Supercharge iTunes With Some More Of Doug’s AppleScripts [Mac]

If you’re a heavy iTunes users with a significant size music collection, you definitely should know about Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes. Doug Adams has been writing scripts for iTunes ever since Apple’s inception of its popular jukebox. As far as I can tell, iTunes seems to be the most scriptable of all the default Mac applications.  Last year I talked about some of Doug’s scripts and now I want to cover some more useful ones.
If you’re not familiar with AppleScripts don’t let the techie name scare you off. Doug‘s site has scripts for managing your music tracks, playlists, album covers, controlling iTunes, networking, managing files and lots more. Instructions for downloading and installing scripts are very clear and if you become interested in creating your own iTunes scripts, Doug’s how-to guides get you started in that direction as well.

Smarts

Doug has created several self-contained AppleScript apps, each for $5 or less. But his free offering, Smarts, will be very useful to iTunes users who like to use smart playlists, which are the best way to create smart collections and manage a large selection of music tracks.

With Smarts, you can load and save your existing smart playlists as templates for creating similar smart playlists. So for a very simple example, you might have a smart playlist for recently added tracks to your iTunes library. It might be set up like this:

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With Smarts, you can load and save that smart list as a template to create new ones that use some similar rules. Using a template saves you the trouble of starting from scratch.
You can also use Smarts to access and manage all your smart playlists. This little tool is great for iTunes users just getting started with iTunes and for those of you who would like to create more smart collections.
If you’re new to smart technology in Mac, check out my free MUO Automation Guide for all you need to know to get started using it.

Quick Convert

Advanced iTunes users and music aficionados know that MP3 files can be encoded into different formats for better quality. The default format for most iTunes tracks is AAC.

If you want to encode and export tracks into a different format, you have to make the change in General Preferences of iTunes. That’s not a big problem, but if you’re encoding lots of different files, you might want to use Doug’s Quick Convert AppleScript.
The step-by-step instructions for downloading and installing this and other Doug apps are very easy to follow.

After you install scripts, you can easily access them from within the menu bar of iTunes. Your menu list will reflect the scripts you have installed in the Scripts folder of iTunes, similar to this one:

Remove Dead Tracks

If your iTunes library has grown a little unwieldy with “dead” tracks and playlists, Doug’s Remove Dead Tracks will locate those files that are “no longer in your local drive (“!” appears next to their names) and asks to delete them from the playlist“.

If your iTunes library is quite large, the scanning process will take some time. And as Doug notes, use this script “thoughtfully and cautiously”.

Gather Up The One Hits

If you‘re like me, you’ve probably collected lots of single music files, such as the free single offering posted in the iTunes Music Store every Tuesday.

If those singles are scattered throughout your library, you can use Doug’s Gather Up the One Hits script to have them collected and put into a single new playlist. The only drawback to this script is that if you have album collections featuring a compilation of artists, it will read those tracks as singles. So you will need to go through the new playlist, sort it by Album, and delete the tracks you don’t want in the “one hit” playlist.

Track’s Album To Playlist

If you haven’t been very good about putting music files in playlists, this Track’s Album to Playlist can help you manage those files. You can quickly find out if a selected song is in a playlist by right-clicking on it and seeing which playlists, if any, it is located in.

In the example above, the selected track is found in a few smart playlists, but there’s no playlist for the album of songs that track belongs to. So I can select the single track and run the script to have it create a new playlist that includes all the tracks for that CD.

Change Hidden Preferences

iTunes, now in its 10th version, constantly grows and improves, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be customized and tweaked. Doug’s Change Hidden Preferences script allows you to make a number of preference changes, including hiding the “Ping” buttons, automatically creating playlists for purchased song collections and adding a “Library” playlist for your collection.

I have not scratched the surface of all the scripts available for free on Doug’s iTunes site. He and other developers have hundreds of iTunes scripts —some old, for older versions of iTunes, and a few that might not quite work as described.
If you’re a dedicated iTunes user, you owe it to yourself to spend some time browsing and downloading scripts. If you find his scripts useful, drop Doug a line at dougscripts at Mac doc com.

