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torrents posts

Filed under: Internet, P2P

Did OpenBitTorrent just become The Pirate Bay 2.0?


When the news came down a few days ago about The Pirate Bay being sold, the community reacted strongly. Despite pleas on the official blog for users to not abandon the site, it was inevitable that the 'betrayal' many users felt would lead to a flood of account deletions.

To a number of P2P users, TPB is dead. After all, once GGF goes to work the site will likely be a hollow shell of its former self. So what will become of the massive number of torrents in their tracker?

TorrentFreak
has discovered and interesting development with OpenBitTorrent, a clever open tracker project. Haven't heard of it? Here's how the site summarizes itself:
OpenBitTorrent is a bittorrent tracker free for anyone to use. You don't need to register, upload or index a torrent anywhere, all you have to do is to include the OpenBitTorrent tracker URL in your torrent.

Read more →

Filed under: OS Updates, Utilities, Windows, Freeware, P2P, Windows x64

Patch Windows 7 tcpip.sys for faster torrent downloads


Many of you have probably been adjusting Windows' half-open connection limit since Windows XP. It's widely regarded as one way to help increase the speed of your torrent downloads.

If you're running Windows 7 beta (or one of the plethora of leaked post-beta builds), Half-Open Limit Fix is a small, portable utility that is compatible with your OS and will patch your tcpip.sys in just a few clicks.

Download the application, launch it, and click the button for your preferred language - nearly a dozen are supported. Most sites recommend using 50-100 and the program will default to 100. If you want to, change it - otherwise, just click add to tcpip.sys and reboot.

Once Windows has loaded again you can head to your torrent app's configuration screens and adjust your connection preferences to utilize the new half-open connection setting (TorrentFreak has a good tutorial for uTorrent and BitComet).

Filed under: Internet, P2P, web 2.0

Find private torrent sites accepting users with Trackerchecker


Private torrent trackers are great. If you're after hard-to-find files that don't make it to major sites like Piratebay or Mininova, you've likely tried to locate them on a private site only to learn that they're not accepting signups. I still remember what a pain in the butt it was to keep checking in on Demonoid years ago to see when a few more spots would open up.

Trackerchecker does its best to keep you informed about which sites are accepting new user registrations and which ones aren't. Over 500 trackers are currently supported, and they cover an incredibly wide range of specialties. As you can tell from the screenshot, they're not all SFW, but then again, you probably shouldn't be downloading from a private tracker at work anyway.

The code is easy to understand: green means you're good to go, red means you're out of luck for now. Sites that don't respond to Trackerchecker's queries in a timely manner are given a blue mark. If your desired site is taking signups, click its name to be taken directly to the registration page.

The listings also tell you when the last check was run on each site. Registering at Trackerchecker lets you build a list of favorites, making it easier to monitor only the sites you're actually interested in joining.

It's a great tool to add to your P2P bookmarks.

[ via TorrentFreak ]

Filed under: P2P, Browsers

Greasemonkey script adds Pirate Bay links to Amazon pages

If you're looking to either make your Pirate Bay downloading a little more like traditional shopping or a way to avoid spending money at Amazon.com, a new Greasemonkey script is ready to answer the call.

Pirates of the Amazon works by inserting a direct download link below the title of the product you're currently viewing. Of course it works with movies and albums, but it also does an admirable job finding software and books.

The download link points directly to the .torrent file, so you won't even have to view the Pirate Bay page for a particular item. Their crew doesn't mind a bit.

"We love scripts like that. Sharing is good, [and we] don't really care if people end up on our download page or take the torrent itself directly. It's easier for the people to get it directly, but they miss the meta data that is surrounding the torrent file (comments and so on can be helpful)."

This isn't the first script of this kind, obviously. Others exist that perform the same function with IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, and a quick tag search at Userscripts.org for 'torrent" reveals several others.

It's an interesting script, but I'll keep searching NowTorrents for now.

7 Multi-Site Torrent Search Tools For the Swarthy Downloader

So, it's torrent booty ye be after? Well, matey, I'll be happy to share a list of me favorite places to find forbidden treasures.

