Torrents, the bane of many a record and movie industry boss. While the download technology does have its legitimate uses, it’s hard to argue against the fact that the vast majority of torrents flying around the Internet are of the less-than-legal variety.
That’s not stopped one clever little coder putting together a handy dandy little web app that promises to allow iOS devices to download torrents without the need for a jailbreak. What’s even more interesting is the app’s party piece.
Before we get onto that particular party piece, a little background.
The web app comes out of the recent TechCrunch Hakathon in New York and is developed by Sohail Prasad. Called NowStream, the app uses the iPhone’s own Mobile Safari instead of risking Apple’s App Store acceptance process.
So what’s so exciting about NowStream? Well, yes it allows users to download torrents right on the iPhone but that’s not all. Torrents can be opened and streamed, even while they’re still being downloaded.
So, assuming you’re using a legally obtained torrent containing a copyright-free video, it’s actually possible to watch a video even while it continues to download – effectively allowing the streaming of video within a torrent. It’s not something we’ve heard of happening before, let alone on a mobile device.
Prasad is still working out the legalities of his creation, but you can sign up to be notified when NowStream is available.
(via CrunchGear)
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