December 12, 2008 by sharky
There’s just two more weeks until Christmas, and trackers are full of holiday spirit. Many of the major players have already kicked off the festivities with Christmas competitions, contests, treasure hunts and holiday-related fun. In this installment of "Tracker Watch" we also present a slew of brand-new sites (17 in all), plus some tracker tidbits and info.
BitNation.com Off The Map - The Truth Exposed
BitNation is now gone for good, as they had a falling out with the owners. Dfoolz the owner and the domain name owner, pulled the plug on BitNation. The new owners had an old backup and restarted the site after being down for 3 weeks. Their efforts of buying the domain name failed, but for a month or so tried to obtain donations for a new name and server, and 2 weeks ago the plug was pulled. All was lost except for the old backup, and any donations or new user information was gone, including torrents. So, if you donated (i.e. $75 for VIP) during the second-coming of BitNation, you’re SOL.
One member has donated a server and they hope to raise funds for a new domain name, said to be at http://bakedbits.org.
Private Tracker Christmas Spirit
Here’s a small sampling of what’s going on in the world of private trackers this holiday season.
• BitMeTV — Has a stylesheet (CSS) competition going on - the winner receives 100 GB upload credit, and the 4 semi-finalists receive 20 GB. There’s also a "treasure hunt" happening, with 73 hidden presents, each with a value of between 350 MB and 15 GB (upload). And damn, they’re hard to find, I gave up after about 90 minutes. And lastly… Wanted to invite some friends but have been worried that it might fall back on you badly? Well, anyone invited during the month of December 2008’s inviter will be immune for being responsible for those invites. So invite your friends and say stuff the consequences.
• RevolutionTT — 5 different Christmas competitions, each for upload credit. BTW, jappo, you made some rockin’ RevoTT wallpapers!
• What.cd — Another design contest for a holiday stylesheet. Offtopic: What.cd just passed the 10 million "snatch" mark.
• Waffles — Has a "Toys For Tots" campaign, which offers members a great opportunity to get points to spend in the Waffles Shop. All particpating members must place a heart-shaped tag on their toy & take a photograph of themselves dropping the toy. (Photos do not have to include your face, or anything revealing, so long as we can determine that it’s got a heart shaped tag). There’s 250 points awarded for the first toy, and 500 for each one after that; and there’s no limit.
BitGamer Briefly Adds Public Trackers to their Torrents
In a brazen move to increase speeds and pump in some fresh "ratio" stats, BitGamer tested out adding public trackers to (some of) their private torrents. This dreadfully backfired, and some members instantly began to receive DMCA takedown notices from their ISPs. What makes this even more deplorable is that this was an unannounced decision, unbeknownst to members. One user said, "Hey BitGamer, if I wanted to share my IP address with all the users of Mininova, I wouldn’t have bothered to sign up here".
Public trackers have now since been removed from the torrents, and an apology was issued.
Newzbin.com Opens (Rare) Signups
Well, it appears that hell has now officially frozen over. Newzbin.com, the premiere Usenet indexing service, and creators behind the widely-popular *.NZB file technology, has (temporarily?) opened their doors to the public. This is the first time we’ve seen this in well over a year, so if you’re a Usenet junkie, now’s the time to get in.
New Trackers to the BitTorrent Scene
Featured Trackers:
http://theiotaproject.org — The Iota Project has been around for about 3 weeks, and currently carries almost 200 torrents. The site is well-laid out, boasts over 400 members, and has some decent pre-times on the latest popular releases.
http://carpathians.hu — Open for signups, Carpathians is a newer ‘general’ Hungarian tracker that debuted in September, with an impressive list of 1,133 torrents. There’s a seedbonus here, and all torrents are currently set to freeleech.
http://visionbits.net — VisionBits is brand-new tracker to the scene; currently lists 75 torrents in their first 5 days of operation. Everything here is ’scene’, and pre-times are impressive.
http://emerald-speeds.com — New ‘general’ tracker with 300 torrents, and everything is freeleech. Almost everything is "scene", including a decent selection of Pr0n torrents.
www.leechland.net — LeechLand started up about a week ago, and has 46 torrents. There’s a 15,000 member limit, but not to worry: they only have 144 slots filled.
www.thecandy-store.org — The Candy Store has been around for about a month, and currently lists 75 active torrents. Most of the torrents pertain to TV episodes, DVDRips and DVD-Rs.
Polish Trackers:
http://polishleechgame.pl — In a little over two weeks since launch, PolishLeechGame has already put together 109 games torrents (although many are 0-seeded). Also, many torrents are "scene" (i.e. RELOADED, SKIDROW) and thus are English releases.
http://kingtracker.org — In 10 days since launching, KingTracker offers 65 torrents (most of which are Polish only).
http://legitime.org — LegiTime has been around for about 6 weeks, and has an impressive 545 torrents.
http://kickasstorrent.eu — ‘KAT’ is a newer ‘general’ Polish site, with 111 torrents.
Romanian Trackers:
www.bluefile.ro — With Romanian trackers, you can always expect a great layout and an eye-pleasing design. Bluefile.ro is no exception - although after just two weeks since launch, there’s only 17 torrents.
www.rotorrent.ro — Brand-new general tracker, RoTorrent is only 3 days old and yet already has 152 torrents.
http://xtra-scene.ro — Another new Romanian tracker that’s just 4 days old, and has amassed 131 torrents (mostly music).
Older Trackers We Missed:
http://megatorrent.pl — Not new (but it’s not listed anywhere), MegaTorrent has been around for a few months now and has 672 torrents.
http://vtorrent.pl — Older Polish tracker with over 5,300 torrents.
www.evil-zone.org — Evil-Zone has been around since late August, and offers over 330 torrents, mostly TV episodes and WWE/MMA stuff.
http://ebooksshares.org — An unbelievably great tracker that slipped under our radar! Over 4,200 torrents for audiobooks, eLearning and eBooks (PDF, LIT, magazines, children’s, fiction/non, and more).
Other Tracker News:
• http://templatep2p.com — Will be offering open signups between the 18th and 25th of December.
• Pianosheets.org will be switching to Gazelle soon, we’ll keep you posted.