P2P File Sharing From Within Your Browser With LittleShoot

Varun Kashyap — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:01:34 +0000

P2P file sharing involves downloading files from other users computers (as opposed to a central server) and then giving away a little bit of your bandwidth to other people who may be wanting the file you just downloaded or some other file being shared by you. I am sure you are well versed with the concept.

You might have also used Limewire or its cousin Frostwire, both of which are excellent. So now how about the proposition of being able to achieve p2p file sharing from the browser? Developed by the co-creator of Limewire, LittleShoot allows you to do just that – search, publish and download files via p2p networks from within your browser.

You first have to download and install a browser plugin. Hence forward, whenever you feel a tickle to hop on a p2p network, just point your browser to Littleshoot.org. Once there you can search and download, or share one of the files on your computer with the rest of the world.

Littleshoot allows you to search for videos, audio, images, apps and documents across the Littleshoot network, Limewire network, Flickr, Youtube and Yahoo. So you can expect some pretty good results. It provides a safe search option and other options including source and category. It can also be tweaked to get to what you are really looking for.

Once the hunt is over and you find what you were looking for, just click to download and save the file to your computer. By default, LittleShoot uses the

OS X: /Users/your_user_name/shared/downloads
Windows: c:/Users/your_user_name/shared/downloads or C:/Document and Settings/Username/shared/downloads.
Linux: ~/shared/downloads

directories to store the files.

Littleshoot optimally chooses the sources which are nearer to you or perhaps even on the ISP to give some additional boost in download speeds.

You can also publish (or share) files with the world from within your browser. You do not need to upload the file anywhere. Hit the browse button and browse to the file you want to share. That’s it. It would start appearing in people’s searches soon, from where they can start downloading the file directly from your computer. As more and more people get the copy of the file you are sharing, your bandwidth is also preserved and their downloads will be faster.

Littleshoot gives you total control over published files. You can edit, open or remove them any time by moving over to the publish tab and choosing the appropriate action.

Although LittleShoot is web based, if you check out the processes tab in the task manager you will see a “LittleShoot.exe”. This is the process that manages the connection and bandwidth. Although not so lean on resource utilization, it’s still better than running a fully fledged client solely for this purpose.

If you’re interested to know more about the technology behind Littleshoot, there is lots of information on the LittleShoot website (once there, click on ‘Technology’ in the ‘About’ tab). LittleShoot claims to be Open Platform, Open Source and Open Data. You can access the source code, learn about the protocols employed and much more.

So how do you like the concept of Littleshoot? Prefer something else for P2P file sharing? Let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Frostwire : A Clone That Surpasses The Original

Jeffry Thurana — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:05:51 +0000

As an “active media trader” (a polite term for someone who downloads and shares “lots of things” – wink-wink!), I have a list of applications that I use on a regular basis. One of them is Limewire which (almost) always gives me good file searching results.

Recently, I came across an application which looks like, works like, and even sounds like Limewire. It has all of LimeWire’s abilities and more; it finds and shares files, connects to six ultrapeers networks, does torrents, integrates with iTunes, is chat-able and skin-able, and is totally free. It It’s called FrostWire. Just like Limewire, Frostwire is also built on Java so they can both work on multiple platforms.

The extreme similarities between these two intrigues me, though. Even the boldest copier wouldn’t go that far. A quick Google and Wikipedia search later I found out that FrostWire is actually the clone of LimeWire, developed by (part of) the same team and has been released to the public since October 2005. The full story can be found here.

Anyway, after giving little Frosty a proper trial for a few minutes, I decided to ditch the original and use the clone instead. My (very subjective) reasons are:

- It connects to as many networks as LimeWire Pro so FrostWire is faster than the non-pro version of LimeWire (I used the non-pro Limey).
- It does torrents also, so no other torrent clients are necessary. I haven’t done any scientific tests but I kinda feel downloading torrents using FrostWire is faster than using other Mac torrent clients.
- It’s free. And we all love freebies.

Still, there are some things that I don’t like about FrostWire:

- It slows my machine – the good ol’ iBook G4. (I know what you’re going to say. Don’t. I love this white ancient baby. But if anybody is willing to buy me a speedier machine, it wouldn’t be polite to reject the kindness, will it?)
- Even though the developer claims that they had a junk filter built in, I found that searches still produces a lot of junk, especially with popular strings. So choose your results carefully.

All in all, it’s one more path to follow for you file hunters out there.

Happy hunting!

Jeffry Thurana is a blogaholic who has just started his own self-improvement journal “Supersubconscious” and manages an Indonesian tech blog “InterNeTips“. He actually thinks there are 30 hours everyday.