How To Remotely Control Your Mac Using Simple AppleScripts

If you’re lucky to have two or more Macs in your home or office, you no doubt find occasions where you would like to remote control a Mac either from another room or from another part of the country. You probably know that you can use the Shared feature to remotely control another Mac on the same network. But by creating some simple AppleScript commands you can control a remote Mac much faster, alleviating the need to open the Shared screen feature.
If you have never worked with AppleScript before, don’t fret. The following Mac remote control scripts are very short and easy to use.

Settings For Remote Control

In order to remotely control a Mac, say your desktop machine, you must first set it up for commands to be sent to it. To do this, launch System Preferences > Sharing on the Mac you want to control. Click the box next to Remote Apple Events, and set user restrictions if you need to.

Next, you will need the IP address. In System Preferences, switch to Network and locate your machine’s IP address. It should be something like, 192.168.2.3.4.. Copy that address to proceed to the next step. You can also use the machine’s Bonjour name which can be found at the top of the Sharing pane in System Preferences. Its address will be spelled similar to this one: “smith-nancy-computer.local.”

Create A Script Command

Now, on another Mac, say your laptop, launch the AppleScript Editor, which can be found in Applications Folder > Utilities Folder. Our first command will be one that puts the remote Mac to sleep.
In AppleScript, go to File > New. Copy and paste the following simple script in the editor:

tell application “Finder” of machine “eppc://192.163.1.2.3″
sleep
end tell

Replace the sample IP address with the address of the Mac you’re going to send the command to. Be sure the address comes after “eppc://.

Now click the Compile icon. If you don’t get an error message, you should be good to go.

Now make sure the remote is awake and running. Click the Run button in AppleScript. You will probably be asked for authentication. Type the username and password of the Mac you’re sending the command to. If it works, then you have successfully sent your first remote command to another Mac.

Saving Your Scripts

There are a couple of ways you can save and access your scripts. You can save them to the Scripts Menu that can be put into the menu bar of your desktop. It looks like this:

If it is not there, go to the AppleScript Editor, open its Preferences and click the box, “Show Script menu in menu bar” in the General Pane. If that doesn’t bring it up, look for the AppleScript’s folder in the Applications folder. Inside that folder, find and click on “Install Script Menu.”

Save your script in your Home Library > Scripts folder. It then should show up in you Scripts Menu. From there, you can run the script whenever you need it without having the AppleScript Editor open.

If you think you’re going to run the script on a regular basis, you can save it as an application and put it in your Dock.

Other Command Scripts

Here are a few other commands that you might want to send to your Mac.

Start iTunes

tell application “iTunes” of machine “eppc://IP Address”
play
end tell

Stop iTunes

tell application “iTunes” of machine “eppc://IP Address”
stop
end tell

Increase Volume

tell application “Finder” of machine “eppc://IP Address”
set volume 7 — Call this one “Full Volume”
end tell

Open The Safari Browser

tell application “Safari” of machine “eppc://IP Address”
activate
end tell

Close The Safari Browser

tell application “Safari” of machine “eppc://IP Address”
quit
end tell

Let me know if this tutorial works out for you. If you know of other AppleScript commands that our readers might find useful, please share them here. For some more AppleScript automation ideas, check out this article, and if you looking for Mac automation tips, download my free MUO Guide to Mac Automation

How To Download Google Books As A PDF File [Mac]

Google comes up with the coolest services. Every time I look at the diversity of the things it can do, my jaw drops in awe. If you don’t agree with me, well — just think back. This little company began amazing us by providing the largest email inbox in history. Email! And now? We can’t live without Google’s services.
Google Books is one of the offerings that completely blows my mind. The fact that I can now read magazines that was published way back before I was even born is absolutely astounding. The only teensy-weensy flaw that makes me cringe is the lack of offline support. If the magazine or classic that I’m reading is free, then it should be made freely available — even offline.

