Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Windows, Web services
Torrent2exe turns any torrent file into a single-source BitTorrent client
by Brad Linder May 13th 2008 at 7:00PM
Torrent2exe is a web-based utility that does for BitTorrent files what Audio/Video to Exe does for audio and video files. That is, both utilities let you take a file that's typically useless without companion software and make it usable on its own. While Audio/Video to Exe makes audio and video files playable without a media player, Torrent2exe makes files distributed via BitTorrent downloadable without a separate BitTorrent client.
Here's how it works. You download a torrent file (just the tiny torrent, not the big ole file it helps you to download) to your desktop, and then upload that torrent to Torrent2.exe. Click the download button, and you'll get an executable file. When you run this program, a standalone BitTorrent program will start up and immediately try to download the source file to whatever directory the executable is in.
The site also allows you to enter the URL of a torrent instead of uploading a file from your desktop. But we had less success with that method.
If you want to convince your less tech-savvy friends or relatives to download a Linux distribution or Creative Commons licensed movie, Torrent2exe could come in handy. Instead of telling them to download a BitTorrent client, then a torrent file which they have to load into that client, you can just create an executable that you can send to them.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Patrick Lewis said 10:19AM on 5-14-2008
This could also be a clever way to find out who is downloading what torrents, especially for copyrighted material.
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Reader said 9:33PM on 5-13-2008
"If you want to convince your less tech-savvy friends..."
You hit the nail on the head Brad. Explaining torrents to some friends not the most fun thing in the world, would love to just send them an exe to download it. Especially when you get into picking a 'faster' torrent than another for the same file.
Cool program, will have to look into it.
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Kevin said 7:51AM on 5-14-2008
Doesn't this also encourage the lack of seeding?
It may take a few minutes to explain the concept of torrents to a friend (I've done it a few times, it's not that difficult a concept, even for the biggest luddites), but you're doing the torrent community (legit and otherwise) a disservice by providing a way to 100% leech without giving back to others who want to download.
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Matias Korhonen said 7:51AM on 5-14-2008
Sending more EXEs via email. Yet again a great idea from Download Squad. Opening EXEs that arrive via email is really the sort of think you want to encourage your less tech-savvy friends to do.
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http://www.draco-vulgaris.net
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gimp said 8:15AM on 5-14-2008
The "If you want to convince your less tech-savvy friends..." got me, but I have to say that the comments from kevin and matthis made me see the error of this way.
Great in theory but I think dumb in practice.
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AskTheAdmin said 9:04AM on 5-14-2008
Anyone else have it hang on connecting to tracker? It builds the folder structure and stands on 0% and connecting to tracker?
Anyone get this to work?
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evilbelgian said 9:14AM on 5-14-2008
This is actually quite nice for someone like me who doesn't actually enjoy using torrents. Since I live in a country where bandwidth is sort of a scarce commodity with the norm being 3gigs a month bandwidth packages and even then they are overpriced.
So being able to use torrents without giving my precious bandwidth away to strangers could come in handy
The Evilbelgian
thelairofminorevil.wordpress.com
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James said 10:27AM on 5-14-2008
In other words, waaaah, I want to leech and screw over everybody else, poor little me, I can't foot the bill for the bandwidth I want to use, boo hoo.
evilbelgian said 11:20AM on 5-14-2008
Actually i would like to point out that for starters I avoid using bit torrent as much as possible as I made clear earlier, and secondly I more than make up for any unshared leeching by spreading everything i leech as much as possible in my community.
Jeebus said 2:54PM on 5-16-2008
@James, how is he screwing over everyone else? If the choice is between not downloading at all and leeching, either choice helps the community, but the first choice helps himself. I think you may be a communist.
Jeebus said 2:55PM on 5-16-2008
Should have been "either choice does not..."
Rick White said 12:15PM on 5-14-2008
I didn't think this would really have a purpose for me since I like the features uTorrent provides me, but then I saw your idea for helping people who may be daunted by the task of using bittorrent. Great idea. I'll be sending my dad some of these next time he asks me how to get a particular file.
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whiskey said 4:30PM on 5-14-2008
As stated before this is not something you would want to encourage your friends on doing...
Wouldn't it be better to have self burning iso's instead of this?
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Rumble said 10:34PM on 5-14-2008
BitLet.org works too. Just copy the URL it creates when you link to a torrent and send it to a friend.
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Rob said 8:16AM on 5-15-2008
Because, of course, training users that clicking britney.exe is the right thing to do could never, ever go wrong, could it?
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Torrent2exe Team said 4:49PM on 5-15-2008
Hello!
Thank you for the rewiew of our service.
You wrote that Torrent2exe had some problems with URL processing. Could you tell us the URL of the torrent file that hasn't been processed correctly. We'll find and fix this bug if it exists.
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