Emily Chang - eHub Interviews

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Visit Prodigem, originally added to eHub on Sep 19, 05.

eHub Interviews Prodigem

Thanks to Gary Lerhaupt, creator of Prodigem for this email interview posted January 19, 2006.

eHub: What is your web application/service about?

Prodigem: Prodigem is a web service which simplifies BitTorrent publishing into simple upload, point and click. Moreover, our API allows any web application to have built in support for BitTorrent creation and seeding by relying on Prodigem to do all the legwork.

eHub: Why did you start this project?

Prodigem: I had worked with Robert Greenwald to create torrents for his movie Outfoxed, and realised that the entire process could be dramatically simplified to the point that non-skilled content producers could publish without a middleman. Separately I had also created a proof-of-concept application called Torrentocracy, which as a plugin to mythtv, could be used to download BitTorrents directly to your television. From both experiences, Prodigem just became the natural next step.

eHub: How much time do you devote to its growth? Do you have a day job?

Prodigem: I am currently also a Master’s student in Computer Science at Stanford University. Between balancing my course load and making Prodigem happen, there hasn’t been much time for much else.

eHub: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

Prodigem: Prodigem is mostly a solo effort at this point. Prior to starting Prodigem and coming to Stanford last year, I had spent 3 years at Dell in their Linux Engineering Group. While I was at Dell, I authored the GPL’d projects DKMS, devlabel and started Dell’s Linux Blog.

eHub: What is your design philosophy?

Prodigem: Code, release, improve, repeat. Like most in the Web 2.0 space, I am a big believer in releasing early and often.

eHub: What technologies are you currently using?

Prodigem: Everything is LAMP based.

eHub: If your project is live, what are the most requested features from your users/community?

Prodigem: We recently just delivered on our most requested feature which was to simplify the BitTorrent process even more. With all the differing publishing options available on the internet, people just don’t have the time to go from site to site, re-entering all the meta-data or blogging details associated with whatever they are publishing. Along with the API we just also made available a small script called PEP which takes care of this by auto-creating torrents directly from enclosures found in your existing feed URL. This means you just continue publishing as you were, except now an automated script can come in and read your feed and have a torrent created. And since we provide torrent feeds for each user, you can just then let people know about that feed and presto, instant bandwidth savings with no additional work.

eHub: Does your user base reside in a primary geographic location or is it distributed?

Prodigem: It’s worldwide. BitTorrent is a worldwide phenomenon and people everywhere are looking for ways to simplify it.

eHub: Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months? The next 2 years?

Prodigem: Prodigem is very focused on working within the loosely joined web. I’d really like to see more web applications tap into our API to add BitTorrent within their feature set and that’s really the focus of the next 6 months. Over the next 2 year period, I’m looking forward to continuing the innovations and making strategic partnerships to get our usage more widespread.

eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

Prodigem: There a ton of efforts underway and a ton of giants involved in media distribution via the internet. While it certainly means plenty of competition, it also leaves Prodigem to nimbly continue to work on the Web 2.0 front building success from the bottom-up. Rather than have to worry about placating hollywood and how we’ll handle DRM, Prodigem is free to continue to deliver services that web users actually want.

eHub: What is the one thing you need to get to the next phase of the project?

Prodigem: More visibility. I had already mentioned PEP and how it converts RSS enclosures into torrents, but I’m not sure enough people fully grasp how easy this makes BitTorrent distribution for them. While I’m an impatient guy, I know these things take time.

eHub: Do you have a business model? If so, what is it?

Prodigem: Prodigem also innovated a method to sell content through BitTorrent. So besides traditional monthly hosting fees that our user’s incur with our more advanced accounts, we also facilitate the sale of content. For that we take 10%. Our advanced hosting accounts offer more storage and bandwidth than our free accounts and are competitive to what you would find from a more traditional hosting service.

eHub: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

Prodigem: We’re looking forward to our 100,000th download which should be coming down the pipe soon. There’s lots of room to grow and I’m looking forward to it.

eHub: What is the one thing you’re most proud of about the project?

Prodigem: Just recently with PEP, I realised that my work with BitTorrent had come full circle. Whereas I started with torrentocracy pulling down BitTorrents to your television via RSS, somehow by trying to simplify BitTorrent I ended up coming up with a way to create BitTorrents from RSS. It has a very nice circular appeal to it.

eHub: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?

Prodigem: Web is it. These will be the days that we look back on as the time the role of the OS and the OS distributor began to wane as users simply needed ways to get to the web to get to the world’s real computer assets.

eHub: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?

Prodigem: The regulars: del.icio.us, slashdot, gigaom, boingboing

eHub: How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

Prodigem: Not enough. I’ve got homework to do!

Thanks to Gary Lerhaupt, creator of Prodigem for this email interview posted January 19, 2006.

Visit Prodigem
Originally added to eHub on Sep 19, 05

» More eHub Interviews

eHub Interviews is a series with the creators of Web 2.0 applications and services by Emily Chang, author of eHub, designer, and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes, a strategic web consultancy in San Francisco that she co-founded with Max Kiesler.

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