Written in Java Available in English | Operating system Type Peer-to-peer | |
Developer(s) Daniele Castagna
Alessandro Bahgat Shehata Initial release 2007; 10 years ago (2007) | ||
BitLet, abbreviation for BitTorrent Applet, was a BitTorrent program that enabled the use of this file sharing protocol inside any Java-enabled web browser, without the need of an external dedicated client program. It is open-source software under the Apache License (ASL) 2.0. Prior to December 28, 2013, it was released under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) 2.1.
Features
The software intends to make the use of BitTorrent very simple. To make a download, the user first needs to obtain a valid torrent metafile URL. The user then copies the URL to BitLet's main page or uploads a .torrent file by clicking "Select local .torrent" and clicks the download link, initiating the downloading process.
All the sharing is done by the user's computer, which is actively uploading and downloading as long as the program window is open. This differentiates it from other services like Torrific (presently down), which does the sharing on the server side, allowing the user to download the torrent by HTTP in the end. So with BitLet your IP address using BitTorrent protocol is available for all peers.
This system also allows webmasters to easily distribute files using the BitTorrent protocol without requiring the visitors of their sites to install and know how to use a BitTorrent client. To do that, a webmaster needs to find a tracker that directs the BitTorrent downloads and uploads of his file, host the .torrent file, and then display a link in his site, prefixing a URL code to the torrent's online location. The BitLet site provides a code generator to create the HTML for that link; some sites that distribute torrent files already provide such links along with the URL to their torrents, including Fenopy and Suprnova. However, no means of embedding the applet and player into third-party sites exists as of July 2009.
BitLet also allows streaming audio in MP3 and Ogg Vorbis formats, an experimental streaming video feature (mostly using Theora, with optional HTML 5 playback), and an uploader for turning a file into a torrent.
Bitlet as a service is now defunct and bitlet.org redirects to the Bitlet github page.