Sidepodcast

Way back in August of last year, we announced plans to make every Sidepodcast show available for download via peer-to-peer networks. At first we started slowly to ensure it was a viable and effective means of distribution and then as we’ve grown more confident with the tools, we’ve integrated them better into our work flow.

Each time we upload a new show nowadays, we’ll release a corresponding torrent file at the same time. Additionally, after much effort on Christine’s part, we’ve also managed to make the entire back catalogue distributable via P2P too.

Synchronicity I

One of the suggestions we received from Alex after originally announcing plans to support file sharing, was to provide a subscription feed for shows available in Torrent format.

This gave us headaches for a while, but we’ve now found a way to sync the Torrent feed with the traditional podcast feed, meaning subscribers will now be able to receive the latest show via P2P at the same time as iTunes users download directly.

Torrents are becoming a key part of our distribution solution, and if you’ve never tried subscribing in this way before, we highly recommend giving Miro a try.

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• Length: 08:47 
• Size: 102.8 MB 
• File: track19.m4v 
• Transcript: track19.pdf 
• Torrent: track19.torrent 
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Formula One is already marching headlong into the 2009 season, but before it gets there, Sidepodcast takes one final look back at the events that shaped 2008.

This isn’t your normal F1 season review, but a chance for us to catch up on some of the things that slipped through our net during the past 12 months. These are things we wanted to cover but couldn’t, either because of time constraints or video becoming available past our broadcast dates.

We look right back to winter testing, acknowledge Rubens for reaching a special milestone and hear what Jenson has to say about Formula One’s first ever night race. All this and more in the last episode of Sidepodcast TV for 2008.

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• Length: 04:48 
• Size: 58.4 MB 
• File: track14.m4v 
• Transcript: track14.pdf 
• Torrent: track14.torrent 
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Formula 1 is set for one last hurrah in Europe, before departing for the four long haul races that will see the 2008 championship out. The destination for this last stand also happens to be the fastest track on the calendar.

This week Inside Track catches up with Jarno Trulli to get his thoughts on racing in his home country. We take a flying lap around Autodromo Nazionale Monza and also refresh our memories of how exactly the championship tables stack up post Spa Francorchamps.

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• Length: 05:55 
• Size: 67.1 MB 
• File: track13.m4v 
• Transcript: track13.pdf 
• Torrent: track13.torrent 
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The perfect antidote for a Valencian procession has to be a blast through the Ardennes Forest, and Formula One delivers this and more as the teams arrive at the Circuit de Spa Francorchamps for the Belgium Grand Prix.

This week Inside Track takes a look at the circuit and catches up with the thoughts of Christian Danner and Sébastien Bourdais. We also look back on the controversial events that unfolded last year and see how the championship stands before the drivers come face-to-face with one of the most daunting tracks of year.

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• Length: 05:22 
• Size: 62.1 MB 
• File: track12.m4v 
• Transcript: track12.pdf 
• Torrent: track12.torrent 
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For the second time this year F1 goes street racing and this time it’s through the twists and turns around the port of Valencia.

The city offers a unique backdrop for Formula 1, and notably features a specially created swing bridge allowing F1 cars to cross Valencia’s canal. In total, 25 corners make up this magnificent circuit and this is one episode of Inside Track you won’t want to miss.

It’s also Formula One’s annual summer break, so Christine takes a look at the state of the championship, some recent engine rumours and a look at why McLaren might have an advantage over their rivals when it comes to tyres and logistics as the racing returns to Spain once more.

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Following up on an earlier post relating to torrent support at Sidepodcast, I figured it might make sense, having covered the reasons for using peer-to-peer technology, to also look at how it works from a user perspective.

Within the past couple of weeks, links to torrent files have been appearing all over this site. You’ll find them beside episode names within the archive pages, in the small panel to the right of audio shows and beneath the transport controls in videos.

In order to use these .torrent files, you’ll need some client software and recently we’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of Vuze. The software runs on Linux, Mac and Windows operating systems and it’s free to download from the homepage.

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We talked briefly on last weeks show about some minor issues we’ve had recently in regards to our bandwidth costs. If you managed to get to the end of that episode we mentioned a spike in traffic led our hosting company, Media Temple, to warn us we could be looking at a bill for $350+ at the end of the month, and then the traffic spiked yet further.

The Price of Fish

As you can imagine, there’s no way we could afford those kind of costs once, let alone on an ongoing basis. The hosting company includes in their grid-service, one terabyte of bandwidth per month and until now that’s suited us just fine. Anything over that though gets billed at more than two dollars per gigabyte and in July we shifted almost double our allocation.

Media Temple do a sterling job of providing us with solid web hosting, the kind that lets us handle 1,600 comments per thread without blinking, but they never claimed to offer infinite bandwidth.

We’ve obviously been testing out a bunch of alternate solutions and amongst them is Amazon S3, which in truth has been a little unreliable of late, but does offer unlimited bandwidth (although it is expensive). More importantly though, S3 acts as a tracker for torrent files as well as a permanent seeder and this is where things get interesting.

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