Two new file-sharing tools: Diglo and Magic Player

Magic Player allows you to play BitTorrents in your browser.

Here we’ll take a look at two new tools in the file-sharing arena. First, there’s Diglo, a new site that successfully fuses file sharing with social media — kind of like Facebook merged with RapidShare. Second, we’ll take a quick look at Magic Player, a browser plug-in that lets you stream media torrents directly, without leaving your browser — just click on a link and press Play.

Diglo

We’ve previously looked at a number of tools that integrate social networking services with file sharing. For example, µCast and Tribler allow you to create personal download lists and RSS feeds specifically for social groups. A new site called Diglo (www.diglo.com) fully meshes the idea of file sharing and social networking. It’s not a P2P site; rather it’s a file-sharing site along the lines of Megaupload, RapidShare or Hotfile, except with a variety of social networking tools built in and the ability to search through all publicly available files just by typing search terms into the search bar.

First, you need to create a Diglo account. You’re given three online storage drives into which you can upload files. One is a public share, which can be accessed and downloaded by anyone and has unlimited storage capacity. The second is a private drive, the contents of which can only be accessed by you. The third is a friends drive, which can only be accessed by people on your Diglo friends list (this works a lot like a Facebook friends list). On a normal free account, your private drive has 10GB of capacity, while friends get 1GB per friend.

To upload files to Diglo, just click on ‘Upload File’ in the top right-hand corner of the screen. An Explorer dialog will appear that lets you select which files you’d like to upload — you can Ctrl-click and Shift-click to select more than one file. After the files have been uploaded, they’ll appear in the Files section of Diglo, automatically categorised under a folder named for the date of upload. By default, all files are public, but to change that you just have to select a folder (or several folders) and click on Visibility, which allows you to change the folder settings to personal or shared only with friends, effectively moving the folder between your different drives.

Diglo also has groups, which work like chat channels, and you can create your own groups or join others. Groups have a common file share, accessible to all members, to which you can add any files you’ve uploaded to your file store. You can chat among members, much in the same way you do on Facebook.

The site has a variety of other cool tools as well, including a built-in music player that lets you play MP3 tracks stored on your or a friend’s file share, as well as a tool for creating galleries from images you’ve uploaded.

Unfortunately, the help system is awful (non-existent, really) and getting to know how Diglo works requires a good deal of trial and error. It can also be slow to upload and download, it defaults to having your files public when they should be private, and the way that accounts work is downright arcane, with a complex system of ‘Diglo points’ used to maintain premium account status.

Magic Player

A browser plug-in for Firefox, Chrome and Opera, Magic Player (http://magicplayer.torrentstream.org) lets you stream media torrents without leaving your browser. We’ve talked about torrent streaming before — it’s a capability now built into several clients — but Magic Player actually lets you right-click on a torrent file in your browser and select the Play option to show it directly, without even needing to fire up a BitTorrent client.

Magic Player works with Torrent Stream, a Windows app you’ll need to install first. Torrent Stream downloads the file in the background, allowing Magic Player to play it.
To set up Magic Player, first go to the web site and install the extension for your browser. Then, go to any torrent site and find a media .torrent file you’d like to watch or listen to. Right-click the file and you’ll see in the context menu a ‘Play torrent online’ option; select that. If Torrent Stream isn’t installed, you’ll be required to install it before you go any further. A download link for it will appear.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed Torrent Stream (and restarted you browser), you can go back to the .torrent file and try again. This time, the media player should drop down with the file ready to start. If there are multiple media files in the torrent, you can choose which one you want to play by clicking on the Playlist button on the bottom-right of the window (you may have to register to unlock this functionality).

While it can technically work with any torrent, Magic Player really works best on a limited number of BitTorrent sites, which are listed on the Magic Player home page. In fact, Opera users can only use these sites, since Opera doesn’t support the right-click feature. On these sites, a link to play the file with Magic Player will appear on the web page itself.

As with all streaming solutions, you’ll have to be patient with Magic Player, as buffering can take several minutes before playback starts. And unless your download speed can keep up with the media bit rate, movies will be unwatchable.