Several of you have asked me about this so…here’s the deal. Ever discover some super cool file on the net, the next greatest thing, a demo of a game, preview of a movie, excerpt of some funny ad everyone is talking about, and you can’t get it because everyone and their uncle is all trying to download it from some overwhelmed server at the same time as you are? Or even worse, find yourself in the 4 hour waiting list at fileplanet waiting for your turn to grab the file, which invariably you miss because you walk away from the computer shortly before your turn in the que comes up?

Enter BitTorrent. Problem solved. BitTorrent is at its best serving up files ‘au courant;’ whatever it is everyone is trying to get at the moment, the hottest demos, movie clips etc etc, BitTorrent most likely has and there’s no need to wait in line, and there’s no speed limits beyond what your own connection can handle. How does it do that? It makes all of us responsible for sharing the file with each other. Every person who is downloading the file is simultaneously sharing the parts of the file they’ve already gotten with others who are also trying to get the file. The more popular something is, the faster you can get your hands on it. It works great!

To get it going, grab the software from the site linked above and install it. Next time you see a link to a torrent file, click on it and it will invoke the BitTorrent app, which will ask you where you want to store the file. Tell it, and the download will start. Within a few minutes it will ramp up to saturate your download link, assuming it’s a popular file you’re after.

You can also go grab a copy of TorrentSpy – if you grab that, you can drag saved torrent files onto it and it will tell you tons of info about the file, most importantly how many people are currently grabbing it. Comes in handy if you’re not sure whether to bother grabbing something or not.

So where do you find torrents? I’ll post more about this in the coming weeks. Basically anything popular ends up getting turned into a torrent, but there’s not a single source of info on where to grab them. All kinds of cool stuff shows up too, like the previous night’s tv shows, concerts, radio broadcasts, all kinds of great stuff. For now, just watch for the links in the discussions that surround any particular file, like inside slashdot discussions or on usenet.

One last thing – the success of BitTorrent depends on a great degree to the willinness of all of us to leave the window open after the file downloads – let it run for a while, give back to the community which just gave to you. Don’t be a dick! Do you like waiting for a file on fileplanet for 3 hours? If not, dont be an ass, keep the window open so others have a chance to get the file, and so places like fileplanet are no longer the central source we all have to rely on to get our mods, patches, demos and so on.