I’m happy to say that the Bittorrent piece is up and working, though I have a few small issues to work through this evening with the feed. Today, I’m looking for a few willing souls to test just the download portion of the system. Details and some requests/requirements below.

First, I’m glad to announce a new podcasting innovation.

My longtime friend and PHP guru Anton Olsen has created what we believe to be a first for podcasters. PodcastTorrent.com is a bittorrent tracker dedicated specifically to podcasts. Anton cranked out a great looking and (soon to be) very functional WordPress site to easily facilitate this process for podcasters. He’s currently working on the piece that will allow .torrent file uploads and some other items but, in truth, the bulk of the functionality for the site is in place. Huge kudos to Anton for this work, which really started simply as a way to help with the bandwidth problems we’re currently experiencing with The Roadhouse. A good friend, indeed.

Now, if you’d like to help test the bittorrent piece, here are a few steps to follow.

1. Visit PodcastTorrent.com and click on the torrents link in the top menu on the site.


2. You’ll find a directory listing of all the Roadhouse torrents. Select any single file and download.

Obviously, you’ll need to have bittorrent installed on your system. If your browser prompts you for a helper app (or asks what you’d like to do with the file), select “Open with” and point it to your bittorrent client.

Until we’ve got more clients seeded, these files may take a bit to download. So, if you have interested friends, let them know, as well, that they’re welcome to help test the bittorrent downloads.

We may be ready to test the feed this evening. Keep an eye here if you’re interested in testing the feed piece, as well.

Moving at Internet speed, we don’t yet have a formal bug-tracking mechanism in place. So, for now, please send a description of any issues you encounter to rhblues [at] gmail [dot] com. Please, please, please use “Bittorrent Testing” (without quotes) in the subject line. This will allow me to set up a filter to forward these emails to Anton when received. Please also include in the body of the email basic information on your operating system, browser, browser version, and version of bittorrent. This will help us to track issues more formally, if necessary.

If you do participate, feel free to send email to the above address, even if the system works perfectly. That’s useful information to have, as well, so be sure to include all the requested system details.

Thanks so much for your interest and help. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.