That’s where Google Book Downloader comes in. Apparently Varun wrote about a similar application for Windows a while back. Just to clear any confusion, that app was called Melon Google Books Downloader and weirdly, it seems to have disappeared.
This nifty Mac application allows you to download Google Books as PDF files and read them offline just like any other ebook you download. You can then sync those files to your iPhone, Android or any other mobile device which supports PDF. It’s very simple to use and quick too. Let’s run through it once, shall we?
Download the application from the developer’s site hac the planet. As you can plainly see from the site, Google Book Downloader was designed to run with Leopard. However, I’m running Snow Leopard and the application works without a glitch.

Perform the usual ritual of mounting the DMG and dragging the app to your Applications folder. Then there’s nothing left for you to do but run it. Basically, the app is a downloader and compiler. So don’t expect a juicy graphical user interface. All you get is an input field and a big Download button.

Let me first point out that not all ebooks can be downloaded from Google Books. If you’re thinking that you will be able to download complete copies of ebooks with limited preview, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Again, only free ebooks will be available for download.
In order to make any free ebook from Google Books into a PDF, copy the URL and paste it into the input field in Google Book Downloader. Hit Download and watch the magic happen.

Google Book Downloader will retrieve the title of the ebook along with the contents and compile them into a nice little PDF. Now you will be able to read the ebook offline or on the go with your mobile device.

As with every application, we have to discover the options Google Book Downloader allows. The only notable preference here is the width of the resulting document. Google Books Downloader will let you customise the width of the output PDF file. Why is this cool? Well because if the ebook is mainly text, then you can select to have the width equal the original document. However, if the ebook is mainly images, you can save some space by downsizing it — making it easier to copy over to and view from your mobile device.

Google Book Downloader works only on Mac OS X 10.5 and above. Download it here.
Do you prefer reading ebooks online or offline? Do you prefer having your ebook with you on the go? Are you familiar with any other tool that lets download Google Books ebooks as PDF files. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

How To Trigger the Download of a File Remotely (Mac Only)

These days, almost everybody is connected to more than one computer. The common scenario is: one computer at work and one computer at home. This configuration often requires people to move files between computers, raising the popularity of USB drives.
Sometimes you find something at work that you want to download for your home computer (or vice versa). You could:

• download it on your work computer and bring it home later, or…
• ask your home computer to do a remote download right away – real time – from your work computer.

There’s nothing wrong with the first option, but even from the non-geek point of view, the second one is way cool. So if you have a Mac machine (which is always connected to the net) and a Dropbox account, I’ll show you how to set up the system to do a remote download – non-geek style.

Note: Dropbox is a service which will allow its users to synchronize files online and across computers. If you haven’t got it, you can get the free version, or you could try the 14-day free trial pro version (credit card required but you won’t be charged).
To learn more about this service, you can read our article comparing Dropbox and Sugarsync.

How the system works

Before we start, I think it’s best to understand how this remote download trigger works. I got the idea of setting up the system when I wrote about “2 Useful Tips For Organizing Electronic Files [Mac Only]“.


Basically it would go like this:

• you find a file that you want to receive through a remote download
• you get the download link and save it into a text file
• you put the text file into the specified Dropbox folder
• that folder will be synchronized with the same folder in your home computer
• the addition of this new text file inside the folder will trigger a download action
• after that, the text file will be moved to another folder and synchronized back to your work computer. You will be notified that the remote download process has started.

Setting up the system

Here’s how I set up my system. You can do some modifications according to your preferences.
First, I created a new folder inside the Dropbox folder on my home computer called “Remote Download“. Inside the folder I created two other folders called “New Links” and “Started“.