Millions of torrents, thousands of places to look for them...What's a wayfarin' buccaneer to do? Why, search a whole pile of places at the same time, of course. After all, you're more likely to find gold with seven maps to the same pot than you are with just one.

Enough of the played-out pirate jargon already, on to the sites!

Simultaneous Searching

NowTorrents. Searches up to twelve sites at once. I like the file type tabs and health indicator, and they offer a Firefox and IE compatible search plugin.

uSniff. I wrote about uSniff before, and I use it quite often. I don't really search a lot of different sites, usually just Pirate Bay and IsoHunt, and they're both supported (along with six others). The interface is clean and responds quickly - the search box throws some people off, though. I don't understand why, it's giant, orange, and says "search" on it. They also have a search plugin for IE and Firefox.

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Filed under: P2P

Download Like a Pirate Day

Watch carefully.. I'm about to talk like a pirate.

Arrh. Avast. Shiver me.. oh forget it.

It's officially "Talk Like a Pirate Day" the world over. Talking like a pirate is kinda lame. It's been done. It's so 2004. Since we've had it up to here with co-workers and their clever attempts to recreate a pirate past that never was a cute or cuddly as the fantasy pirates of today, we decided to go a different direction.

Welcome to Download Squad's "Download Like a Pirate Day". It's just like that other day except, well, lot's and lots better. We'll keep you fat and happy throughout the day with ways to download your fill, even ways to feel like a pirate without breaking any copyrights.

Check out some of our recent posts on burning up your bandwidth and watch throughout the day for more great ideas to keep you downloading like a pirate.

Filed under: Internet, P2P

YouTorrent - Torrent searches get stylish

YouTorrentIf you've been making a list of all the web sites that start with the word "You" that have popped up in the last year, today's your lucky day. The latest addition to the You-sphere is called YouTorrent and it has to do with searching torrents.

On the surface, there is nothing new. YouTorrent appears to be just another search engine for torrents that combines a number of trackers and engines, then displays their results in an easy to digest format. In fact, other than a sharp and clean look, YouTorrent does not seem to be much of an innovator, and maybe even a little on the slow side in terms of displaying search results.

However, it's not exactly what is available now but what is going to become available in the future that makes YouTorrent an interesting engine to watch in the coming months. Promised are Boolean searches, additional engines, as well as customization options for those engines.

But even without those additional features, YouTorrent is a good looking and functional search engine for torrents. Just remember what your mother always said: torrent responsibly.

[via CyberNet]

Filed under: Utilities, P2P

Torrent tools for the masses

Just when you thought there were enough BitTorrent apps to serve and fetch your download needs for life, Mashable puts together an enormous list of 50+ torrent tools and legit sites to confuse you even more.

Your favorites are all there, Azeurus, uTorrent, and all the rest. Also among them are neat-o picks like WizBit -- for S60 smartphones.. who needs BitTorrent on a smartphone? --, and Burst -- a torrent client that even runs on Windows 98.

We'll remind you once again, torrent responsibly and don't go breaking anyones copyright.

Filed under: Fun, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Web services, Google, Freeware, P2P

DiggTorrents - torrent search using Google power

DiggTorrentsAlthough DiggTorrents is a useful service, their proclivity for using other companies' trademarks is a little bit distasteful. Originally named GoogleTorrents, which is in fact a more accurate name, DiggTorrents uses the recently released Google Co-op Custom Search Engine to search a select set of sites for torrent links. In my brief testing, it appears to work particularly well.

I noticed in the FAQ that it says you may not be able to get any search results if you're running the AdBlock or AdBlock Plus Firefox Add-Ons. I'm running AdBlock Plus, and didn't notice any issues. Athough it's not clear what happened to the GoogleTorrents.com domain, the owner of the site reports that he sold the domain with the understanding of having traffic from it forwarded to diggtorrents.com. I'd assume Google bought the domain simply to keep it off the market, but that's pure conjecture.

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