Some of you may know, most of you won't, but I'm a really passionated BitTorrent user. I'm fascinated by how good it works and it's potential in replacing the current Server-Client paradigm with a much more powerfull architecture that does not have the flaws and backdraws the classical architecture has. Some time back I saw an interesting article on what Web 2.0 is and along with AJAX and Flickr, they also counted BitTorrent as part of the revolution, away from centralised, static content towards, user controlled content that evolves during time, and most important of all, involves the users too.

So why am I telling you this? Because I too want to contribute a little piece to this world, and what other could it be than bridging the gap that exists between BitTorrent and the Web? Yes right, I'm currently working on a small Web application that allows users to create custom feeds with their favorite Torrents and monitor them.

I had the idea while seeding one of my favorite TV Shows when I stumbled upon some major and many minor difficulties (I'll be writing a post some time soon about what I've learned during this adventure) and one of the hardest was certainly to keep the seeders interested in seeding. Well the first step towards coordinating the seeding effort is off course give the seeders the tools to identify what is asked for, the easiest way being to give them the ability to monitor their torrents and when a torrent needs a seeder, they could turn their client on just as long as it is needed. Well and there comes my application: the users upload their torrents, which are parsed and saved into a database, then the trackers are checked on a regular basis and the users can create custom feeds that gather the information of one or more torrents in an easy an usable way. Using pure XML I also make it possible to easily write applications that interact according to these feeds. An example of these feeds can be seen here.

Right now it is still under development and is used purely for my own seeding coordination, but it may eventually go public