Then I created an Automator workflow to trigger the automatic download. I went to “File –> New –> Folder Action” menu and I :

1. Set the “New Links” folder as the trigger for the folder action

2. Chose “Files & Folders” from the Automator library

3. Dragged the “Filter Finder Items” workflow as the first action, and set it to “find all .txt files inside the New Links folder

4. Dragged the “Open Finder Items” workflow as the second action and set it to “open the .txt files using my download manager. Please note that you have to use a download manager that can import download links from txt files. I use iGetter (not free), but you can experiment with the download manager that you choose.

5. Dragged “Move Finder Items” workflow as the third action and set it to move the .txt file to the “Started” folder.

6. Saved the workflow as “Automatic Download“

You can change the folder’s name and the saved workflow to your liking, but you have to set the workflow actions accordingly.

How to use the system

To use the system, you just save a download link into a text file and put it in the “New Links” folder inside the Dropbox’s “Remote Download” folder in your work computer. You can also use the web interface if your work computer don’t have the Dropbox application installed. The text file will be synchronized and the download will be started automatically in your remote home computer. The scenario is also applied the other way around (from home to work).
The cool thing is, you can trigger the automatic download from any operating system (or even a mobile device) as long as you can connect to the net and can save a text file.
I strongly suggest you put one link inside one text file. Multiple links usually caused the download manager to ask for confirmation, so the download won’t start automatically.
As an additional bonus, you can set your work computer to notify you every time a new file is added into the “Started” folder so you’ll know that somewhere far away your download has started. Just set another Folder Action from the Automator.
You can use the same principle to trigger a torrent download, but instead of a txt file, you put the torrent file in a Dropbox folder and set your torrent client to monitor that folder and start the download automatically everytime a torrent file is detected. I know that Transmission is able to do that. But if you are using another torrent client that doesn’t have monitoring features, just use Folder Action.
I’d love to write a similar system for Windows users but I haven’t found a Windows equivalent to Mac’s Folder Action and download manager that can import links from a text file. Can anybody help?

How To Remotely Trigger A Torrent Download Via Email [Mac]

For a long time now, I’ve been searching for a way to start a torrent download from a remote location. And since I’m on the road most of the day, Transmission’s WebUI isn’t any good to me. I couldn’t be bothered to set it up anyway, it would involve having a fixed IP address or DynDNS — too much hassle to being with. What I actually needed was a simple way to download a torrent on my iPhone and send it to my Mac running at home.
When I realised that the iPhone didn’t support downloading files natively, I was back to square one. Then I thought of using Dropbox — but that didn’t work. After a couple of hours of research, I finally found a solution, albeit a pretty rudimentary one. It involves a secondary email, Mail rules, Transmission or uTorrent and Applescript. Now, let’s be clear on this: I’m not a scripting geek. I’m just an average Mac user. But the fact that I actually wrote this script is a clear testament to how easy it is to learn the Applescript language. I digressed.
Here’s how I managed to set up Mail and Transmission to automatically download torrents sent via email.

First of all, we need to write the script. But since this is MakeUseOf, I’ve already written it for you. Download the appropriate version depending on which torrent client you use.

Unzip the file and store the script somewhere safe, for example within the scripts folder located at /Library/Scripts/.
If you prefer to compile the script yourself, here’s how it looks like:

(*Transmission via email by Jackson Chung*)
using terms from application “Mail”
on perform mail action with messages theMessages for rule Torrent
tell application “Mail”
repeat with theMessage in theMessages
set theText to content of theMessage
set the clipboard to (theText)
end repeat
end tell
tell application “Transmission” to activate
tell application “System Events”
tell process “Transmission”
keystroke “u” using {command down}
keystroke (theText)
key code 36
end tell
end tell
end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from

Before we proceed, let me explain that we are going to set a rule to detect torrents sent from a primary email to a secondary email. So in this case, you’ll need to 2 separate email accounts.
Now launch Mail (assuming you inherently use Mail; if not, you’re out of luck) and enter its Preferences. Click on the Rules tab and add a new rule. Name it “Torrent“, then set the condition to “all”, as in “If all of the following conditions are met”. Next, set the rule conditions as you see in the screenshot below:

From – is equal to – your@emailaddress.com
Subject – is equal to – Download torrent

