The world of BitTorrent is yet to see a torrent tracker dedicated to magazines. True, lots of E-learning and library trackers such as Bibliotik carry plenty of magazine releases but there isn’t a private tracker on this planet which solely focuses on mags. This however is not the case with DDL forums and release blogs – we have already featured on this blog ‘Magazines Download’ and StoreMags, two specialized mags only DDL sites that index iPad and PC compatible electronic issues of modern magazines (see end of post for links to full reviews on these) . Today’s article is about yet another similar release blog for premium magazines in PDF format; MagBooks. MagBooks is one of the older DDL sites on the net and it’s been in operation since mid 2008. The site has kept the momentum going over the years and still indexes around 50 new magazine uploads every day.

The content on MagBooks includes both magazines and E-books. Out of the site’s 9100+ releases, around 7500 are magazine uploads. It’s actually a pretty impressive collection of mags, ranging from premium, well known publications to somewhat lesser known issues some of which region specific. Each magazine is uploaded into multiple one click hosting services such as Filesonic, Hotfile, Depositfiles, uploading.com, etc. Note that the Download links section is easy to miss – it is located at the bottom of each article, beneath the ‘You might also like’ section.

Layout of MagBooks is nothing revolutionary but users should be able to figure their way around the site without much trouble. Note that most of the site’s usability functions including search, browse by category, browse by date, etc are located in the rightmost sidebar (with other sidebars mostly catering to advertisements). Basic layout resembles that of a regular release blog, with recently uploaded magazines displayed on homepage. Each upload has a separate detailed description page, where the download links are located.

MagBooks maintains a social media presence both via its FaceBook page and a Twitter feed. Additionally, RSS feeds are also available both for posts and comments. Note that registration on MagBooks is not required for downloading – all links are visible even to guests.

Site Name & Homepage: MagBooks (http://magbooks.org)
Twitter Feed: http://magbooks.org/twitter
Facebook Page: http://magbooks.org/facebook
RSS Feed: http://magbooks.org/feed

More sites to download magazines:

• Magazines Download – PDF Magazines With DepositFiles & Hotfile Links
• StoreMags – Release Blog For iPad/PC Magazines In True PDF Format

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A couple of weeks ago we posted an article about StoreMags, a release blog for all kinds of magazine downloads. While the site indexed a ton of mags, it received quite a bit of criticism from our readers primarily due to two reasons; 1. It indexed a lot of adult themed magazines. 2. You had to purchase premium membership at a certain one click hosting service to download some files. If StoreMags didn’t suit your needs, here’s another free magazine download site that you might find useful. It has a much cleaner interface and is free of adult content. The site is updated on a regular basis and true PDF files viewable on both PC and iPad are indexed, along with Hotfile and Depositfiles download links.

Just like StoreMags, Magazines Download is modeled after a release blog. New uploads are posted as separate articles and latest issues can be seen on the site homepage. If you are looking for older releases, there are multiple ways to search for them. You can either use the search box on top right corner of the page or you can look up the release in site Archive which is accessible from top toolbar. An even cooler way to discover new magazines is the ‘Root category list’ (located on the right sidebar). As you may have guessed, this is a magazines index categorized by genre. Clicking on a specific category will take you to a page which will look something like the screenshot below. It’s a in fact a well organized view which gives you easy access to all available issues of a certain magazine with the click of a button.

‘Magazines Download’ appears to index magazines from all parts of the world. However, some of you would be glad to know that majority of these releases are English, US published content which are hugely popular. As we mentioned earlier, downloads are hosted on one click hosting services such as Hotfile and Depositfiles – you can download files from these services even if you don’t have a paid/premium account. Downloading is pretty straightforward and no registration/log in is required.

[Click Here] to visit Magazines Download homepage.

Related Articles

• StoreMags – Release Blog For iPad/PC Magazines In True PDF Format

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Two new editions of your favorite pirate magazine, The Game Scene Charts (TGSC), is out. Issues No. 45 and 46 covers PC game ISO/DOX scene releases for the months of July and August 2010. For those of you who are reading about TGSC for the first time, it’s a coded magazine that rates and ranks release groups in the warez scene based on the number of cracked games they leak each month. Groups are given points for each pre they make and at the end of each month groups with the highest number of points are selected. Each edition usually includes an editorial, a monthly overview, monthly charts, yearly charts, all time stats and in some cases even interviews with scene groups. TGSC is built with an old school scene cracktro look and feel, comes with its own rendering engine and does not require any additional software to run – just click on the executable and start reading.

As for the monthly group rankings, SKIDROW has unsurprisingly managed to retain the top position in both July and August. This group has been spewing releases regularly and consistently, and appears to have the ability to break all major DRM on the market (Steam, Securom, UBISoft DRM, etc) today. They have also been releasing cracked game updates, which we don’t always see from scene groups. Anyways go ahead and download the magazines to see complete group rankings.

Download

You can download TGSC issues from Defacto, a scene resources site we featured in a previous article.

[Click Here] to download Game Scene Charts Issue 45 (July 2010) from Defacto.

[Click Here] to download Game Scene Charts Issue 46 (August 2010) from Defacto.

Note: Your screen may flash and flickering text will appear during the magazine’s intro screens. This is intentional since it’s modeled after old school scene cracktros.

If you are looking for older editions, Defacto has the complete collection of TGSC magazines since Issue #1 (September 2006) on this page. And it’s regularly updated with new editions as well.

