Blog Torrent

November 24, 2004 11:02 PM

Blog Torrent is out, it's been under development for a while now by the good people at Downhill Battle. It's a really simplified way of uploading files for the bittorrent network with an integrated client/server solution. Right now the client side is windows only, but the core functionality works with any client of course. Pretty neat.
posted by rhyax (15 comments total)

BTW, in addittion to my duties as an internet 'kook', I'm also in the process of leveraging said RSS Torrent technology for the task of international news distribution.

I ran into some folks the other day that do a satellite news broadcast five days a week, are run as a non-profit, and are down with the whole idea of using this new fangled internets for distribution of their content. Kind of like the 'Daily Show', but instead of making a joke at the end, they talk about the various WTF's going on in the world with a straight face.

More to follow soon, I have about a month to get a working prototype together.

Cool stuff, that.
posted by wah at 11:30 PM on November 24, 2004

Television is certainly where this technology promises much. While seemingly simple and unsurprising, BlogTorrent does for BitTorrent what Blogger did for personal homepages. Neither brings anything truly new to the table, but Blogger changed the internet through sheer ease-of-use. I already use BT to obtain all of my must-see TV, and thus there is certainly a potential audience for indy TV (if only people such as myself).
posted by mek at 12:02 AM on November 25, 2004

Because all the cool kids are downloading from the net and running random .exe's which will even ask the firewall for server privileges?

How are users going to be able to differentiate "good" .exe's which promise you loads of content from dialler.exe and mailproxy.exe which also promise loads of content, but completely mess up your machine in the process?

And I really don't see what problem this slew of mysterious .exe's solves that a good, simple, standalone bittorrent client doesn't solve, which users could grab from a trustworthy source (download.com, magazine cover discs, and so on) rather than some random web-site.
posted by rjt at 12:04 AM on November 25, 2004

And indy audio too, podcasting is great, but the bandwidth these people are going through is insane, maybe tv in a little while, but podcasters can start using this tomorrow.
posted by rhyax at 12:25 AM on November 25, 2004

That 35% of all network traffic is allegedly BitTorrent is quite extraordinary, but Blog Torrent could expand that usage significantly. Uploading a torrent and establishing a tracker is a confusing hurdle for new users.

There are many sites I trust that do not currently distribute stuff by BT, maybe now they will. It won't make any difference to any propensity I have for downloading from "some random web-site."
posted by Prince Nez at 12:25 AM on November 25, 2004

rjt: Yes, yes the kids ARE running random .exe's. Ever checked how spyware-riddled your neighbour's (or family member's) copy of IE is? (Yes, they even use IE... the horror)

This technology is specifically for users who don't already have BT installed. The webpage clearly indicates this sort of program has little or no use for the poweruser. Literacy, ain't it grand?
posted by mek at 12:27 AM on November 25, 2004

mek: Yes, I know, yes, I have, and yes, that was rather my point. Training the end-user to blindly download and run random binaries from the internet can only lead to more pain in the long run -- pain for the end-user, pain for those who provide (often free) tech support, and pain for everyone else as the spam-networks and DDoS zombies grow faster than ever.

We (presumably) all know just how big a mess a PC can get in even when the tech-savvy are training friends and family not to download and run random .exe's. If blogtorrent does take off, then that effort has been wasted, and much of the internet will go back to blindly clicking "Yes" to everything.
posted by rjt at 12:42 AM on November 25, 2004

Not really related, but all this talk about BitTorrent and RSS reminded me of Buttress.
posted by urish at 2:19 AM on November 25, 2004

Ever checked how spyware-riddled your neighbour's (or family member's) copy of IE is? (Yes, they even use IE... the horror)

This technology is specifically for users who don't already have BT installed. The webpage clearly indicates this sort of program has little or no use for the poweruser. Literacy, ain't it grand?

while this may be slightly off topic, wouldn't it be grand if the "powerusers" who have a hard-on about microsoft would stop trying to destroy IE and causing problems for those of us who are not "powerusers" and just want to use the intenet to its full potential.

blog torrent looks like a great tool, but if it becomes just another weapon to be used against users of microsoft products (inorant fools that we may be), i think we all become losers.
posted by three blind mice at 2:21 AM on November 25, 2004

Buttress was just what Ive been looking for! Anyone run it under OS X?

Sorry to be OT
posted by ejoey at 3:13 AM on November 25, 2004

tbm - I'm not sure I understand how blog torrent could be used as as a "weapon" against Windows users, all it does is create an executable that combines a BitTorrent client with a .torrent file.

ejoey - I think this HOWTO from engadget might be useful. It recommends Azureus with an RSS plugin.
posted by revgeorge at 5:22 AM on November 25, 2004

mek: I'd argue that the server side of BlogTorrent actually does have some use even for a "power user". If posting a torrent suddenly becomes as easy as making a blog post, we all win, as bandwidth bills become one less obstacle towards people releasing videos, music, flash files, etc., to the net. Yeah, I'd rather see something more fundamentally secure than Windows .exes for the client-less folks (but what? WinXP doesn't come with Java, most users probably don't have .Net yet) but at some point, the decision to download something involves trust.

Actually, what I'd like to see is something that brings this level of "set it and forget it" ease-of-use to virus & spyware scanning. Something smart enough to automagically scan *everything* at the moment it's downloaded/copied onto the machine, for both viruses and spyware. The user shouldn't need to navigate to a download folder, right click and hit "scan", it should just happen. (FireFox used to have an extension for this, but damned if I can find it now...)
posted by arto at 11:45 AM on November 25, 2004

if they're not educating their users on the importance of staying on and seeding the torrent even after their download is finished, they might as well just provide direct links to the files. bittorrent isn't magic, it only works well if everyone shares.
posted by bizwank at 1:58 PM on November 25, 2004

If posting a torrent suddenly becomes as easy as making a blog post, we all win, as bandwidth bills become one less obstacle towards people releasing videos, music, flash files, etc., to the net.

Is this really still true if the quantity of available material increases in the way you suggest this technology enables?
posted by billsaysthis at 2:56 PM on November 25, 2004

i figure the quantity can increase all it wants, the few jewels of quality will remain small, and in order for bit torrent to really work you need several people downloading/sharing yer files more or less all the time.
posted by Satapher at 12:16 PM on November 26, 2004