TorrentFreak

• Smaran
• February 8, 2007
• 28
• mainline_bittorrent,
  mininova,
  tomato_torrent
• Print

A new Dashboard widget for the Mac has simplified the process of creating a torrent to grabbing a file or folder and dragging it onto the Mac OS X Dashboard.

Until now, there have only been two three ways of creating a torrent on the Mac. The first was to use the mainline BitTorrent client, the second option was Azureus, the Java-based BitTorrent client, and the third was Tomato Torrent.

The problem with the mainline client is that it’s not a Universal application, so running it on an Intel Mac is like watching cheese ferment. There is a Universal beta, but is still very buggy and refuses to close, you have to force quit it. And Azureus is a memory hog, partly because it’s written in Java and partly because it’s such a feature-full application.

So, there is a need for a lighter alternative. Well, we’ve found an alternative, and it’s as light as it gets. A developer by the name of Wojtek has released a widget that makes creating torrents as easy as dragging and dropping a file or folder onto your Dashboard. It’s called CreateTorrent and is really simple to use.

The only thing you need to do once you’ve downloaded and installed it on your Dashboard is add an announce (tracker) URL. Just flip it around and you’ll see three input boxes: Announce URL, Port and Output Filename. The only one you need to change is the Announce URL, ie. a tracker address. Mininova compiles a list of “frequently used” public and private trackers that you can use. Most people just use The Pirate Bay’s tracker:

http://tpb.tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce

Initially, the widget just refused to work. But then, I wanted to find out what exactly was wrong and opened it with Azureus instead of Transmission, the client I normally use. Turns out, it was an issue with libtransmission, the core library of the two BitTorrent clients I tried to seed the torrent with, Transmission and Acquisition. When I opened the torrent with Azureus, it just worked.

Download the torrent I made with CreateTorrent: Noite de Carnaval by Code (.torrent).

Until now, there have only been two three ways of creating a torrent on the Mac. The first was to use the mainline BitTorrent client, the second option was Azureus,...