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BitTorrent, and BitTorrent Clients

I’m been investing a little time lately trying to learn more about BitTorrent. BitTorrent, a P2P distribution tool, is unique and potentially superior because it allows many people to download the same file without slowing down everyone else’s download. (More: Wikipedia | Y!Search). This background and client review will be a precursor to an entry on BlogTorrent that I’m still working on.

Traditional P2P distribution (Napster, Gnutella, Kazaa) let you download an entire file from another person on the network. BitTorrent is different. With BT, you initially download only a small map of the file. This map describes the many tiny files that comprise the complete file. This map file is called a tracker.

Once you’ve downloaded the tracker, a BitTorrent client takes over. The client coordinates the separate but concurrent downloading of each small file. It always choosing the fastest source. This is a faster and more stable process, capable of handling feature-length movies and other multi-gigabyte files.

Another distinction between BT and more traditional P2P technologies is that with BT, things go faster when more people are on the network. This is the opposite of other technologies, that bogged down on popular files. By definition with BitTorrent, if you’re downloading you’re also potentially uploading. The more people that want a particular file, the more people that have the file. More requesters equals more providers. And more providers equals a faster experience for everybody.

If you’re looking for a BitTorrent Client, I’ve posted personal research from my hours spent looking for the best one. I’m just sharing, I don’t profess to be an expert.

BitTorrent

  • Current Version: 3.4.2 (Windows, plus python source code)
  • Release Date: April 4, 2004
  • Download: bittorrent-3.4.2.exe
  • File size: 2.71 MB
  • Homepage: Bram Cohen

Description and notes: Bram Cohen is the creator of BitTorrent, and made this client himself. It’s open source python.

BitTornado (Windows, plus python source code)

Description and notes: According to Slyck’s BT Guide, this is “[c]urrently the most popular and recommended modification to the [pure BitTorrent, above] source code.” The noteworthy tweak is the “ability to control the upload bandwidth used”.

Azureus Java BitTorrent Client (Cross-Platform, including Mac)

Description and notes: Azureus is a powerful, full-featured, cross-platform java BitTorrent client. It “offers multiple torrent downloads, queuing/priority systems (on torrents and files), start/stop seeding options and instant access to numerous pieces of information about your torrents” and is available in many many languages.

BitComet – a powerful C++ BitTorrent Client (Window)

Description and notes: “BitComet is a powerful, clean, fast, and easy-to-use bittorrent client. It supports simultaneous downloads, download queue, selected downloads in torrent package, fast-resume, chatting, disk cache, speed limits, port mapping, proxy, ip-filter, etc”. I more or less accidentally downloaded this one after desiring more features and a more comfortable look-n-feel that the original BitTorrent Client (by Bram Cohen, above)

(Thanks again to Slyck for info on the first two reviews, as well as background and format of reviews.)

Summary

While a few others exist, and are reviewed elsewhere, I think the software above represents the big players, and a wide range of interfaces and features.

I currently use BitComet. I’ll update you as/when that changes. Let me know your experiences and findings, and if you recommend any others.

Parting Note:

In my reading, I found this BitTorrent summary that caught my eye for it’s succinctness:

Bittorrent in a nutshell: A) Get a client, and B) Click on a .torrent link.

How To: Subscribing to Blogs / Feeds

Note: I sent this email to my dad this morning. It’s republished here for two reasons: 1) Hopefully it will be of interest or assistance to somebody else. 2) This is, I guess, the first installment of “how to actually integrate feed reading into your daily online life” series. This one is rough, but I wanted to throw it up as-is to help me bust through my writers block on this subject.

