Here on FILEnetworks, Google Translate is a tool that we use almost everyday. For example when it comes to translating text from foreign private torrent trackers, it helps us greatly. Just like us, I’m sure most of our readers use this web service  their translation needs. If you do, here’s an application that you might find interesting. AIRTranslate is a piece of software that allows you to use Google Translate right from your desktop – with no browser involvement at all. With this app installed, you won’t need to fire up the browser and visit translate.google.com whenever you want something done.

As you can see from the above screenshot, AIRTranslate pretty much offers everything Google’s online service has to offer. This includes translation between the 50+ languages supported by the service, language auto detection and clipboard content detection. Although there is no browser involvement, AIRTranslate requires internet access to perform translations (obviously :p ).

You may have guessed this already - AIRTranslate is built on the Adobe AIR platform. It’s a relatively lightweight app (around 25MB physical RAM taken when run on Windows 7, setup file is around 750kb) and does not clutter your system with additional services, startup entries and such. You will need to have Adobe AIR installed (download from here) to install and run AIRTranslate.

Download

[Click Here] to download latest version of AIRTranslate from Google Code

Read the rest of this article...

After being closed for a while, PTN has re-opened their external invite applications to the public. This should be good news for folks who were looking forward to get in since PTN invites are not that common and on most BitTorrent forums it’s a non-movement tracker (you can’t request/giveaway invites). External applications are one of the safest ways to get invited as the invites come directly from trackers staff - there will be no risk of your inviter being a scammer, trader or a cheater. As we have discussed in detail many times before, PTN is a specialized movie torrent tracker. It’s a ratio free private site that focuses a lot on community.

PTN may not be as popular as other specialized movie trackers but that doesn’t mean it’s crap. In fact, PTN is a tracker that doesn’t prefer much publicity – they have rules in place that prevent full tracker name on URL being publicly disclosed. It’s not just a wannabe secret tracker though – PTN is a pretty well established site' that’s been around for a while. Currently there are over 2600+ active members and over 7500 torrents indexed.

PTN mostly tracks movies. This includes individual movies as well as unique movie packs. In addition TV series (including season packs) and OSTs can also be found on this tracker. Screenshot below shows part of PTN’s torrent index:

As we mentioned earlier this is a ratio free tracker – PTN doesn't want you to maintain a minimum global ratio like most other private torrent sites. Traditional global upload:download ratio is easily replaced by the ‘gold’ system – which is a seed bonus system variant only way too cooler :p (to learn more about it, read FAQ and rules after joining PTN).

PTN has one of the most customized user interfaces ever – you probably won’t see anything like it elsewhere. Apart from the layout it’s packed with lots of small features such as arcade, blackjack, pirate galleries, pirate’s notes box, three separate browse pages for movies/TV/OST and so on. Even when it comes to ‘Gold’ there are some interesting site features just waiting to be discovered. For example when browsing the torrent index you might come across a set of yellow colored icons next to a torrent’s name. These indicate the currently active enhancements for that particular torrent such as 2x, 3x, 5x gold multipliers, random category bonus, filled request, ‘staff pick’ and so on.

Being a private community, PTN is almost never open to public signups. One of their more popular methods of new member recruitment has been the external invite application. PTN invite applications were explained and discussed in some detail in our previous review of the site. Before you complain about the whole process, we suggest you read the comments to that article which includes responses by users as well as PTN Staff.

Note that open invite applications won’t last forever – they usually close in ~2 days.

Site Name: PTN

Invite Application URL: http://*********.***/comeandplay.php (do not use ‘www’ in the address)

Note: PTN tracker rules prohibit displaying full tracker URL in public so only the location of the invite application was given (../comeandplay.php). Do not ask for full tracker URL or post it here.

In addition to open invite apps, double upload is also enabled for all torrents on site. One of their pioneering staff members stepped down and it seems PTN have enabled 2X upload in tribute:

As a gift to the users before he left, aFTERMATh managed to break in the 2xUpload button. It will be at least 3 days before we get it fixed, so happy leeching, its an early christmas present!

