Brennan’s Blog

The mod_bt extension for Apache 2 is currently in alpha release and development is moving forward. It is quite exciting what will happen once the Bit Torrent system is released to all Apache web servers. For starters it will mean that people will be able to host large files to be downloaded by thousands of people without overloading their bandwidth. Perhaps DSL and Cable Modem providers will allow home hosting at some point.

At this point the only significant files I would expect to use this bandwidth will be personal podcasts, or audio blogs. I am looking to start one with a few of the guys at work. For starters we will just pick a single topic and record a discussion of it for 5 minutes. And one of the guys is a musician so he will provide intro/exit music for our little show. I work for a company named SpiderLogic and the podcast will be called "The Eight Legs Podcast." I will simply host it as an RSS 2.0 enclosure with an mp3 file like most podcasts. Some popular podcasts already make use of Bit Torrent technology to spread the server load a bit. The iPodder software has Bit Torrent features incorporated into it's design.

But audio blogs is really just the start. There will come a point where bandwidth and disk space will be so easily available that recording amateur video blogs will become reasonable for most people. A thousand teenagers in Wisconsin alone will be producing their own Jarret's Room Skit while 30 something Gen-Xers will be making throwback skits of Wayne's World. Personally I think my own Monty Python skits would be fun to make and publish online.

Of course there are those who will record video games to make movies by editing the video and dubbing in voiceovers. It would actually be great to record all of the communications made over a voice link while playing an online team game and later broadcast it as a videocast. Who would not like the best gamer clans out there to produce videos we can watch and hopefully learn something? I remember I use to record myself playing Super Mario Bros as a kid especially when I got up the higher levels so I could watch it later and show my brother-in-law who wanted to see how I did it. Once Halo 2 is out for the PC I will be able to record it all and create my own videocasts over my cable modem with the mod_bt extension. I just hope my Halo skills improve with Halo 2 so I do not appear to be a newbie once I start to broadcast those matches. Maybe I will just edit it down to just shots where I take out Refux. That would be the feel good gamer video of the year for me. (Sorry Refux)