RedSwoosh P2P Media Sharing
RedSwoosh, a start-up with an innovative web service, promises “zero-cost file distribution” for your large media files. The next time you want to post a link to a large MP3 or video file that you’re hosting, you can do so without worrying about your site getting digged and your bandwidth bills going through the roof.
Go to RedSwoosh, plug in a URL to a hosted media file, and you’ll get a “swooshed” link that you can post on your site. When a user clicks on the link, they’ll be asked to install the RedSwoosh client. Then, as more users click the link to grab the file, they will be downloading it from shared RedSwoosh users rather than from your servers.
I gave it a shot and posted an MP3 for sharing. You can download it here. It’s a 20-minute audio recording that I made last night by holding my iPod (with an iTalk mic) out of my apartment window. You can get a little taste of what July 4th sounds like in the middle of San Francisco and I don’t have to pay for hundreds of you to download the 18MB file.
RedSwoosh also offers a predelivery service that allows you to create “campaigns” with daily, weekly, or any kind of periodical content.
The extra step involved to install the client is a bit of a hassle, but there really isn’t much of a way around it at this point. Oh and guess what — the client only works on Windows machines. At least it’s a start. And the way the client works is rather innovative. The RedSwoosh client caches recently downloaded files and continues to share them while you go do something else. It only shares the IP information required to make the file transfers happen, so no personal information is shared. Check out their FAQ for more details.
[link via del.icio.us]
