Torrents! Torrent Search Mash-up

I found a search engine yesterday that is the latest offering from FreshMash featuring a torrent search engine powered by TRYANT and Yahoo!

Torrents! is a mash-up between TRYNT, an API developer and Yahoo! Using it means that you combine searching for torrents and the powerful indexing of the Yahoo! search engine. Due to the nature of the content though I would be cautious as to where I went from there.

Torrent search engines and trackers usually maintain their own databases. They do this by either accepting user submissions or sending out bots and scrapers. Torrents! is different in that it accesses data that has been indexed by Yahoo! That means a powerful search engine for the torrents you want, as long as you don’t care where it comes from.

Search by topic or name of the media or file that you are wanting. Results are displayed as a list that contain a link to the site that has the torrent. It does not link directly to the torrent. This is where it gets a bit tricky. Because Torrents! uses the Yahoo! indexing it means that the torrent you get in the result could be on any site, good, bad or ugly. The way that I looked at this service was time consuming as every result I wanted to look at I passed through SiteAdvisor’s site details look-up. The “safe” sites that were in the results were mixed. Most I would not recommend anyone visit. One comment on SiteAdvisor in regards to one domain was:

“… If you are using Internet Explorer get out quick!”

Apart from another reason not to use IE I would not want to go there anyway, in addition to the fact that details of the torrent are probably available elsewhere.

Other features include a tag cloud of popular searches and that is about it, after all it is a search engine what more do you want.

In summary, Torrents! will more than likely get you the torrent that you were looking for. But I would be very cautious as to what I clicked on and take appropriate precautions. For me it is not worth it. I would recommend to stick to sites and services that you trust. Judge for yourself but you have been warned.

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Vista Cracked

It would appear that in a small amount of time that Windows Vista has been leaked and cracked. So much for being more secure! Twenty four hours in the life of the as yet to be released Vista.

Reports are confirming that that Vista RTM has been leaked. That leak occurred directly from inside Microsoft itself, as it has not been made available as yet. November 15th was the date that was hinted at for it to be available to MSDN Subscribers. Not twenty four hours later it is starting to come through that this leaked version has been cracked. A quick Torrent networks search will confirm this. Not a MSDM subscriber myself I could not say if it has been made available earlier or not.

It appears the crack is not simply a download and run affair and involves a few steps [Don’t know how long that link will work]. Interestingly it uses the keys that Microsoft gave away during the beta. Which makes me wonder just how long this will work, for all Microsoft has to do is disable the keys issued as a part of the beta. Especially since Vista has not been released yet. Or then it might not matter what key is used. Or will Microsoft use it’s Windows Genuine Advantage software to cripple software? Maybe, but they will probably upset a few people and how would they know. Then again a beta is not forever. Whatever they do it better be fast, but it looks to me like it is too late. Will it happen again? Yes, so what does it matter what they do.

Seriously though twenty four hours to crack Vista, they should be a tad embarrassed. Really it is beyond funny.

I am not sure if the rumour mill is working over time or not but there are reports that Office 2007 has suffered the same fate. These reports are as yet to be confirmed and it has yet to be cracked, only a matter of time.

With all the efforts that they have made into being more secure and harder to crack and Microsoft saying that it is harder to crack and the whole WGA thing. They may have well have painted a giant “Hack My Software” poster on their arses.