Few months ago we reported about 7Track, a Gazelle based General/0Day tracker with a ‘communist’ look to it. However, just a few weeks ago 7Track ceased to exist – it didn't die or anything, it became Anontrack. The migration from 7Track to Anontrack did not result on any data loss – all torrents and users have successfully been moved. Just like the old site, new one also runs on gazelle codebase. It’s worth mentioning that Anontrack retains the ‘red’ look of 7TRack – even the popular ‘sovietski’ skin has made it to the new home.

As of 22/09/2009, AnonTrack tracks over 1300 active torrents and has a user base exceeding 1500 registered members. Torrents include movies, music, E-books, games and other general content. You can find most of the usual scene and p2p releases here but there are lots of uncommon torrents indexed as well. For example this tracker has a lot of of books on hacking, reverse engineering, etc that are not usually available on other general trackers (I don’t know if the name Anontrack has any relation to (or is inspired by ) the famous hacking group ‘Anon’ aka ‘Anonymous’ ). Screenshot of part of the torrent index is given below:

When 7Track launched back in 2008, it was one of the first few private trackers to use Gazelle codebase. No doubt this itself attracted a lot of users for the tracker. However now the situation is different- Gazelle trackers are fairly common in the BitTorrent scene and AnonTrack would have to work extra hard to attract more users to the tracker. And they definitely do need more leechers if the site is to survive in the long run.

As mentioned in the title of this article, AnonTrack is currently open for registration. All new users get 5 invites and 2GB upload credit upon signup.

Site Name: AnonTrack (http://anontrack.org)

Signup URL: http://anontrack.org/register.php

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A new build of Windows Live Messenger (WLM) 2009 beta is now available. WLM 14.0.8089.726 seems to be the successor to previous 14.0.8064.0206 build – however there is little to no information available on what’s changed in this version. This primarily looks like a QFE (Quick Fix Engineering) release and Microsoft has been a little discreet about its release. Existing v14.0.8064.0206 users are not being prompted to automatically update to the new build which hasn’t been the case with previous updates. It seems that even Softpedia were asked to remove the download from their servers, at least temporarily.

I initially thought that Microsoft had refreshed all of their their Live Wave 3 apps when I saw the release of Windows Live Movie Maker 14 Final (Build 14.0.8091.0730), alongside WLM update. However this does not seem to be the case. Right now it’s not known for certain if WLM 14.0.8089.726 is even considered as an official update.

Download

As i said earlier there are no direct download links for this version from Microsoft as of yet. However I found the full standalone/offline MSI installer package to be online at BetaNews’s FileForum.

[Click Here] to visit FileForum download page for Windows Live Messenger 14.0.8089.726 (Standalone Installer)

Related Articles

• Windows Live Messenger 9 Final 14.0.8064.0206 Standalone/Offline Installer

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By popular demand, our second Awesome-HD invites giveaway is here - we are offering 100 more free invites to this private tracker (our Twitter followers should have had a heads-up on this). If you didn’t know already, Awesome-HD (AHD) is a gazelle based BitTorrent site that specializes in high definition movie and TV show releases. Founded by EuREKA (ex-HDBits.org encoder), AHD has quickly become one of the better places on the net to find and download scene and non-scene HD encodes. If you are looking for well seeded, high quality HD rips (including some internal encodes), this is a tracker you should definitely check out.

So what exactly can you find on Awesome-HD? It’s mainly movies, music and TV shows – all in High Definition formats (lossless when in comes to music). Releases indexed on this tracker usually meet the following standards:

• Movies - DXVA 2.0 compliant 720p/1080p x264 encodes + DTS/AC-3 + English subtitles in a Matroska container
• TV –  Only Blu-Ray / HD DVD sources. Only complete seasons.
• HD-Audio - DTS-HD, TrueHD, LPCM, FLAC

As mentioned earlier there are both scene and non-scene releases indexed on AHD. In fact, majority of the uploaded torrents are encodes by p2p groups such as  EuReKA, ESiR, CtrlHD, BTT, DON, iLL, etc. It’s worth mentioning that AHD generally provides excellent download speeds – torrents usually have plenty of seeds.

Although it’s only been about 6 months since the launch, AHD has managed to sign up close to 5000 active members and upload 550+ torrents. This feat was achieved amidst the chaos of several downtimes and of course migration from XBTIT to Gazelle codebase. Initially the site was open for signup but it soon became an invite only community, which brings us back to the invite giveaway.