2X upload too will remain active for another ~2 days. If you want to get in and earn some gold, now is a perfect time :)

Read the rest of this article...

For those interested in scene rules, here’s another update. Scene standards for untouched DVDRs releases have gone through a change (yet again) and updated ruleset has now been pre’d. If you download DVDRs from trackers such as Sparvar, onlyDVDs, TheDVDClub, SceneDVDR, DVDRSource etc, expect future releases on these sites to be based on updated standards (as they mostly pre scene content). This is the second update to DVDR standards in the last two months with TDRS2K9 being released last September. TDRS2K10 however was initially nuked and then un-nuked, in true scene style:

NUKE: crap_signing.grps.are.crap_for.small.changes.create.a.adendum
UNNUKE: this.ruleset.is.real.and.legit.leave.it.alone

Either way the end result is that new rules are here to stay. There aren’t many changes but the full ruleset (new+old) is available on the NFO. These are categorized into several subsections; General, Video, Source, Authoring, Subtitles, Menus, Extras, DVD Limitations, Packaging, Samples and Directory Naming. Enough descriptiosn, read it for yourself :p

[Click Here] to read THE.2010.DVDR.RELEASING.STANDARDS-TDRS2K10 on PasteBin

Related Articles

• Scene XviD Release Standards 2009 (TXD2K9)
• Scene MP3 release rules 2.0 (2009)
• Scene DVDR Releasing Standards 2009 (TDRS2K9)

Read the rest of this article...

TorrentVault (TV) has been mentioned on this blog quite a few times. That’s because it’s a great private tracker for general p2p/scene releases, especially TV and music torrents. The site has excellent pre times, good download speeds and a decent amount of activity on most indexed torrents. TorrentVault recently underwent a massive change – they have upgraded to the Gazelle codebase and are now looking better than ever. In addition, their autouploader bots seem to be on steroids – they are now spewing hundreds of scene releases to the tracker daily (including Multilanguage releases). TorrentVault has never opened signups since they moved to Gazelle. However, FILEnetworks readers will now be able to register new accounts on TV through the special signup link mentioned at the end of this post.

TorrentVault is by no means a new private tracker. The older, TBDEV powered version of the site had been around for years. By now it’s a well established site with over 6000 active members and close to 10000 torrents. Many are unaware of it but TV actually has better pre times than other larger, better known torrent sites – for example, it’s television torrent upload times are on par with (and sometimes beat) trackers such as SCC, ScT and TL. Most of the good pre times are thanks to scripts that automatically upload releases to the tracker (aka autouploaders). TorrentVault’s autouploader bots upload more than 100 torrents to the tracker every day. During yesterday alone there’s been ~125 scene releases uploaded to the tracker (this includes muti-language releases).

TorrentVault does index a lot of TV releases – if you are focused on downloading single episode torrents and not many full season packs, you wouldn’t need a specialized TV tracker to get them if you have an account on this site. But make no mistake – it doesn’t only have TV torrents. Music, games, movies and other general stuff is readily available too. Below is a screen of TV running on its brand new Gazelle implementation:

Speaking of Gazelle, they’ve just upgraded and some features of the site are still being worked on (that’s what the current logo is all about). There’s been a lot of recent changes along with Gazelle migration and tons of new features are in the works as well. A summary of changes and upcoming features are given below (quoted from a new post on TV)

Changes

Site is now viewable in up to 256bit SSL encryption, simply visit https instead of http
Our IRC New Torrent Announcement has been cosmetically updated and due to this.. TV AutoDownloader v2.2.9 has been Updated by Ze0de.
NEW tagging system. Usually hundreds of torrents are Uploaded daily so its nice to be able to control which are torrents you haven't looked at.
When you make a Request or Fill a request it is announced on IRC now!

Upcoming Features/Fixes

Free leech and the return of the "SPAM" section - A second browse page showing only spam categories such as Appz/0day, Ebooks, MP3 etc.. and these categories will be hidden from the main browse Torrents page
Browser compatibility - We are aware that the site looks atrocious in IE and some features arent functioning properly in IE.
Upcoming competitions planned so get out your Photoshop
Genres next to pretime for MP3 coming soon!

