in LimeWire now immediately display the artists, albums and other information that fully describes files.
Proxy support.
Users can now use web proxies to route their downloads to protect their identity.
Support for International searches and International groups.
Users can now search in any language, and LimeWire ensures that a user will be connected to other users with their own language to aide international users to receive search results in their native language and to find content from sources that are close to home.
LimeWire still has the following great features:
Ease of use. Just install, run, and search.
Ability to search by artist, title, genre, or other meta-information.
Elegant multiple search tabbed interface.
“Swarm” downloads from multiple hosts help you get files faster.
iTunes integration for Mac users.

Unique “ultrapeer” technology reduces bandwidth requirements for most users.
Integrated chat.
Browse host feature. Even works through firewalls.
Added Bitzi metadata lookup.
International versions: Now available in many new languages.
Connects to the network using GWebCache, a distributed connection system.
Automatic local network searches for lightning-fast downloads. If you’re on a corporate or university network, download files from other users on the same network almost instantaneously!
Support for MAGNET links that allow you to click on web page links that access Gnutella.