AHD admins have been kind enough to give 100 free invites exclusively for FILEnetworks Blog readers. These will be served on a first come, first served basis. You are not required to provide ratio proofs or speedtests. Please do not abuse this opportunity – do not request invites if you have no intention of being active on the tracker.

To obtain an invite follow the steps below:

1. Create a new email message with the subject ‘Awesome-HD’. In the body of the message clearly specify the E-mail address you want the invite sent to (write the email message in the format address@provider.com – do not use the address[at]provider[dot]com notation as you did in previous giveaways.
2. Send the email to invites.filenetworks@gmail.com

UPDATE: Within 4 hours after posting this, we have received 140+ invite requests. The first 100 requests will be sent an invite. Please do not sent any more requests since this giveaway is now officially over.

ALTERNATIVES: For those who could not get in, we understand your pain. You can either wait for the next giveaway (not scheduled yet) or sign up for another specialized HD trackers that are currently open for signup:

• HDStar – Decent HD & Blu-Ray Torrent Tracker Open For Signup
• HDME – New BitTorrent Tracker for HD Movies and TV Shows
• AVCHDBits tracker - Download AVCHD and MKV movie torrents (BD5/BD9)

If it helps, you can sign up for TorrentLeech via free IRC invite. Although not a specialized HD tracker, TL too has a lot of High Def movie/TV/Documentary releases. In other news, Zamunda, an often overlooked huge general tracker without mandatory ratio rules, is also open.

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If there are any readers who still haven’t got an account (surely you should have got one by now, if you’ve been reading FILEnetworks) on popular General/0Day tracker TorrentLeech, here is yet another chance to get one. TL is currently holding a free invites promotion for existing users of FileList tracker (filelist.org). This is different from the previous invite giveaways that involved TL’s sponsor Travian – this time around you are not required to register for a Travian account. All you need to do is to get on their invites channel and give them the E-mail address to send the invite to. Is this giveaway limited to FileList users as it’s claimed to be? Not really. Basically anyone can PM their E-mail on the channel and get invited for free.

Invites channel topic pretty much explains everything you need to do:

FOR FILELIST USERS! GRAB YOUR INVITE NOW! PM _w00t_ WITH YOUR EMAIL ADRESS O-N-L-Y AND THE INVITE WILL BE AUTO-SENT TO YOU.NOTE THAT THE BOT WILL BAN YOU FROM THE #invites CHANNEL AFTER THAT,TO PREVENT DOUBLE ACCS.HAVE FUN!!PLEASE DO NOT IDLE HERE!

It looks like the invites are being sent out by a bot (an IRC script). This could be the reason why everyone (not just FileList users) are able to obtain invites instantly. The giveaway has been going on for at least 2 days now. However, note that it could end any time, without warning (TL giveaways usually tend to stop abruptly). If you need step by step instructions for the entire process, continue reading:

1. Join the TorrentLeech invites IRC channel. Invites channel details are as follows:
   Server: irc.torrentleech.org
   Port: 7011
   Channel: #invites
   Direct Link: irc://irc.torrentleech.org:7011/invites
   New to IRC? Click here to download mIRC and read a brief tutorial.
2. Once on the channel, PM _w00t_ with the E-mail address you need the invite sent to. Make sure your message contains only the E-mail address – don’t send unnecessary junk such as ‘hi please send me an invite to……’ etc. PM’ing in most irc clients can be done by double clicking on the desired username - (on mIRC, list of users currently in channel is displayed on the right panel)
3. If the giveaway is still active, you will instantly be invited– thereafter you will be banned from the invites IRC. This is done to prevent flooding. You will only get one chance so don’t screw it up.

As usual, don’t try to create dupe (multiple) accounts on the tracker. This will eventually result in you losing all your accounts, not just the duplicates.

Note: If you are not an existing FileList member and still request for an invite, chance are high that you will get it. However note that this is sort of ‘exploiting the system’ as the giveaway is really intended for FileList users - proceed at your own risk.

Related Articles

• NonScene BRRip-x264 and BRRip-XviD releases now on TorrentLeech tracker
• TorrentLeech Invite Giveaway July 2009 - 2000 IRC Invites

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During the past few months, we featured at least two full alternatives to the now defunct TextBook Torrents tracker; Free The Textbooks and PureTorrents. Unfortunately, one of these sites (Free The Textbooks) hasn’t shown a lot of improvements – FTT  seems to have lost some torrents and there are hardly any new torrents being added to the tracker. Performance of PureTorrents on the other hand has been the complete opposite – during the past four months the tracker has added over 7000 torrents and attracted several thousand new members. In addition the site underwent some UI changes and several usability enhancement features too have been added.