As we mentioned at the start of this article, TorrentVault is closed for signup. However, you can use the special signup link below to create an account for yourself. Note that this link will only work for a limited time – during that time, the number of users that can sign up through it is unlimited :)

Site Name: TorrentVault (https://www.torrentvault.org)

Signup URL:
https://www.torrentvault.org/friends_of_filenetworks_blog_limited_signup.php

Please be sure to read the rules and FAQ once you sign up – do not abuse this opportunity.

Special thanks to ‘Demonic’ and rest of TorrentVault staff

Read the rest of this article...

‘Is Zamunda down for good?’ This has been one of the most frequently asked questions during the last couple of days. Reason - large general private torrent tracker Zamunda.Net has been inaccessible for most international users in the past two weeks (by ‘international’ we mean most countries outside Bulgaria, which is the home of Zamunda). We have tried to contact site admins to find the reason behind the downtime but so far had no success. Anyways judging from the responses we got we can only assume that the site was/is unreachable for significant number of its 600000+ strong user base. For those still having issues with the site, here’s a possible workaround that’ll get you in, at least until the problems are fully resolved.

During all this time, Zamunda’s BitTorrent tracker has been working for all users from almost every country – it’s only the web interface that’s been inaccessible. As we mentioned earlier even the website has been reachable from Bulgarian IP ranges (so technically, Zamunda is not down). Perhaps they are having international peering issues just like trackers such as LastTorrents and ArenaBG which went though similar issues sometime back (now resolved). Solution is simple (and is similar to the one mentioned by ArenaBG’s staff when it had the same problem) – use a Bulgarian proxy to access the site.

Proxy will only be required to browse the site and to download .torrent files to hard disk. Since the tracker is working for all users there will be no need to proxyfy tracker URL. Some Bulgarian proxy sites and servers that we found to be working are listed below:

• http://proxy-bg.info/ – Web interface. Just type in the URL and start browsing
• 89.215.247.40:3128
• 212.117.63.145:3128

To make use of the last two proxy servers, you’ll have to change your browser’s proxy configuration. This is easy. To configure FireFox browser to access sites through 89.215.247.40:3128 (3128 is the port number) do the following:

1. Open FireFox
2. Go to Tools—>Options—>Network
3. Press the ‘Settings button under under ‘Configure how FireFox connects to the Internet’
4. Change the settings as shown in screenshot below

Important: Make sure you do not access other private torrent trackers through proxy servers. Most trackers will instantly ban you for it so change these settings whenever you want to access them. As far as I am aware, this is not an issue on Zamunda. In addition, your regular web browsing speeds may also become slower when accessed through a proxy server.

For those who don’t know about Zamunda, here’s some info. It’s a huge General/0Day tracker with lots of movies, music, games, Ebooks and more. The site indexes over 70000 active torrents and has a user base of over half a million members. To read more about Zamunda.Net and why it’s such as popular tracker, refer to following articles:

• Zamunda – Huge private tracker with no mandatory ratio rules (signups open)
• A private torrent tracker that has PC Game rips?

Read the rest of this article...

Several weeks ago we featured a new ratioless general tracker named StoreThe.Net (STN). Due to it’s great pre times, seedbox hosted torrents and the high amount of torrents uploaded daily, the tracker was an instant hit among many torrenters. Their latest move however might not become as popular. STN will soon be switching to an ‘sponsorship model’ where users will have to pay in order to continue being a member. That’s not all – they’ll soon be launching a host of new services including one that converts leaked E-books to hardbound books. A summary of upcoming changes and services (according to Yocto, the site’s admin) is given below:

STN switches to sponsorship model E3.00 for 6 months (or longer, depends on how many sponsor make a pledge).
STN launches www.yoctogon.com and is an ovh reseller, OVH pricing and information will be online on Saturday.
STN launches ebook/pdf to REAL hardbound book.
STN will announce the launch of scene2web.com in a week or so.