Perform the following actions:

Mark as Read
Run Applescript – Click the choose button and locate the Applescript you’ve just downloaded

Click on OK and click on “Don’t Apply” if asked Do you want to apply your rules to messages in selected mailboxes?
Mail is now set. For every email from your@emailaddress.com with the subject “Download torrent”, it will trigger the Applescript. Perfect, just what we want.
Now, let’s set Transmission. Enter its Preferences and check the box for “Start transfers when added” and make sure to uncheck “Display “adding transfer” options window”. We want Transmission to automatically start torrents without intervention. OK, Transmission is now set as well.

uTorrent’s default settings will do just fine.
Now then comes the interesting part. How do we format the email? It’s pretty simple. The Applescript is set to copy the content of the message so all you need to add is the URL to the torrent. Remove your email signature or it won’t work. From my iPhone, all I do is hold down on a link until the contextual menu appears. I tap on Copy and launch Mail on my iPhone.

Select the appropriate mailbox corresponding to your@emailaddress.com and compose a new message to your secondary email account my@emailaddress.com. Enter the subject line: Download torrent — remember that’s one of the triggers.
Then paste the torrent URL into the content of the message and remove everything else i.e. signatures, etc. Click Send and watch the magic happen.

As soon as your Mac receives the email, it will:

*Mark it as read; *Start the Applescript which then; *Launches Transmission or uTorrent; *Opens a torrent location from a URL; *Enters the URL into the field and clicks OK; *Starts downloading the torrent.

Since all of the magic happens from within your Mac, it doesn’t really matter how you send the email. Happily, you can do this from any mobile phone with internet connectivity, or from a browser. I hope you’ll find this “hack” useful.

How to Access your Torrent Client & Download Torrents Remotel

BitTorrent is great for sharing large files. If you have been using BitTorrent for some time you know the kind of stuff you can find out there. From movies to TV to games to Stanford lectures.
Here is how you can manage and download your torrents remotely which means that you can start a torrent download on your home computer while you are at your friends place or anywhere with access to the internet. So that when you come back home the downloading is already finished and it’s ready to use.
Sweeeeet? Lets make it happen.
You Will Need:

• Either µtorrent (Windows) or Transmission (Linux or Mac)
• A little tweaking around.

For Windows:

1. Download µtorrent Web UI (Direct Link) and follow these instructions to set it up.2. You need to place the zip file as it is (don’t extract) into the Application Data folder for µtorrent. To open the folder go to Start > Run (or Win + R) and type %AppData%\µtorrent and hit enter. This will open the required folder. Paste the zip file as it is. Don’t extract. 3. Open µtorrent and go to Options > Preferences (or Ctrl + P) and then to Web UI and check Enable Web UI . Provide the necessary details. 4. Now fire up the browser and point it to http://127.0.0.1:<portnumber>/gui/ where portnumber is the one mentioned in Preferences > Connection . Alternatively you can enable Web UI at 8080 from the dialog in step 3. I found this to work better. You can try both the options.
5. If all went well you should see the Web UI in the browser.

For Linux:

1. Just download and install Transmission Client. Look here or use your distribution’s package management. Make sure you have version >= 1.30.2. Go to Edit > Preferences and Check Enable Web Interface, optionally you can specify a username and password, you will be asked to log in when you try to access the torrents via the web interface. 3. Remember the port number you specify or leave the default if there is no conflict. 4. That’s it, you are ready to rock! Fire up the browser and hop over to http://localhost:9091 (you may need replace 9091 with the port you specified in case you changed it). 5. You should see the interface or login screen if all went well. If not, make sure you did everything right or see troubleshooting below.

For Mac :

Transmission (see above) is available for Mac as well. So most of the setup would be similar, I presume. I have not tried it on a Mac because I don’t have one.