When we first reviewed PureTorrents back in April 2009, the site only had 1200 torrents and 175 members. Now in August 2009, it tracks over 8200 active torrents and has a user base in excess of 4200 members. To put it short, PT is one of the largest academic/educational books trackers currently in existence.

Expanding the torrent and users databases is not all what PureTorrents has been doing in the past couple of months. They’ve added several new features too. The somewhat less user-friendly torrent index has got a facelift and now detailed information on each indexed book along with a book cover thumbnail is displayed. In addition, a new version of PTSort (a mod that can automatically extract book information from Amazon) is also due to be introduced soon (preview of this can be seen here).

If you are someone who is worried about having to maintain a mandatory ratio on a torrent site, here is some good news – PureTorrents does not have tough policies on user ratio requirements. Following is quoted from the homepage:

We field a lot of questions from members worried about their ratio.  You do not have to worry about your ratio.  We understand that as a book site, the chances that other people are going to want the same things as you are relatively small.  For the time being, we'd just like to see things better seeded and get some more content.

PureTorrents is without a doubt a great resource for students and professionals looking for electronic versions of educational and academic books (not just text books). Signups are currently open and you may register an account for free.

Site Name: PureTorrents (http://puretorrents.org)

Signup URL: http://puretorrents.org/account-signup.php

IRC Channel: irc://irc.puretorrents.org/PureTorrents

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We’ve been seeing a lot of ‘Games for Windows Live (GFWL)’ titles lately and by the look of things this trend is not going to subside anytime soon. Microsoft yesterday launched a brand new version of Games for Windows Live 3.0 and this component is now freely downloadable from Microsoft download center. Included in the new version is a new theme, an in-game marketplace, improved account management tools and of course two new anti piracy measures. I found the new anti piracy measures to be particularly interesting – one of them involves server side authentication.

Following bit about piracy protection is quoted from release notes:

Starting with new title releases this fall, publishers can optionally take advantage of two new methods to ensure everyone's playing with a legitimate copy of their games.

• Server Side Authentication links the game license to your Gamertag. The advantage of this method is that it allows installation of the game onto any PC, anywhere — only you can access the LIVE service from the game. Server Side Authentication has no affect on offline play.

• Zero Day Piracy Protection keeps games from launching before the street date the publisher has set for the game.

If you are a pirate, server side authentication can never mean any good. Although not much is revealed about how this works in GFWL 3.0, this type of protection is always harder to break. On the positive side, Microsoft uses similar methods to validate copies of Windows and people still manage to emulate the authentication servers and hoodwink them so hope is not lost for pirates. Either way something tells me that this would just be one extra step for those who legally purchase games.

Download

[Click Here] to download Games for Windows Live 3.0 Standalone/Offline installer from official server

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PRE channels are always an interesting topic. Some of you might be wondering what actually a ‘PRE Channel’ is. To put it short it’s an IRC channel where an automatic script (aka a bot) announces latest scene releases to the public. Announcing is usually pretty quick and is almost always done immediate after a group pre’s a release on topsites. Unlike in torrent trackers, there is not even a slight delay involved since there is nothing to upload – pre channels do not contain download links nor do they host any files. Their sole purpose is to announce to public the availability of a scene release. This article features a new public PRE channel maintained by the crew behind IPTorrents, the popular private torrent tracker.

Most private trackers do have their own pre channels but to log into these you usually need to be a registered member of the said tracker. IPT’s Pre channel however is open to everyone – even non members can access it just fine. I’ve been idling on this channel for several days and IMHO the announcing is actually pretty fast. Pre information is very detailed with each announce containing info about release category, release name, size, no. of files, genre, group, etc.

This is actually a fairly new project that is still being developed – several new features will be introduced soon. These include search for pre’d releases as well as dupe checking capability (“!pre and !dupe searches coming soon”). Also note that they have a rule titled ‘No Relaying Channel’. This means you are not allowed to make the announces available elsewhere in real time. Anyways this is excellent work by IPT crew – be sure to check it out.

Channel Details

• Server: irc.iptorrents.com
• Channel: #ipt.pre
• Direct Link: irc://irc.iptorrents.com/ipt.pre

If you are an IRC noob, please read this article for basic guide on how to connect to IRC channels using mIRC.

