Azureus has officially put all of its eggs into a basket called Vuze. The company has dropped its standalone BitTorrent client as instead focusing on Vuze, which is a combination Bittorrent search engine and desktop video player. Azureus has also officially changed its name to Vuze and yesterday released Vuze 3.1, an updated client with a handful of new features, including:

• Create user profiles and add friends
• Recommend torrents you think your friends might want to download
• Search BitTorrent trackers besides Vuze, including MiniNova, SumoTorrent, and others

You can also add your own BitTorrent trackers to the search menu. The addition of third party trackers is an interesting approach. On the one hand, Vuze becomes much more useful as a BitTorrent client if you can download torrents from a variety of sites. But if Vuze is trying to sell 100% legal downloads of TV shows and movies, the company is kind of undermining its own mission by letting you download those same movies and TV shows for free from other BitTorrent sites.

[via NewTeeVee]