There’s a lengthy post on STN’s forums describing in detail the changes site will undergo - so we won’t advertise it here again. But it all comes down to this; those who become sponsors will retain membership of the tracker (with additional benefits) while accounts of those who don’t pay will be deleted after a maximum of 28 days.

There has already been a lot of negative feedback regarding STN’s sponsorship model on various BitTorrent forums such as TPS and FST. I saw a thread on FST which even called for a boycott on P2L trackers such as Vizz.Tv and STN. STN’s admin (Yocto) however has a different take on P2L (Pay-To-Leech - a widely flamed concept among Bit torrent communities). This is what he wrote on STN forums, as reply to a question raised there:

There is not a single site that is bit-torrent (p2p) that is not p2l
Here is my logic.
Sites that sell donations (SCT, etc) are p2l
Sites that have ads are p2l
Sites that you click on anything or are forced to view something are p2l
sites that are ratio based are p2l (as you pay with your bw that costs you something).
So there are NO sites that are p2p that aren't p2l, because p2p is inherently p2l.

I (the writer of this post) personally think STN going P2L was/is a bad idea but hey, no one is pointing a gun to my head and forcing me to pay. The decision whether or not to become a sponsor, after all is up to the site’s users. On a side note, this kind of operation has a higher likelihood of attracting law enforcement’s attention than the usual scenarios. This would also cause some folks in the warez scene to go bonkers (well they already hate P2P anyways but I don’t think monthly subscriptions for scene content will be an idea they’ll love). Whatever happens, I hope STN and its users can and will be able to stay safe.

Read the rest of this article...

As you may know we’ve been offering direct download links to standalone/offline installers for various pieces of software for quite some time. Now here’s great news for users of Yahoo! Messenger. After being in beta for couple of months, Yahoo! has released the first final build of Yahoo! Messenger 10 (build 10.0.0.1102) to the masses. New version comes with support for high quality video calls, new languages, new ways to arrange your contacts and a new  ‘updates’ tab. To put it short if you are using Yahoo! Messenger, v10 is a must have upgrade.

Build 10.0.0.1102 was just released to the public a few hours ago and Yahoo!’s official download page has now updated with links to the latest version. However, the download they provide is the web setup – a small setup program weighing few kbs is downloaded to your computer and it is then used to download rest of the files over the web. For those who hate web setups (like us), link to the offline/standalone installer is provided below. Download it, save it and run it wherever, whenever you like – without having to re-download everytime :p

Download

[Click Here] to download Yahoo! Messenger 10.0.0.1102 standalone installer from official server

Note: This software has just been released. There may be slowdowns in download speeds due to the high number of requests.

Note: The standalone setup contains Yahoo! Toolbar and Yahoo! Browser Extensions. These are non essential components that will clutter your system (unless you really use them) so make sure to deselect them during installation.

Read the rest of this article...

With the return of Docs.Torrents.Ro and the launch of DocsBits, these appear to be great times for E-Learning trackers. Here’s even more good news on this front – Bibliotik, a Gazelle based private tracker for E-Books (fiction, non fiction and educational), magazines, comics, etc has opened public registrations in a rare move. Having conducted a few invite giveaways for Bibliotik we can tell you one thing – demand for this tracker never decreases. We have given away close to 1000 Bibliotik invites via our giveaway threads and we still get new requests almost daily. For everyone who missed out on previous giveaways, here’s a golden opportunity – get in without the need for an invite during open signup.

As we have highlighted many times before, Bibliotik has seen some great improvements over time – not a big surprise considering the experienced crew behind it (mostly the same folks who bring you Cinematik and Asian DVD Club). The site’s torrent index has expanded to 14150+ active torrents from ~10500 a about 2.5 months ago. If this trend of rapid torrent submissions continue, Bibliottik will soon catch up with the likes of BitMe and BitSpyder ( which are arguably the two best E-Learning trackers in existence ) in terms of content.