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Scene rules probably don’t mean anything to the average pirate but thought of posting this since we’ve been updating on scene standards for quite some time now. Official rules governing scene MP3 releases for 2009 have changed from the initial version devised sometime back. The revised set of standards carrying release name Official_MP3_Release_Rules_2.0-2009-MP3COUNCIL was published today. Folks downloading from private trackers such as VIPmusic and SceneSound (which specializes in scene MP3 music) will immediately get to download releases based on the new ruleset, after it comes into effect on 1/09/2009.

Following are some of the main changes introduced in V2.0 – this list is quoted from the release NFO:

• homemade releases forbidden
• lame 3.90.3 removed
• retail after free allowed
• new source FLASH
• pre-nuking for possible fakes allowed
• ID3 v2 enforced
• EXTRAS- tag for CD-extras

For a detailed description of changes, you can check whatsnew.txt file included in the archive.

Download

[Click Here] to download the entire archive which includes whatsnew.txt, the complete rule set as well as old versions of rules (MegaShare Link)

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Been playing Wolfenstein (2009) for the past two hours and IMHO it’s a pretty decent PC title. Only concern for many would be graphics, which are not as mind blowing as one would have expected from a Wolfenstein title. On the plus side the game is pretty fun to play – single player campaign is interesting (except maybe for the first 20 mins) and it has everything you’d expect from a shooter. Also,Wolfenstein has a lot of blood and gore and folks who like violent video games (like me) would enjoy this title a lot. The game seems to be fairly well optimized and runs fine on even mid-range hardware. Anyways here is our regular troubleshooting article which addresses several minor issues you might encounter with Wolfenstein 2009.

Note: This is by no means a complete article. It’s still a work in progress. More troubleshooting info will be added (including corrections, if any) as we come across more issues.

How to enable Anti-Aliasing (AA)?

Right now, there does not seem to be a way to enable Anti Aliasing in Wolfenstein. I’ve tried many techniques including forcing it from the video card control panel, manually editing the game config file, etc, but have had no success so far. If I come across anything new, this space will be updated.

How do I change the game settings manually by editing the configuration file?

As always, auto detected game settings are not always the best for your PC. And options presented on the in game menu are not always sufficient to satisfy power users who love to tweak the hell out of their games. You can edit the game configuration files manually and tweak a number of options that are otherwise unavailable from options menu. To do this browse to the directory C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\id Software\WolfSP\base\ and open wolf.cfg with a text editor such as notepad. (You might need to have ‘Show hidden files’ enabled in your OS)

Note: Always make a backup of your original cfg file before making any changes.

Where are the saved games located?

Wolfenstein saved games are located in the same directory as the configuration file. See above.

How do i change the menu, text and subtitles language of Wolfenstein to English?

Some players have reported getting non-English languages in their in game menu and audio. There are two methods you can try to get rid of this problem. You may try either one or both these methods:

1. Open Control Panel, go to Regional and Language Options. In the ‘Formats’ tab selected current format to English (United States). Additionally in the ‘Location’ tab set current location to United States. Press Apply and close the Windows. Re-Launch the game.
2. Use the in game console and enter the following commands
   seta fontlang English
   seta syslang English
   Note: You can also try entering seta syslanguage English
   (For help on how to open in game console, see below)

Note that these methods may or may not work. I did not get the language issue so I could not test the above solutions to be certain.

How do i enable the console in Wolfenstein 2009?

Create a shortcut on the desktop for the game executable. Edit the shortcut’s target field and append the following command to the end +set com_allowConsole 1. Save shortcut properties and launch the game using the shortcut. While in game press the ~ key to open the console.

How to get rid of the ‘Out of Range’ display error messages, blank or black screens and other display issues

Similar display related problems are known to be caused by the game running at a refresh rate that your monitor cannot handle (but this is not always the cause). For example if the max refresh rate your monitor supports is 60hz and the game defaults at 75hz, you wouldn’t see anything on the screen. Have no fear – you can edit the game configuration file manually and set the refresh rate to 60hz (we do not recommend setting it below 60hz). See above for help in editing the game config file manually.

