A number of blogs I subscribe to have pointed to
Blog Torrent this weekend. I had to go and check it out because of the projects I'm working on. From what I can tell, Blog Torrent is an evolutionary step for BitTorrent. I didn't download Blog Torrent and install it on my web server. However, I did attempt to download a torrent and create a torrent. I ran into a number of problems. Blog Torrent has two download methods: a plain torrent and "easy download." The "easy download" has the torrent file and a BitTorrent download utility packaged together in a single executable. From a security perspective, this is a bad idea especially given that the executable is generated on the fly when a file is uploaded. There is no way to be 100% certain that there is nothing else injected into the build process. The fact that this is entirely web based and does not require client software is a major step forward for BitTorrent, even though I was unable to successfully perform any of the advertised functions. The proxy and firewall issues need to go away. It looks like an applet of some sort is attempting to launch when I tried to upload a file. There should be no reason why an applet needs to launch in order to create a torrent. Blog Torrent does not solve any distribution problems related to serving up large media files. It only solves problems associated with the publishing and downloading the media files; albeit not very successfully at this point. Blog Torrent still requires peers to seed downloads for distribution. I highly encourage the team working on Blog Torrent to press forward. I believe they are heading in the right direction. Making complicated technology easier to use is always a worth while endeavor.
