I’ve been revisiting my idea for combining the power of Bittorrent to TiVo-like boxes. One little-known project which does just this is called konspire (and kast). It provides Bittorrent-like distribution of virtually any media. Even offers “channels” and ranking of sources.
From this page describing kast:
kast is similar to a blogging system in that you can use it to regularly “post” new content to a group of readers. Of course, a blog, like any website, has limited bandwidth. Thus, the kinds of content you can post to a blog are usually limited to text and pictures, especially for popular blogs that are read by many people. By leveraging the distribution power of konspire2b, you can use kast to post files of any size to essentially as many readers as you want.
[…]
a free radio or television station
using konspire2b, you can run a multimedia channel that reaches a large audience. As with any broadcast system, your receivers need to be “tuned in” (with their kast nodes on and subscribed) in order to receive particular broadcasts. However, as long as your receivers have their nodes on during your broadcast, they can interact with the received content later at their leisure. For video distribution, this makes konspire2b more like TiVo than ordinary television. Also, with konspire2b, you are not just limited to sending audio or video: you can send any kind of file.
Kast fits the bill for sharing content, especially content that is user-generated. It comes so close to meeting my needs that I’m surprised it took me so long to discover it. Right now, however, it’s about as useful as Alexander Bell’s first telephone: great concept, but if no one else is using it, its a doorstop.
Download kast, put in some content, and help change the face of media.