While the world wonders what will happen to the likes of BitTorrent after the Supreme Court's
Grokster decision, Adisasta Software, a small Bali-based company, releases WinMobile Torrent, a version designed to work on Windows Mobile Pocket PCs.
"This software offers a fantastic solution to mass distribution problem that consumer and producer will eventually reap the tremendous benefits of mobile accessibility," Adisasta Founder and CEO Yongki Andyka said.
"By contributing a solution of such a beautiful protocol in the mobile platform, I hope that more and more producers and consumers will push BitTorrent protocol toward wider legitimate usage."
The software works on any device sporting the Windows Mobile Pocket PC 2003/2003 SE, and Andyka said it would eventually work on the future Windows 5 platform, though he has yet to test that in a real-world situation.
Like any other BitTorrent software, WinMobile Torrent allows users to share files of varying sorts using the leech and seed method.
Users can search and download a Torrent file, in pieces from various other users, which are then reconstructed into a complete file.
The process can take several hours (sometimes days) if the file is large enough, but it also allows someone to download a huge file, like a large software application, without hogging all of the computer's resources.
The software allows for multiple downloads at the same time and offers a "user-friendly" interface with a traffic monitor screen that displays the status of all uploads and downloads and a download and peer screen that allows the user to manage the download item and peers.
The software gives a graphical picture of an individual file download progress and, most importantly, allows the user to extract a file when it's complete without waiting for the entire Torrent to finish downloading.
This is an especially interesting development since Torrent files usually consist of one or more files (for example, a Torrent file of an album will contain all of the songs and maybe a photo of the album cover) and none, not even the tiny image file, can be opened until every file in the Torrent is completely downloaded. Often, that can take hours.
Andyka said a new "keep alive" option will keep the mobile device from sleeping or shutting off while downloading.
Other mobile-only options include a startup button that triggers the dial-up function of the device, a network probe that lets users select which peers to connect to, and an auto-save feature that will save what you've downloaded in case of battery failure.
Andyka said BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen's work inspired the creation of this software and worked it out in pieces "in order to sustain a long journey."
First he developed WinMobileZip (a zip utility for Pocket PC) and then added add AES encryption technology into WinMobileZip to familiarize himself with the compression and encryption technology used in the protocol.
"Then I moved on to develop WinMobile download accelerator for the platform," he said, "and in the end, the accumulated know-how I gained through such stepping-stone developments enabled me to develop WMTorrent for the mobile platform."
While the software certainly brings together BitTorrent and the mobile community, using a browser on a mobile phone can often be a less-than-ideal experience.
Andyka said they've tested the software on the "poor" GPRS Network, which they use regularly in Bali, and they've never had a problem downloading files up to 200MB, even though it may take several days to do so.
"We never try any file of size over that figure due to the storage card that we have," he said.
"From our experience with WinMobile Download Accelerator, we know how to deal with this issue. If you take a look at the performance between WinMobile Torrent and WinMobile Download Accelerator [WMDA], you will notice that WinMobile Torrent is way beyond what we have achieved in WMDA, that sometime still stops from time to time due to signal problems."
The full version of the WinMobile Torrent software can be downloaded from the Adisasta Software site for $19.99. A free trial version is available as well.