Troubleshooting and Additional Tips:

Entering localhost:port doesn’t show up anything on my machine
Make sure you followed the steps correctly, also check that your firewall allows access to the port. And oh yes, make sure the torrent application is running on the remote machine (i.e. the machine you are trying to access).
Entering localhost:port shows up my friends torrents
Yes, it will. If you want to access your torrents on your home computer you will have to know the IP-Address of your home computer. In that case you will have to enter : or use dynamic DNS (see below) to access the torrents.
I can access the torrents using localhost or 127.0.0.1 but cannot access from the internet
Make sure you are typing the IP correctly. You might also have to forward the port in question. Use your router’s guide to achieve this or try port-forward
My IP changes everytime I connect to the internet, is there a way around?
Great, you have a Dynamic IP. There is surely a way around your problem, it just requires a little extra configuration.
So here you go – There are a number of services that offer you dynamic DNS’s. This means that you will get a URL like yourname.xyz.com, and everytime you enter this URL you will be actually referring to your computer/server at home. DynDns and No-IP are two such services. I have been using DynDNS and there are clients for both Windows and Linux that keep your IP updated. So no matter how often your IP changes yourname.xyz.com will always point to your computer. You can use this with a static IP as well just to make it easier.
I am on Windows using µtorrent and my web UI still doesn’t appear
You might want to enable the alternative listening port from within Options > Preferences > Web UI . I had this problem in the beginning where it would only show up on the alternative port. Some users have also reported problems when using the trailing ‘/’ after ‘gui’ in http://127.0.0.1:<portnumber>/gui/ so you can try with and without the trailing ‘/’ and see if that helps.

Increase the Speed of Your Internet Connection

Does your ISP deliver the speed you pay for? It’s rather easy to test your broadband internet speed. However, there are a few things to keep in mind. For one, ISPs usually promise an “up to” speed, so you can’t expect top performance at all times, that’s part of the deal. During high traffic times your ISP will suffer from high loads and will certainly not be able to deliver the maximum speed. Thus you’d best perform different speed tests at different time points, to see whether you ever reach the top speed. Also, when running a speed test, make sure no other applications are using the internet, else the result will not be accurate.
Speedtest.net is a good place to test your internet speed. They operate through servers all over the world, so you can connect to a server near you, which increases the accuracy of your result.

As you may realize, your internet speed does not only depend on your ISP, it also depends on the hardware and software used on your end of the line. If you are using hardware provided by your ISP, there shouldn’t be a problem. The bottleneck for speed often sits in the connecting computer.
Here are a few tips to Increase the Speed of Your Internet Connection

(1) Connecting Port

This may seem obvious, but you should connect to the internet though an ethernet port, rather than a serial, parallel or USB port. If ethernet is not an option, it may be advisable to update your hardware.

(2) Enough RAM

Make sure your system memory can handle the load! If you want to browse fast, you will need to close other applications in case your RAM is maxed out.

(3) Fast Browser

Mozilla based browsers generally are among the fastest browsers, while still being comfortable to use. Whichever open source browser you pick, make sure you don’t overload it with extensions or addons, those will just slow your browser down dramatically. On the other hand, if speed and RAM are not an issue, go for the luxury!
Also there are a number of tweaks and addons to increase the speed of your browser.

(4) Increase Speed under Windows XP Pro

Windows XP Professional reserves 20% of your bandwidth for services like updates or spyware checks. If you would like to exploit this reserve, do the following:

1. Click [Windows] + [R] and type gpedit.msc in the Run window. 2. Under Computer Configuration expand the Administrative Templates. 3. Go to Network and click the QoS Packet Scheduler tab. 4. Double-click on Limit Reservable Bandwidth and enable it. 5. Finally change the Bandwidth limit to 0% and click Apply. 6. Reboot your computer and enjoy.

(5) Tweak Tools

There are a number of programs that promise to increase your internet speed. They may work, they may not. They all apply a number of changes to optimize your network settings. Whether or not they will really improve your internet speed or which one will work the best for you greatly depends on your system, hence it’s difficult to recommend an application.
For further reading I will refer you to a set of articles found on About.com. Start with DSL and Cable Broadband Speed Tweaks and work your way through the links at the bottom.

