Torrentage Project

I have chosen to develop the PHP clients mentioned in the previous entry. I will endeavour to bring more visual representations of the data, and offer time stamped comparisons in a visual representation.

I will call the combined and modified code: Torrentage.

PHP BitTorrent Clients

I have looked into other extended BitTorrent client functions, and have found interesting aspects added to clients written in PHP.

PHP clients run off a server set up by the user, and so offer the ability to have remote control of .torrents and also give the ability to have multiple user accounts and offer each one different admin permissions. A couple examples of these clients include Torrentvolve and Torrentflux.

These two clients are open source and allow anyone to modify their code any way they want. It would be interesting to develop one of these
clients to add extra visual representations of data to make them more user-friendly.

BitTorrent Data

I was interested in how data is displayed in different BitTorrent clients, so i decided to sample what different clients have to offer...

I took at a few of the most popular clients:

ABC (yet Another BitTorrent Client)
http://pingpong-abc.sourceforge.net/screenshot_3.1.png

BitComet
http://www.bitcomet.com/images/ss_main.png

µTorrent
http://download.utorrent.com/screenshots/utorrent3.png


I noticed that all clients essentially display and use the same data (download speed, progress etc. , but don't use much in the way of visualising the data. Out of the examples above the only visuals are used by µTorrent in the progress bar.

I think it would be a great benefit to BitTorrent clients to use more ways in displaying data, and could increase their userbase.

Slow Torrents

There is a lot of talk about BitTorrents being slow (as is mentioned on the BitTorrent Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent).

And there are even articles that provide steps on how to improve BitTorrent speeds: http://torrentfreak.com/speed-up-your-torrents/


It is a shame amongst the BitTorrent user community that so many do not upload to their full potential.

Most seeded torrent...

After a little browsing I found a project similar to what I was thinking up regarding torrents, where a University student has attempted to make the most seeded torrent in history... but failed, quite badly...

http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3530260/The_most_seeded_torrent_on_the_internet_(for_the_search__for_the

P2P-Art

A fairly innovative project can be found at http://www.p2p-art.com/.

Although the project is basic an uninteresting, it shows the p2p protocol to be an overlooked tool for art distribution and creation.

BitTorrent

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent

BitTorrent is a protocol extension of P2P.

The original client has been around for a few years, and the developer released the source code for anyone to freely edit, which spawned dozens of different Torrent clients.

BitTorrent works by relying on the user having a Torrent client, and having a .torrent file of what they want to download. The client opens the .torrent flie, which contains information on what needs to be downloaded, and a list of torrent 'trackers' that literally track who is downloading/uploading torrents listed on their server.

BitTorrent is probably the latest target for controversey in the anti-p2p push by corporations, and many of the torrent tracking sites (that often offer the ability
to download the torrents) have come under fire, or have even been shut down due to legal action.

Popular torrent clients include:
µTorrent
Azureus
BitComet
BitTornado

Popular torrent tracker sites include:
http://www.demonoid.com
http://thepiratebay.org
http://isohunt.com
http://www.torrentz.com

P2P

A popular network option that I have overlooked is Peer-to-Peer.

P2P is a highly popular and controversial networking option, where users connect to each other, rather than going through a server. The controversy
arises where copyrighted material is shared on the network illegally.

Infact today, P2P is used by the average user to just file share and file swap. Popular file sharing programs inclue Limewire, Kazaa and the variants of the Bit Torrent Client.

More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer (P2P wiki)
http://www.limewire.com/ (Official LimeWire website)
http://www.kazaa.com/ ( Official Kazaa website)
http://www.bittorrent.com/ (Official BitTorrent website)

Chat Rooms/Forums

I have been researching into Chat Rooms and Forums (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chat_room) and have been focusing on where they fit in the social spectrum.

The basic form of chatting, such as newsgroups and IRC are some of the most basic forms of communication and are still used by some websites today. However these have been refined and upgraded into 'fancier', more advanced communication mediums, such as Instant Messaging, forums and becoming ever more popular in online video/computer games.

As an experienced user of Internet Forums (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_forum), I am interested in how they work and interact with the database and handle user information so seamless nowadays. I have had some experience with using pre-made forum code (phpbb), but never fully understood how it works with the mySQL database.

I am starting to think that a combination of real-time chat and forum functions could be an interesting path to follow, and is an idea that is rarely implemented in a basic form.

Developing an Application in Facebook

I decided to look into how Facebook gets you on your way on making an application in a bit more detail. However after reading a little bit more at making a Facebook Application, with my current knowledge of PHP would not be feasible...

... So i have decided to develop some kind of chatroom/forum that could easily be ported to the facebook platform. The API would focus on user's avatars, which can be an uploaded image or a painted picture using a basic graphic making application.

After the development is complete I would probably have sufficient knowledge to port the application into the Facebook API.

Facebook provide a sample application to download and study to help developers get started on. To do this the developer must have a Facebook account and simply add the Developer application.

Popular Facebook Apps

This post will give a more in depth look at the most popular Facebook Applications avaliable for Facebook users' profiles.

Free Gifts
Based off of the 'Gift' idea that originally comes with Facebook, Free Gifts allows users with the application to exchange virtual gifts (essentially an icon or picture of something like a cake, for example) between users.

Human Pets
Probably the most successful application on Facebook. Human Pets creates a sub-profile of the user with the application, and gives users the ability to buy eachother using Human Pet 'points'. The application also offers great social extras like a chat room, which includes a multiplayer crossword, and other tools for making 'Herds' (essentially the same as 'groups' on the default Facebook).

Free Gifts
Based off of the 'Gift' idea that originally comes with Facebook, Free Gifts allows users with the application to exchange virtual gifts (essentially an icon or picture of something like a cake, for example) between users.

Photos/Videos
Default programs that Facebook provide, which allow users to upload pictures or videos and 'tag' the people contained in them.

Top Friends
A popular feature on most social networking websites, Top Friends allows users with the application to create a thumbnail list of their top friends in their Facebook friends list.


There are hundreds more applications, but these are the more popular, or atleast most well known ones.