Blog Torrent Beta Released

chatooya writes "Downhill Battle has released the first public preview of Blog Torrent a "simplified" BitTorrent package that they developed because, "Making it easy to blog large video files means that people can share their home movies the same way they share their photos or writings." Features include: integrated torrent creation and upload, simple non-MySQL installation, and an RSS feed for every tracker. Currently Windows only on the client side, but Mac and Linux versions are in the works."

Comments

sounds like a cool idea but

[Ckwop]

Would you host a torrent for someone else's blog? I dunno, sharing a torrent for a music album or a linux distro is a bit different to someones home movie.

I'd love to see it take off but I'm yet to be convinced.

Simon.

Re:sounds like a cool idea but

[jacksonj04]

I had the same thought - the BitTorrent ideal is that lots of people share the same file. The chances of readerships for blogs with videos (mainly ones read rarely) neing large enough for this to work is slim to none. Especially since the chances of everybody being online at once are even more remote.

Re:sounds like a cool idea but

[Champaign]

I probably wouldn't, but I'd certain be willing (forced) to share with others AS I downloaded it. This would certainly be useful.

Plus it lets the blog owner use their home connection bandwidth instead of their blog/server bandwidth...

Re:sounds like a cool idea but

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

The chances of readerships for blogs with videos (mainly ones read rarely) neing large enough for this to work is slim to none.

Just wait till Natalie Portman or Jenifer Lopez start video-P2P-blogging and you'll see the readership increase quite a bit.

Re:sounds like a cool idea but

[timeOday]

Worse yet, due to the assyemtry, if you let BitTorrent use that full 384Kbps upstream, all other Internet use will be abysmally slow. So you're best off capping it at half that, or so.

You can get around that, at least on Linux, using LARTC. I have set up my box so "miscellaneous" packets (p2p, email, etc) are only sent if there are NO ssh or web browsing packets ready to go (script). There may be a few remnants of wondershaper in there, but I think mine is better :)

It does work. With this in place the effect of running BitTorrent (or whatever) in the background is tiny.

Re:sounds like a cool idea but

[Taladar]

Popular blogs would have an advantage here and for unpopular ones the one original Bittorrent Seed would be enough and not much worse than hosting it on Webspace.

How can this work on a small scale?

[Fluidic Binary]

If bittorrent works off many users sharing bandwidth at once, I fail to see how this would help most blogs that don't have huge readerships.

Any retorts?

Re:How can this work on a small scale?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, theoretically the overhead of bittorrent is not much higher than that of simply running an FTP server (assuming the tracker server is also seeding the file, which would be necessary in this situation). So, if only one person is downloading the file, then it would be better to just run an FTP server. but, as soon as a second person joins the torrent, the first person starts uploading to them, offloading some of the bandwidth burden from the tracker server.

pretty simple

Re:How can this work on a small scale?

[hackstraw]

If bittorrent works off many users sharing bandwidth at once, I fail to see how this would help most blogs that don't have huge readerships.

But without p2p, you would have to upload the whole file to a server, tell your friends and family where the file can be downloaded. Which means that you would have server space with very generous bandwidth limits, etc, etc.

With a torrent, you create the torrent, register it with a tracker, and post on your blog or in an email, and you never have to think about it, nor would you have to wait for the upload to finish first before telling your friends & family.

This rocks.

Re:How can this work on a small scale?

[TrevorB]

Sometimes images become shared between thousands of blog users as the meme of the week.

For instance, this link has been making the rounds last week:

http://img40.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img40=feuerfreimo vi e.swf

You could easily find that link on a thousand LiveJournals. It's not quite slashdotting, but files often get locked out because they're shared on bandwidth limited servers.

So don't think home movies. Think shared movies. Not the MPAA DivX kind, but more like weebls stuff or mpeg clips of turkeys attacking George Bush's crotch or something... The kind of thing that's embedded in a page.

Application?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only real use of this, is of course for the amateur porn blogs. Then it's a killer app!

just what i was looking for

[Anonymous Coward]

I made a bunch of home movies with my wife on my honeymoon, now i finally have a way to share with the world how lucky and well endowed i am!

THTTP

[areve]

I've wondered about Torrent being an extension to to the http protocol for surfing the web. I wouldn't expect it to happen but if our web browser would just get data from the nearest node instead of the original site then the slashdot effect would be a positive one increasing your sites bandwidth not a negative one.

Re:User mindset

[holmes wilson]

Hey, Holmes from Downhill Battle here.

We definitely thought about that, and other people have raised that concern. But here's how we view it:

First, the only person who gets an executable to download is a first time user. Once Blogtorrent is installed, the tracker detects that and just serves you up regular torrent files (or blogtorrent files for uploaders). So we aren't creating any habits here.

And considering the first time user, they fall into one of two camps. Either they're an experienced user who understands what's bad about running an executable from an untrusted website, or they're not.

If the former, they'll be happy to install Blogtorrent if the tracker is running on a site they trust, while if it's on "war3z d00d's p2p moviez page" they probably won't. And they won't have to. It will be enough to check out Blogtorrent.com and download it there.

And if the latter is true (our user doesn't know what's bad about running executables from shady sites) then their computer is probably already a petri dish of virii trojans, adware, and virii, or it will get that way soon. And the majority of such users would have a hard enough time wrapping their heads around how Bittorrent works that they'd just give up without the executable installer.

Deciding to *not* give these users an executable installer just means deciding (on their behalf) that they should continue their life in adware purgatory, but without that video clip or album they wanted. We wouldn't really be protecting anybody by not providing this feature.

And I know Bittorrent is pretty easy to install, but trust us, we've talked to so many people who have tried *so* hard to get it and failed miserably. With the executable, anybody who wants a file will end up getting it. And next time they're covered.