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Using Gmail to search Bit Torrent files

Jul 13th 2005
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Combination of Gmail’s RSS reading functionality and Bit Torrent files available through RSS files. So you have no excuse now not to use all that gaping storage space in your Gmail account.

Microsoft’s Outlook 2003 gives users the ability to use Search Folders. Essentially this feature allows users to scan their incoming email using specific criteria they provide. Simply a handy feature without question. I thought I’d borrow from this idea, though, and hook up Gmail to filter out some specific downloads I regularly track on various BitTorrent websites. So here we go.

First, find a few good RSS feeds for BitTorrent downloads. I’m using a feed each from Mininova.org, Rokanova.org, and NewTorrents.info.

Next, go and visit the free RSS-to-email service RssFwd and subscribe to your chosen feed(s).

Lastly, log on to your Gmail account and create the appropriate label(s) and filter(s). For example, create a filter based on items that you usually would search for via these websites and their feeds. The image example I’ve provided shows a simple filter I set up to search for all instances of musical artists that I like. I then have opted to apply a label titled ‘Downloads’ to these items when filtered.

Hopefully with this information you can get Gmail really working for you. I mean why bother, for example, searching through literally hundreds of potential download items when Gmail can do all the sorting? And of course you’ll hardly run out of storage space either. Joy!

One final step might be to subscribe to your Gmail account’s incoming ‘Downloads’ mail feed in your favourite news aggregator. There are many to choose from.

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3 Comments

  1. Or, you can just use Opera 8.02 preview [link], which has torrent search built in. A good site to start is isohunt.com.

  2. I wonder why doing so difficult, while you can just go to http://www.myBittorrent.com/?do=search and look for every file you want. That site has the most torrent and the best results!

  3. Nice article. And good tip Shashank.

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