Tyler Who Doesn’t Blog passed this info along to me. I’m not a BitTorrent user, nor do I have much experience with peer2peer tools—outside of a little dabbling with 6S ()—but I do know an interesting visualization idea when I read about one.
PacketGarden logs all of the activities one might do on a networked computer—Web surfing, file transfers, email, IM, games and P2P—and uses the accumulation to “grow” a personal 3D garden. The open-source tool monitors packets on designated ports, each with a different virtual plant to represent it. Uploads and downloads change the topology of the landscape.
To quote the creator, “You can think of packet gardens as pages from a network diary.”
Not every computer can run it, but my world-worn MacBook seems to be up to it. I’ll plant the seeds of activity soon and post pictures of my garden in a few weeks.