How to minimize crash to desktop (CTD), crash at startup and other similar issues with Wolfenstein (2009) 

As far as I know, Wolfenstein 2009 does not contain any showstopper bugs. However users may experience random crashes due to various reasons including hardware/software configuration, etc. For these type of cases, no preceise troubleshooting info can be given. However you can minimize overall issues with the game by following the steps mentioned below:

• Install Wolfenstein Patch 1 – Even though it’s only a day since the game has been released, a patch is already out. It mainly fixes issues with multiplayer component of the game. You can download Patch 1 from here or here.
• NVIDIA PhysX – Wolfenstein requires NVIDIA PhysX installed in order to run. If your display driver did not install PhysX automatically (some driver versions do not), you can manually download and install the PhysX system software from here. Note that some games require PhysX runtime software components – not having PhysX System Software would cause such titles to crash at startup, even if your video hardware is non NVIDIA.
• Updated version of DirectX – If you are using Windows XP, please update to the latest DirectX monthly runtime. This will get rid of all the ‘missing dll file’ errors and will reduce the possibility of in game crashes. Latest monthly runtime can be found here.
• Update Video card drivers – Both NVIDIA and ATI have recent video drivers out – you should always try updating to the latest official driver version available for your hardware for best performance. If anything goes wrong, the option to rollback to previous release is always there.
  ATI Drivers: Download the latest ATI Catalyst drivers from this link: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx
  NVIDIA Drivers: Download latest official NVIDIA drivers from this link: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
  For Beta ATI/NVIDIA drivers for Windows 7, XP and Vista, check out this page: http://downloads.guru3d.com/. If you are having video issues with official drivers, do not hesitate to give beta drivers a go. They are not always evil as the sound like.
• Update sound card and motherboard drivers - Click Here to download 3DP Chip for Windows Vista/XP – This program will automatically detect your hardware and search for updated drivers for them.

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I’m not a huge fan of Hindi movies (Ok I'm not a fan of them at all – I hate them). However judging by the number of E-Mail queries we get about Bollywood movie torrents, it’s a fact that Indian movies are very popular across the world. What most folks do not know is that there are many private torrent trackers dedicated specially for ‘Desi’ stuff. You can not only download movies but also TV shows, music and other media too from these sites – free of charge and at fairly good download speeds as well. This article summarizes info about 5 such private BitTorrent sites that specialize in Indian/Pakistani content.

These trackers index a wide range of releases of various quality including Pre-DVD, DVDRip and even HD content. Most of these are being uploaded by ‘Desi’ P2P groups and not to mention a handful of scene groups. Note that when in comes to movies, English subtitles are included in the release most of the time.

iDesiR (Independent Desi Releasers)
 
Site Name: iDesiR (http://www.idesir.com/)
Signup URL: http://www.idesir.com/forums/register.php
Stats: ~43000 (18k active) members and 7100+ torrents
Description: iDesir is a forum based private tracker for Indian movies, music and a wide range of television series. Has a mobile section as well as general chat section on the forums.
Full review: [Click Here] – This review is pretty old – dated 09/2008

DesiBBrG
 
Site Name: DesiBBrG (http://desibbrg.com)
Signup URL: http://desibbrg.com/forums/register.php
Stats: 152000+ users and 3100+ torrents
Description: A huge Indian tracker which has both torrents and RapidShare links for Indian movies, music, TV and even Wrestling content, E-books and mobile apps. Needless to say it’s a popular, high traffic site.

ICTorrent (ICT)
 
Site Name: ICTorrent (http://www.ictorrent.com)
Signup URL: http://www.ictorrent.com/forums/register.php
Stats: 14800+ members and ~500 torrents
Description: ICTorrent is a relatively new Desi tracker that has it’s own internal release group (IcTv). Has pretty much everything; movies, music ,TV , soundtracks, stageshows,etc not only in Hindi but in other languages as well. , Looks very promising.
Full review: [Click Here]

The Media Site
 
Site Name: TheMediaSiTE (http://themediasite.net)
Signup URL: http://themediasite.net/forums/register.php?
Stats: 51900+ members and 630+ active torrents
Description: A forum based site which has the usual stuff – Movies, Music, TV and other downloads plus discussion threads.

IMTorrents (IMT)
 
Site Name: IMTorrents (http://www.imtorrents.com/)
Signup URL: http://www.imtorrents.com/register.php
Stats: ~5700 members
Description: Another forum based tracker for both Indian and Pakistani content. Free leech till 14th – 17th August.
Full review: [Click Here] – again, pretty old review (08/2008)

Note that this by no means is a complete list of Indian/Bollywood torrent trackers. There are many other sites that track similar stuff (ExDesi, DCTorrent, DesiTorrents, BwTorrents, etc) that were not open for signup by the time this article was posted. If you know any other similar sites (that are currently open), feel free to share them in the comments section.

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