Bitlet migrates to mininova servers

First of all, we would like to start this post with a huge thank to Gregory Gumo (from Fenopy) for providing us with hosting for bitlet so far.

He dealt with many issues, ranging from server-related ones to more "delicate" matters and his huge assistance allowed us to focus on BitLet's development while he took care of the server.
Unfortunately, as you might have noticed, bitlet.org went through some trouble recently, and we had to switch to a new server.

The guys from Mininova kindly offered a new home for bitlet.org, so it's running on a new host.

The only downside with the migration was that since we had to move both the application and the database within a few hours, and we had to sacrifice the download history in order to avoid a longer downtime. We apologize for any inconvenience it might have caused you.

2008 Webware 100 Awards

We're glad to announce you that BitLet has been selected by the editors at CNET Webware.com as a finalist in the 2008 Webware 100 Awards in the Utility & Security category.

According to the editors,

300 finalists were selected from more than 4,600 qualifying Web 2.0 services nominated by Webware readers and company representatives. Users will decide which services are the Webware 100 winners, by voting on Webware.com.

We are really proud of that, because it's an accomplishment that was made possible by your support and encouragement.

Voting will be open from February 25 until March 31, and you will be able to select up to three services for each category.
We hope that BitLet will be among those :P



Support us and vote here. ^_-

Music Streaming on BitLet!

Ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to announce you a great addition to BitLet.
After some weeks of work, the set of applets that dwell BitLet.org has a new component: codenamed westream, the new applet allows you to listen music you're streaming using BitTorrent. And it runs, as always, directly from your Java-enabled browser!



At present, westream supports OGG and MP3 encoded audio files, but we are already planning to add support for different file types.

Westream works in a way that's extremely similar to the first BitLet applet: you just have to point your browser to http://www.bitlet.org/music, paste a torrent url in the text box, and click Play.
The applet will scan the torrent for files that are suitable for reproduction and provide you with a web interface to control playback and volume.

Please keep in mind that audio quality, plus the number and duration of the gaps during playback heavily depend on the health status of the torrent you're streaming. If you want to test it with downloads with at least one reliable seed, click here to try it with the new Mininova featured torrents system.


And now, allow us precise a couple of a technicalities...
We understand that some people might consider this an unfair increase in the number of leechers, but we tried to design the streaming library with the original torrent philosophy in mind:

[...] a method of distributing large amounts of data widely without the original distributor incurring the entire costs [...]

It would have been easy to design the streaming client to be extremely selfish, and make it care only for its needs. Ideally, we tried to avoid it: westream should behave as most torrent clients, with a slightly different piece choosing strategy.

As you might imagine, since we're streaming audio files, we prefer to download the parts of the torrent that immediately follow what you're currently listening to, as this is essential to attempt to allow gapless reproduction.
This, however, is not the only criterion we use when choosing which pieces to download.
As any kind torrent client should do, we tend to give a high priority also to less common pieces even if, in some situations, it could degrade the quality of the streaming experience. (As you can see, we are interested in good karma.)
In addition, we always attempt to complete the pieces we started to download: since each peer announces to others only the pieces it has completed, we try to complete each piece we start so to be able to serve them to other peers as soon as possible.

We hope you'll appreciate our efforts. ^__-

Upload!

You can find online the new upload section!
Basically it is a web page that lets you generate and directly upload the torrent metafile.

Currently the upload puts the generated metafile on mininova, but you can link the web page with different parameters in order to post the metafile to other servers: soon there will be an option to use the upload with fenopy, for instance.

How to use it

The user should go to
http://www.bitlet.org/upload?postUrl=encodedPostUrl&doneUrl=encodedDoneUrl
to generate the .torrent metafile, that will be directly posted to the postUrl address and then the user will be asked to go to doneUrl.

After the user clicks the create button and chooses the file or directory, the applet generates the metafile and posts it (to postUrl) directly from the browser.
The post is a simple http post with Content-Type: multipart/form-data and it contains a single parameter named torrent with the torrent metafile in binary form, I guess if you're using php you can just access $_FILES['torrent']. The applet expects a text/plain response with the hash of the info dictionary of the posted metafile in ASCII (e.g:
d901895bc378d0b6ffcb87a4f9503bf51664d475.)

Then the user will be asked to go to doneUrl with the hash parameter (doneUrl?hash=d901895bc378d0b6ffcb87a4f9503bf51664d475) where the user should complete the file submission.

Should you provide a download with BitLet after the torrent submission, the applet will try to guess the correct path to start seeding the file.

Please ask the user to start seeding the files, after the submission is completed.

Usually I'm quite cryptic when I write, so don't hesitate to contact me if there's something I didn't explain well.

peer_id and announce-list

BitLet has been updated!
The new version now supports the announce-list extension, and follows the specification that can be found here.

The applet generates also a new peer_id using the Azureus convention, so the new applet peer_id starts with "-WT-0001"

Note that the previous version of BitLet used the prefix "BitLet01", but since it is an applet (and therefore the update is, somehow, granted) you should not see the old peer_id anymore.

Bookmarklet!

If you are bored of copying and pasting torrent urls, this bookmarklet should help you out.

I coded this simple bookmarklet after seeing this grease monkey script by iisonly.

Here is a small description on how to install it and how to use it.

As usual, feedbacks are very appreciated.

UPnP and incoming connection port

We have just updated the bitlet applet.

Now, if you are behind an UPnP enabled gateway and you are natted, bitlet tries automatically to forward the incoming connection port of your router to your local machine.

Another interesting improvement is that now all the bitlet downloads share a single incoming connetion port. (Previously each download window had its own incoming port.)

As usual, please contact us if you encounter any problem.

Psss: soon we will publish another interesting tool related to UPnP!