Hey Dad,

I have a blog to recommend (many actually, but we’ll start with this one). John Battelle writes about the search industry, and is very well connected to its pulse. I try to read five or six others that cover the same topic, but when I have to pick just one, it’s his. As with many blogs, it serves as a proxy for it’s like-minded blogs. If something interesting pops up on one, it’s usually echoed or references on the others. Plus, he’s a professional writer and generates lots of unique, insightful content:

http://battellemedia.com/

The process I use to subscribe to blogs follows:

  1. Have a http://bloglines.com account
  2. Browse to an interesting site (like http://battellemedia.com or http://natek.typepad.com)
  3. Click your “Easy Subscribe” bookmarklet from either your Bookmarks Folder or, more commonly, your browsers Links Toolbar.

    (“Bookmarklets” or “favelets” are special links that — generally containing a small bit of Javascript instead of a URL — perform little tasks. As with any bookmark, you simply drag a link to your Bookmarks Folder or Links Bar.) This page has the Easy Subscribe links to drag to your toolbar (depending on browser) and more of a description: http://bloglines.com/help/easysub)

  4. Choose which of the available feeds to subscribe to.
    • Sometimes there will be a “full articles” feed, a “summary” feed and sometimes a “comments” feed. (I always go for the full feed.). Of all the options you’re presented with, this is the only one that really matters since it actually represents different blocks of content.
    • Other times, as seems to be the case with the first two options on battellemedia.com, they’re just different technical formats (.xml, .rss, .atom, .rdf). If this is the case then it’s pretty trivial — they’re all basically the same — and you’re safe picking ANY of them.
    • Other times (this is the case with the 3rd and 4th battellemedia options) they are third-party-generated feeds. In this case, these are provided by Technorati and Feedburner. If given a choice, I try to get the official feed from the site itself. But it’s pretty trivial again, and any of the four options will get you the same content.
  5. Enter your preferences (like which folder to store the blog in, notification preferences, descriptions, etc)

That’s it. Pretty soon you’ll be reading scores of feeds like me. (view my blogroll — a blogroll is the term for the list of blogs somebody subscribes to.

Other Ways to Subscribe

If you’re using bloglines but not the Easy Subscribe Bookmarklet you can go directly go to http://bloglines.com/sub and enter the URL of the site or feed. This is less efficient for me, because I have to leave the interesting site to subscribe to it… On the other hand, if you have the bookmarklet on your toolbar you just click-subscribe immediately from any cool site.

Part of the thing with reading blogs is that I’m always discovering interesting new feeds to subscribe to. The easier it is to subscribe the better! The downside is that I sometimes end up with tons and tons of blogs. To combat this, I keep a special folder that new feeds go into as a form of initial probation: “Blogs I’m Considering”. If I continue to be interested in that feed on the next weeks, it gets upgraded to it’s rightful place in my personal hierarchy of feeds.

OR, If you prefer to read your feeds on http://my.yahoo.com you can go to http://e.my.yahoo.com/config/cstore and enter the URL of the feed or site. After adding it, it’ll show up on your personal My Yahoo page.

Responsible Fish, Responsible Shopping

Even though the Monterey bay Aquarium is within driving distance of my Bay Area home, their wonderful Seafood Watch cards are known across the country. One of my friends just got back from a few months in Florida, and she had acquired one of the handy cards down there. The convenient wallet-size cards tell you which fish and seafood is caught and farmed in ways that are healthy for you and for the environment.

Staying with the theme of “Information is Power” comes the Blue Christmas campaign. Did you know that the Hyatt hotel chain game 87% of it’s political donations to Democrats, while Marriott gave 76% of theirs to Republicans? Jet Blue Airlines gives to Democrats; Southwest gives to Republicans? Nordstroms gives to Democrats; Mays gives to Republicans. Bed Bath & Beyond gives to Democrats; Bath & Body Works gives to Republicans.

Educate yourself. Understand the effects of your actions. Be mindful. Make informed decisions.

  • December 8, 2004
  • In Design
  • No comments yet

Chaos = Cooperation

A new Wired article, Roads Gone Wild suggests that removing street signs, curbs and crosswalks can lead to less accidents.

It begins with this compelling premise: “Build roads that seem dangerous, and they’ll be safer.”.