Related Articles

• 10 Great Resources For Scene Releases, Pre Times, NFOs and BitTorrent

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Yeah it’s kinda late for posting the June 2010 edition considering it’s already September. I somewhat forgot about TGSC in the last couple of weeks on top of it I couldn’t issue #44 anywhere else until Defacto posted it a couple of days ago. Anyways for collectors and fans of this awesome pirate magazine, here’s the June 2010 edition of ‘The Game Scene Charts’. If you don’t know what this mag is all about, it rates and ranks groups in the PC game scene based on the number of pirated game releases they make every month. Issue #44 covers releases in the month of June 2010. Sadly, there are no interviews with release groups in this issue (unlike the last edition where SKIDROW was interviewed) but rest of the features including editorial, monthly overview, etc are there.

As far as the monthly rankings go, SKIDROW has managed to secure the first place yet again. If I remember correctly, this is the 5th time in a row they’ve come up first (as said above, if you want to read the interview with SKID read the last issue which you can find here). TiNYiSO, a group primarily focused on releasing budget games gains the second spot while the all time rankings leader RELOADED follows in the third place.

Download

You can download TGSC issue #44 from Defacto, a scene resources site we featured in a previous article.

[Click Here] to download Game Scene Charts Issue 44 (June 2010) from Defacto.

Note: Your screen may flash and flickering text will appear during the magazine’s intro screens. This is intentional since it’s modeled after old school scene cracktros.

If you are looking for older editions, Defacto has the complete collection of TGSC magazines since Issue #1 (September 2006) in this page. And it’s regularly updated with new editions as well.

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We have quite a few number of gaming fans among our readers. If you are  video gamer, here’s something that might interest you. GamerZines is a relatively new online service that offers free digital gaming magazine downloads. Yep, you can download the entire mag into your computer in PDF format and read it at leisure and you don’t even need to register to do that. Don’t worry – these are not sh1tty magazines full of spammy ads and useless info. From what I’ve seen so far, they are professionally designed and contain original content.

There are several different magazines offered at GamerZines - separate editions for gaming platforms such as the PC, PS3, XBOX360, PSP and so on. You can either subscribe to these issues for free or download individual issues just by visiting their web site. Magazines seem to be supported by advertisements – there are several full page ads but the editors have made sure to publish them without causing annoyances to the reader. Hope this wouldn’t change when GZ gets more popularity.

Like I said before Magazines have a professional layout and they do contain original content. For example it’s on PCGZine Issue #34 that I found the first English PC review of Piranha Byte’s Risen. Each issue consists of usual gamer mag stuff such as reviews, previews, hands-on, news, etc. It’s pretty interesting – check it out.

[Click Here] to visit GamerZines homepage

By the way, if you are a gaming magazines fan, you should check out Retrogames – it’s a unique forum that offers downloads of scanned versions of old game mags.

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I’m posting this here because I think this is too good a collection not to share (and preserve). This post features torrents of several hundred computer magazine scans uploaded to ‘The Pirate Bay’ by user mlarsen2000. Now these are not just any magazines – some of them are nearly 30 years old. I don’t know about you but I find it fascinating to read what the computer gurus wrote back when I wasn’t even born :P. IMHO even the advertisements in these are pretty interesting :)

 
Image: Some of the magazine scans listed on The Pirate Bay

As you can see from the screenshot above, many popular magazines at that time such as Home Computer, Family Computing, Run, Ahoy!, Torpet, Info Magazine and DieHard are available for download. The uploader has even managed to find and add complete set of issues of some of these magazines (Run, Ahoy!, etc). Note that every single page of a magazine is scanned into an image file (not PDF) – the entire magazine collection (625+ issues) spans over 60GB.

[Click Here] to visit mlarsen2000’s page on The Pirate Bay. A complete and up to date list of magazine scans he’s so far uploaded can be found in this page.

Also, it must be said that I’ve not been able to find anything like this in any of the private torrent trackers of which I’m a member of (BitMe included). Full credit to mlarsen2000 for uploading these rare gems. Those who download the torrents, please help preserve the memories by seeding.

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About two months ago, we reported about Mygazines.com, a site which allowed you to view popular magazines online for free. Mygazines attracted many visitors who were thrilled at the prospect of being able to read premium content for free but it also drew the attention of copyright holders. As a result some of the most popular magazines were removed from Mygazines.com but the site continued to operated with limited content.

However it now looks as if Mygazines.com has shut down for good. The following message is displayed on the homepage:

Dear valued members, visitors and publishers,
Due to monetary reasons and the state of the global economy, we unfortunately must close mygazines.com. We simply ran out of funds to support the daily operations.
We thank you for your patronage.
If you are a publisher interested in understanding more about our model and vision for the future of the publishing industry going forward, or to discuss our Business to Business model opportunities, please email us at mygazines@gmail.com.
Sincerely,
The Mygazines Team

It is indeed sad to see such a site go offline as it was one of the few sites entirely dedicated to magazines.

Possible Alternatives

With the shut down of Mygazines.com, the next question which comes into mind is ‘are there any alternatives’? The following links should give you a clue as to where to download magazines for free. Don’t expect these to be complete replacements for Mygazines.com but as they they, something is better than nothing.

• 6 sites you can use to download free E-Books (some sites listed here do contain magazines in addition to ebooks)
• FILEnetworks E-Learning trackers section (Torrents – most E-learning sites have a magazines section)
• eBookShare.net (Has a good collection of magazines as well)

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