Sad get that I am, this promted a rush of happy memories of staring at the slow creep of a progress bar, desperately hoping that the file would download completely, and that my shaky 56k connection would hold up for the half hour needed to grab a single song. And then there were the emails from friends, or postings on message boards, pointing to files on the network right now, that you just had to get, straight away, no messing about.

Of course, I wouldn’t like to go back to the benighted days before broadband, with Napster the only way I knew of to find the rare or brand new music I’d never get to hear otherwise, but, despite and because of the difficulty in actually bloody sharing files, filesharing was more fun, and more of a social activity (like real life record shopping) back then. These days, it’s just too easy!

1 - I say ‘they’ because I’m not sure which disc jockey played it, but since one seemed to be channelling the spirit of the late, great Trade resident Tony De Vit last night, I’d guess it was the other!

Magnet links allow users to directly download large media files saving website creators and bloggers money on bandwidth costs and effectively propagating files on p2p networks that attract millions of users per day.

They are supported by the most popular p2p applications including: Kazaa Media Desktop, Limewire, Morpheus, Shareaza, Bearshare, Xolox.

It could be the best way yet to serve up files from a website that are, well, ever so slightly illegal. Since a Magnet link points your reader’s preferred filesharing application in the right direction, you don’t have to deal with bandwidth issues or worry about breaking your hosting provider’s terms and contitions.

Music weblogs could certainly benefit by throwing in Magnet links along with reviews, fansites for TV shows could point to episodes alongside their episode guides. Shareaza, a Windows filesharing app, is even distributed via Magnet link. Throw RSS into the mix, and you have what Scott Raymond calls broadcatching, as well as painless software updates for small developers. Scott’s writing with reference to Bittorrent, but it seems Magnet links have greater potential, in that they take advantage of applications that most folk have installed and are familiar with, and there’s an instant, huge, user base. While Bittorrent and Konspire already provide alternative, bandwidth-saving methods of distributing content - and I’m a fan of both - neither are exactly popular compared to Kazaa.

I would end this post with a brace of Magnet links pointing you in the direction of some of the songs I’ve downloaded recently - keep an eye out for a live performance at The Metro, Kyota by eYe of Boredoms fame - but there doesn’t appear to be a way of generating them on OS X.

Luckily, there’s a couple of weblogs already on the case: Magnet Mix points to everything from independent short films to stock photography and the works of Shakespeare, and Morle’s Magnets has recent posts offering books on Newtonian Physics and Coldcut tracks. Both, interestingly, favour content released under Creative Commons licences.