It caught my eye for a few reasons. One, it shows that design is everywhere. It’s traffic flow too, not just pixels and RGB codes. (Of course I know that, but I still enjoy learning more and more about the design efforts all around us.) Two, it shows that taking things away is often a more effective solution than adding things. Three, it makes me reconsider what and how I design for the web. On the web we try to make things “intuitive”. This article strikes me as evidence that more explanatory and instructional text, more user-hand-holding, and more manipulation by the designer to achieve “control” isn’t the path to success.

[He considers] most signs to be not only annoying but downright dangerous. To him, they are an admission of failure, a sign – literally – that a road designer somewhere hasn’t done his job.

It also reminds me of the disbelief I felt in Rome this spring. Primarily, I was amazed that massive four-lane round-abouts could work. Without cross-walks and without traffic signals or indications of rights-of-way, incredibly dense traffic seemed to almost-peacefully coexist. Across Europe there are cafés more or less in the roads and plazas, all without obvious problem. This article describes just that, and the explanation makes sense:

Monderman ripped out all the traditional instruments used by traffic engineers to influence driver behavior – traffic lights, road markings, and some pedestrian crossings – and in their place created a roundabout, or traffic circle. The circle is remarkable for what it doesn’t contain: signs or signals telling drivers how fast to go, who has the right-of-way, or how to behave. There are no lane markers or curbs separating street and sidewalk, so it’s unclear exactly where the car zone ends and the pedestrian zone begins. To an approaching driver, the intersection is utterly ambiguous – and that’s the point.

Monderman and I stand in silence by the side of the road a few minutes, watching the stream of motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians make their way through the circle, a giant concrete mixing bowl of transport. Somehow it all works. The drivers slow to gauge the intentions of crossing bicyclists and walkers. Negotiations over right-of-way are made through fleeting eye contact. Remarkably, traffic moves smoothly around the circle with hardly a brake screeching, horn honking, or obscene gesture. “I love it!” Monderman says at last. “Pedestrians and cyclists used to avoid this place, but now, as you see, the cars look out for the cyclists, the cyclists look out for the pedestrians, and everyone looks out for each other. You can’t expect traffic signs and street markings to encourage that sort of behavior. You have to build it into the design of the road.”

Outside of web design and any parallels there, the article hits on things I feel in everyday life. I want to live where being a pedestrian is possible. I want to live in a neighborhood where people hang out outside, and kids play on the sidewalks and in the streets. I want outdoor cafés…. I don’t want parking lots and drive-thru’s and strip malls.

“They’ll go to places where the quality of life is better, where there’s more human exchange, where the city isn’t just designed for cars. The economy is going to follow the creative class, and they want to live in areas that have a sense of place. That’s why these new ideas have to catch on. The folly of traditional traffic engineering is all around us.”

I’ve only captured parts here; the whole article is worth a read.

Now I’m off to drive north from the Silicon Valley to San Francisco, up the crowded, slow, mind-numbing 101 North.

Digital Web Magazine: a Fast Company’s 2005 Fast 50 Nominee

If you don’t read Digital Web Magazine, you should. If you do, you should leave a testimonial over at the Fast Company’s 2005 Fast 50 – their 4th annual – where Nick Finck, DWM’s publisher and driving force is nominated this year.

CSS Hack vs CSS Filter

I was in the midst of some late-night coding. Well, not really late-night I guess. Let me rephrase.

It was 10:30pm and I was just getting started with some nighttime coding. I was searching for something, and ended up reading a july 2003 evolt post. In it, PPK describes the difference between CSS Hacks and CSS Filters. I’ve read tons about each, but this is the first time that I really noticed their definitions.

CSS Hacks
Techniques and syntax that achieve desired results by exploiting a bug in a particular browsers rendering engine.
CSS Filters
Techniques and syntax that achieve desired results by exploiting a feature that a particular browsers rendering engine does not yet support.

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