5 Ways To Increase Your Torrent Download Speed

For many people, the distributed peer-to-peer download power of torrents isn’t all it’s made out to be. If you’re feeling drowned in fake files, choking from ISP speed throttling, and sick of being told you’re unconnectable – this guide is for you. We’ll have your torrent downloads in tip-top shape in no time. Note, I’m not touching on security here. If you’re paranoid about your ISP or the RIAA, your only solution is to run everything you do through a VPN and be done with it. If you follow everything I show you here, your torrent overview screen should soon be capable of looking like this:

Open Those Ports!

Your first step how to speed up torrent downloads is to ensure you can actually be connected to from other peers. The latest version of uTorrent is able to test this for you, so launch the Setup Guide from the Options menu. If you have an older uTorrent, you can test specific ports using this tool.

By default, uTorrent will attempt to auto-configure your router using uPnP, which solves so many problems. If your router isn’t compatible, this will fail – but you can perform the following steps to forward the ports correctly.

Open up a command prompt from Windows, and type ipconfig. Find the IPv4 address of the form 192.168.x.x and note it down.

Open up uTorrent Options-> Preferences -> Connection , and choose your own port or note down the one it has chosen for you. Make sure “randomise port each start” is not checked.

Open up your router config page and look for PORT FORWARDING. Yours may be different, but they are all basically similar. Name the forwarding rule, add the first and last port you want forwarded (just enter the same value in this case), and the IP address or the machine you want forwarded to.
Note that if your network is running an automatic addressing scheme, you may need to reconfigure this if you shut down and are given a new address. You can read my previous tutorial here on how to reserve a permanent IP address from your router.
Be sure to re-test when you’re done, though you may need to restart your router.

ISP Throttling & Traffic Shaping

Assuming you’ve gone through all the other steps in this guide and your torrents are still slow, then it’s quite possible that your ISP is shaping your traffic somehow.
This tool from Glasnost can help you tell if your ISP is throttling your speed and specifically tests torrent protocol.
If you find you’re being restricted, you have two possible courses of action. The first is to switch your ISP to one less draconic. In the UK at least, I know Virgin Media are very open about their traffic policies, and do perform some outright speed restrictions (not just on your torrent traffic) if your download/upload goes beyond a certain point during peak times. In general though, they have the least restrictive of any UK ISP.

Your second option is to use a VPN to encrypt your traffic, making it impossible for your ISP to inspect what you are actually doing. Bear in mind this only works if they are “shaping” your traffic for specific protocols, rather than placing general restrictions on the total amount of traffic you can use. We covered some free solutions before, and you can read a complete explanation of what a VPN is here – but when choosing a service for you it’s important to note that most VPN services explicitly DON’T allow torrent traffic, and certainly not any that are free. The best two paid services I know of that do allow unlimited torrent traffic are vpntunnel.se and torrentsecurity.com

Enable DHT Or Join A Private Tracker

I extolled the virtues of private trackers with their ridiculously fast download speeds and high quality torrents last week in my 9 Easy Ways To Never Get A Virus article, but be aware that private trackers generally don’t allow peer exchange and DHT to be enabled because it prevents the system from counting your ratio correctly, effectively letting certain users “cheat”. So personally, I would recommend you DISABLE DHT and join a good private tracker or two, but if you can’t find your way into one…
Make sure DHT and peer exchange is enabled from the connections screen. This will have the fortunate side effect of meaning you can still find peers even when the tracker is down.

Windows Firewall

Make sure the firewall exception is on, or turn off the Windows firewall entirely. Again, do this from the connections screen of uTorrent options if you wish to add an exception.
In my opinion it’s another of those unnecessary security precautions like anti-virus that ends up causing far more problems that it’s worth. To turn off the firewall completely, click Start and type “firewall“. Open the first option in the Control Panel results, and you’ll see a link on the sidebar to completely disable it.