Torstream: Watch Video Torrents Online Via Web Stream, For Free

October 23, 2010 by sharky

From all the innovative ways in which BitTorrent can be efficiently employed to distribute files (legally & otherwise), you’d think that by now someone would have come up with an effective solution to stream video torrents in a browser. The concept of torrent streaming is as age-old as the BitTorrent protocol itself, although it’s never been successfully developed to include public torrents on a grand scale. Until now.

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The Myth of Free Private Trackers: A Commentary on the Economics of Private Trackers

September 27, 2010 by Buddhas Son

Private trackers are seen widely across the bittorrent scene as a means to a "free" end. At its most basic level, we need to start with: "Why do you join a private tracker?" The answer is to get all kinds of free content shared by the members of the private tracker community which you have joined. Yet, are private trackers really free? What are the economics behind private trackers? What allows private trackers to maintain their speeds and permits them to rapidly upload content at such a blazing rate? All these questions might to the un-trained eye be answered simply by saying that private trackers are able to do what they do simply by their members all having the same goals when it comes to sharing. I disagree, and as you will see, there is an entire micro-economy within the torrent world.

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Online Media Streaming, Torrents and More at BitLite.com

June 26, 2010 by sharky

BitLite is a brand new online multimedia storage service that comes with a twist: full BitTorrent support. Users are able to upload .torrent files locally or even from a remote torrent URL. And since the service works entirely on the server-side, download speeds are incredibly quick. Once completed, multimedia files (video, music & images) can then be streamed in a browser to provide flawless online playback. Listen to albums, create a playlist, view image libraries, and stream movies (even in 1080p HD) in full-screen mode just like as though if you were watching it on a home computer.

Being fresh out of the box and still in beta, BitLite is looking for 200 ‘live’ testers to help gauge how well capacity handles demand. For a short time FileShareFreak is offering a special free BitLite signup link available to the first two hundred lucky people:

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TorrentSection - A Simple, Powerful Torrent Search Site

June 01, 2010 by sharky

In a perfect BitTorrent world, public torrent index sites wouldn’t be forced to shut down, censor content or block IP ranges. Popular torrent indexers TPB, MN & IH have become obsolescent to BitTorrent so as long as others continue to exist. The short (but sweet) history of BitTorrent is evidently repeating itself - indexers will continue to come and go.

Yet there’s a certain group of torrent sites that always seem to keep out of trouble, and that’s torrent meta-search sites. Take our featured torrent search TorrentSection.com, for example. Here’s a site that facilitates searching for torrents found on 12 popular torrent indexers, all in one handy search. Because TorrentSection doesn’t actually index the torrents itself (and only acts as a third-party), they stay under MAFIAA’s radar.

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uTorrent 2.0 (Final) Released, With New Improvements

February 03, 2010 by sharky

The dev team at utorrent.com have announced the release of a final 2.0 version of uTorrent today, marking this the first stable (non-beta, non-RC) release since development on uTorrent v2.0 began back in August. The world’s most popular BitTorrent client has undergone quite a few significant changes; including auto-uTP & UDP tracker support, an enhanced setup guide, transfer cap settings, bandwidth management and even a new shiny skin.

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Tixati - An Advanced New BitTorrent Client

December 04, 2009 by sharky

Not too many BitTorrent clients are able to compete with uTorrent & Vuze, but if total control over your torrent transfers is a must, then Tixati is definitely something worth checking out. This new client offers an absurd array of advanced features; including trackerless torrent support, magnet links, and robust flexibility.

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KickassTorrents - A Fast-Growing Torrent Indexer

November 02, 2009 by sharky

Rarely do we come across a public torrent site that’s worth writing extensively about. Most torrent indexers are little more than carbon copies of each other with few, if any, discernible features that make them stand out from the rest. You know the sites we’re talking about - AliveTorrents, ExtraTorrent, BTMon, TorrentFly, Torrentz - while great, it’s somewhat redundant to bookmark more than one. But there is one torrent indexer that’s doing things a little differently, and that’s www.KickassTorrents.com.

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Demonoid Set to Return, But With Heavy Losses

September 27, 2009 by sharky

Offline for almost two weeks now and counting, many Demonoid users feared the worst: here we go again. After a lengthy 6-month absence from November 2007 to April 2008 - Demonoid rebounded well, and dutifully reclaimed the top spot among private trackers (if you can classify them as private). Inarguably one of the Internet’s most prosperous & prolific trackers of all-time, Demonoid is poised to make their return, albeit - the news is bleak.

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The Strange PirateBay, or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Other Trackers

August 30, 2009 by sharky

Call this our obligatory TPB article.

We’ve kept out of the spotlight when it concerns anything newsworthy related to ThePirateBay. Why? Well, to keep it short: Firstly, we don’t fancy FSF for being known as a leading "news" blog; Secondly, in the end TPB exiting the scene really won’t have a large impact on public BitTorrent, anyways. So, after answering more than a just few emails in regards to what might happen to the BitTorrent filesharing protocol once TPB is RIP, it’s time to set a few things straight.

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CakeTorrent Makes Torrent Downloading a Snap!

July 08, 2009 by sharky

As one of the more knowledgeable computer users among most of the people I know, I’ve had a lot of people ask me how to download things from the Internet, or how to use BitTorrent. After explaining to them what torrents are, how to install µTorrent, how to find and download .torrent files, etc. - well, the whole process can be a bit much for some people. Especially for those just starting out.

There’s a new site called CakeTorrent (www.caketorrent.com) with the sole purpose of making BitTorrent as easy as possible to use for people who have never heard of it. Or just quick and easy for the rest of us. Searching to downloading is just 3 clicks from the front page, and includes a mashup of torrent search engines with a browser based BitTorrent client - so that everything works without the need to download .torrent files or browse torrent sites. Users don’t even need to install a BitTorrent client on the home computer - it’s that simple. And of course, it’s free!

