Bitoogle is my favorite torrent file search engine. It’s a useful tool which scours the Internet for popular media files. However, the free service looks like it’s in a bit of a financial crisis (they’re giving away t-shirts with donations) as the user load is becoming very high.

If you don’t know what torrent files are, or how Bit Torrent works, here’s a brief description.

“Bit Torrent is a novel approach to file distribution. Instead of relying on a busy, slow FTP or website for a bunch of files, Bit Torrent distributes the transfer of files over a network as large as the amount of people using it is. Bit Torrent is a refreshing piece of software, as it forces those who download to upload at the same time in order to continue spreading the file.”

The bit torrent mechanism works best when the file you are seeking is a popularly downloaded file. More users means more connections, and usually faster downloads. Bit torrent works differently than Kazaa however in the sense that you are forced to upload (with Kazaa you can turn file sharing off). If you are looking for popular media files, Bit Torrent seems to currently be the most popular method.

For more about Bit Torrent, and to see some of the latest torrents, check out the following:
– Bit Torrent Main Page
– SuprNova.org – popular torrent search site
– Bit torrent resource – from etree wiki