Having said that, Bibliotik probably shouldn’t be labeled as an ‘E-Learning’ tracker as it’s not limited to educational stuff. In addition to E-learning content, Bibliotik indexes non fiction & fiction E-books, text books, journals, huge comics packs, magazine packs/full issues sets, individual magazine and comics releases and of course, Audiobooks. E-books/Magazines are usually in either PDF, LIT (Microsoft Reader) or TXT formats while Comics are packed in CBR (Comic Book Reader) archives. Below is a screenshot which shows part of this tracker’s torrent index and interface:

If you didn’t know already, Bibliotik runs on Gazelle codebase. There are some interesting site features such as Collections, ‘Authors’, Publishers, Advanced Browse, Tagging, etc most of which are powered by Gazelle’s great organizational capabilities. Right now there is only one theme available – this can be customized to your liking.

Anyways as mentioned in the title of this post Bibliotik is currently open for signup. This will be for a limited time so make use of it.

Site Name: Bibliotik (http://bibliotik.org)

Signup URL: http://bibliotik.org/register

If by the time you read this signups are closed, you may request for an invite on their Invites IRC channel irc://irc.brokensphere.net/bibliotik-invites.

Read the rest of this article...

If there was an award for the ‘private tracker that changed its URL most number of times’, eBookVortex may probably win it. If you were a member of this well known E-Learning tracker and tried to access the site via its old URL (http://www.ebookvortex.net), you’ll notice that it’s no longer accessible. Yep – you guessed correct – they’ve changed the URL for what seems like the millionth time. Anyways it’s not a big deal – no data has been lost and all user accounts, torrents and ratio stats remain unchanged. However if you were downloading a torrent from EBookVortex, you’ll have to re-download it to continue seeding.

Following is a mass E-mail sent to all existing members of the tracker:

New URL is http://www.ebookvortex.com

Everyone will need to redownload the .torrent to continue seeding.

- eBookVortex Staff

If I remember correctly, EBV used to have this very same domain a few months back before they switched to ebv.net. Anyways if you are downloading or seeding any torrents downloaded when the site had the old domain, you’ll have to re-download them since tracker address too has changed with this latest move.

eBookVortex has been around for ages but lately,it hasn’t been the most active E-Learning tracker, specially when compared to the likes of PureTorrents. However it still does track a significant number of torrents (~1000 including packs) and has a decent user base of 16000 members. You can read more about eBookVortex and see screenshots here, in our recent review of it. If you are not an existing member of EBV but interested in getting in, signups are still open.

Site Name: eBookVortex ( http://www.ebookvortex.com )

Signup URL: http://www.ebookvortex.com/account-signup.php

Read the rest of this article...

If you are a member of the popular private BitTorrent tracker IPTorrents (IPT) you may have come across some strange errors yesterday and today. As we were informed by several of our readers, almost everyone seemed to get the following message when trying to log into IPT: “Username or password incorrect.”. First of all don’t panic – you haven’t been banned form the tracker (unless you did something stupid such as cheating). Second of all it’s not a fault at your end. What happened was that IPT’s database crashed and everyone’s passwords got re-set. Following is quoted from the site homepage:

IPT databases were fixed today but as a result it seems like all passwords were reset by accident.
This means when you log out your current password will not work anymore so go to your profile and change your password now.
Unfortunately, our email system went down at the same time the database fix went live. Its back up and running now!
This means you can now use the recover password function to retrieve your password.

To put it short, if you get the ‘Username or password incorrect’ error when trying to login to IPT, you can regain access to the tracker by recovering your account. Just go to http://www.iptorrents.com/recover.php and enter the email address you entered when signing up for IPT. You will then receive a new Email from IPT along with your new password. Use this password to login and after first login, feel free to change the password to whatever you like.

Note: This method will not work if you were banned for some reason.

UPDATE: It seems the DB has been restored so recovering may not be required at all.

We have restored IPT Database with a 24 hours old backup, those who had problem logging in, please try to logon with your old password.

IPTorrents is closed and we don’t have any invites – please do not ask for them here.

Read the rest of this article...