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ExtraTorrent.com - A Rising Star on Public BitTorrent

July 01, 2009 by sharky

The timing couldn’t have been any better for ExtraTorrent.com. In the wake of shocking news that rocked the P2P community with The Pirate Bay selling out and even removing its tracker from public torrents; and Mininova filtering out illegal content - torrenters are being forced to move on to greener pastures. ExtraTorrent.com is one such torrent site that has picked up the pace, quickly skyrocketing to become one of the Internet’s top contenders among public torrent indexers.

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Easy aXXo - A Torrent Site For Real aXXo Releases Only

March 04, 2009 by sharky

[Disclaimer - experienced private tracker users, hide your eyes]. Looking at traffic statistics for torrent sites, one could only correctly surmise that the vast majority of torrenters are still steadfastly using public trackers such as Mininova and The Pirate Bay. And when it comes to movies, only one name generates a gigantic buzz for the latest film releases - and that’s aXXo - Hollywood’s reviled nemesis.

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New Torrent Ideas - 10 Brand-New BitTorrent Projects

February 10, 2009 by sharky

Here at FSF, we’re always on the lookout for the next big BitTorrent idea. From the latest hot new trackers to the discovery of torrent utilities & online services, we try to cover it all. Here we present you with 10 new & exciting BitTorrent projects that are currently underway: BitSmash, Top-Trackers, BirdTorrent, FreeTorrentHosting, MinTorrent, TorrentPump, FreshTorrents, Torrentshare, SpaTorrent and TorrentHub. Enjoy the read!

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2009 Oscars - Download The Oscar Torrents Now

February 07, 2009 by sharky

When OscarTorrents.com first took to the stage two years ago, they not only provided torrent coverage of the (leaked) 2007 Oscar-nominated films, but incorporated ‘user-voting’ into the mix. What began as a successful public torrent campaign that reached over 1 million visitors in the span of just two months was rather short-lived, however. For unknown reasons, OscarTorrents did not return in 2008. Flash ahead to 2009’s season which brings us a record-breaking 26 of 26 Oscar-nominated films available on P2P before the Academy Awards even happens (finished just today with the P2P release of Rachel Getting Married, according to Andy Biao from Waxy.org) - we’d assume this to be the perfect comeback year for OscarTorrents. Sadly, this was not to be.

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TopBT on Vuze - A Topology-Aware BitTorrent Client

January 23, 2009 by sharky

In an article published back in October, we reported about a new technology for BitTorrent called TopBT. TopBT was originally built on LH-ABC, an open-source BitTorrent client - but it has been vastly improved into a new version of Vuze. Unlike most currently existing popular BitTorrent clients such as Vuze, BitTorrent™, and µTorrent, the unique feature of TopBT is, it actively discovers its network proximity to its connected peers. It does so through actively sending packets to those peers, and inspecting their responses. Besides the topology-awareness, TopBT also considers network transmission rates to its peers, so that it can download fast. Not only that, but TopBT also saves unnecessary BitTorrent traffic that clogs up the Internet, which is great for those who are bandwidth-capped by their ISP. But is TopBT faster than µTorrent? In our tests: Yes.

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Coda.FM - A Fresh New Torrent Site For Music Albums

January 04, 2009 by sharky

One thing that’s always been missing from the torrent world is a public tracker that focuses strictly on music, and nothing else. Welcome to Coda.fm, the world’s first public music-only torrent indexer! While there’s plenty of music to be found on Mininova & The Pirate Bay, Coda.fm offers a refreshing approach to how music torrents should be displayed; there’s music genre categories, album art, metadata, track listings, album reviews and even artist information. While Coda.fm won’t replace your What.cd or Waffles account, we can assure this will become a hit among public torrenters.

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Find 100% Working Verified Torrents at Vertor.com

December 22, 2008 by sharky

Public tracker users often need to have their guard up when browsing through the vast selection of similar torrents at Mininova, TPB and others. Some torrents are password-protected; others contain malicious viruses, and there’s even fake torrents to lure in unsuspecting torrenters. Even a new torrent that contains an impressive seed-peer list may look ripe for the taking, but even these offer no security. Finally, for the first time ever, there’s a public tracker that actually checks & verifies their torrents before offering them for download. Introducing Vertor.com, a revolutionary next-gen BitTorrent site where every available torrent is checked for downloadability, viruses, DRM and passwords.

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TorrentZEN - A New Real-Time Torrent Search Engine

December 03, 2008 by sharky

Recently-launched TorrentZEN.com is a brand-new torrent meta search engine that provides live search results from 18 different public torrent indexers. Not only are the results fast, accurate and fresh from the source sites, (not from cached sources found in some other meta searchers) T-ZEN doesn’t search other meta search sites; just the top public indexers.

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A Review Of New Torrent Clients - What’s Hot, What’s Not

November 18, 2008 by sharky

The explosion of the BitTorrent revolution has sparked the development of an infinitesimal number of new torrent clients; some are built from the ground up, while others use opensource code, and try to build on an existing idea. Many of these new clients are dismal abominations, while others seem to excel in different (unique) areas. However, will any of these newbies be able to de-throne µTorrent’s indisputable title as king of the clients? We’re not sure about that, but there is one that seems to be faster, at least on public trackers.

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TorrentDam - The Mac OS X Torrent Search Utility

November 11, 2008 by sharky

Finally, Mac OS X users have a torrent search utility to call their own. Introducing TorrentDam, a brand-new public tracker metasearch tool. It’s free, it’s tiny (at just 592 KB), and it’s open source! TorrentDam allows users to search up to 7 different popular public trackers, including Mininova, ThePirateBay, IsoHunt & Demonoid.

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