Soulseek is a ad-free, spyware free, file sharing application. Mainly for music.

Strong community and virtual rooms lets you to meet people, share information, find new music and chat freely using real-time messages in public or private.

What can I say? Soulseek rocks. I always find the rarest music with it that I cant find anywhere else. One of my favorite features is the wishlist. If you cant find what your looking for type the name in the wishlist and you’ll be notified as soon as someone with the file logs in.

Remember to leave your searches going, it never stops searching.

Final Word: Not the fastest p2p network but one of the finest ive seen.

Digitally Imported (or DI.FM) has been around for a long time and has got to be one of the best know online radio stations to date. They have over 30 stations each playing a different style of music. Theres literally something here for everyone. They play 128kbps and lower for free but ask for a fee of $4.95 USD to stream at 192kbps. If you don’t pay the $4.95 USD you are subject to ads ever 30 mins or so. Not the biggest deal unless your a stickler for quality and continuous playback.

I listen to this at work sometimes just for the variety. Kind of annoying at times tho because of the commercials.

Final Word: One of the most popular radio stations around and for good reason unless you dont wanna pay and are a stickler for quality playback.

ThePirateBay.org is well known by the torrent community. They’re based in Sweden and have a reputation of conflict with big companies like Microsoft and Apple. They even have a section you can read all the nasty emails they receive threatening them. Sweden doesn’t have the same laws as the US so they don’t seem too worried. If fact, they hold so much power that when a Swedish internet service provider started blocking access to their site tones of people switch providers forcing that provider to unblock The Pirate Bay. Their latest ploy was raising money so they could buy their own island and become their own country to they could pirate to their hearts content.

I browse The Pirate Bay on occasion to see their top 100 download section. They have big community and lots of great content but I find there to be a few too many Swedish and German comments. I only speak English.

Final Word: Another big player on the torrent scene with a clean look and strong community.

Torrentz.com searches many different torrent sites to find you what you need. Its got a simple user interface and provides many options for each search. The homepage has a search cloud which tells you what the most popular searches are at the moment based on how big the text of each word is (bigger=more popular).

I use this site when I’m feeling lazy and just wanna find something without reading comments. Usually comes up with multiple trackers to choose from. Helps if you know how to add individual trackers to your torrent client to maximize your speed.

Final Word: Easy to search, not so easy to connect to all the trackers. Great for finding new torrent sites.

Demonoid.com is a private torrent site that hosts some of the rarer pirated files floating around. Because its private the administrators are able to more or less control the content and check it for malware and/or viruses. The community is one of the best I’ve seen so you can always find out additional information about the download by reading the comment section. The catch is you need to register and keep a decent ratio to remain a member… meaning your encouraged to upload as much as you download or run the risk of losing your account. Newest torrents don’t require an account to download but newest torrents also have higher risk of not being checked for viruses by the administrators and community.

I use this site for any rare or older torrents that I cant find anywhere else. I also use it to research which downloads are safe and which I should keep away from. I don’t download from it so much because I don’t want leave my computer on for days uploading after downloading a big file.

Final Word: Either the first or last place to look for that special file you want real bad.Private torrent sites are less likely to be sniffed by the powers that try to bring file sharing to an end.

Mininova.org is one of the biggest and best torrent sites around for the time being. It has a healthy community and tones of software, games, books, TV shows, music and anime. Very simple and fast.

This should be any torrent searchers first stop. Always remember to read the comments and see what others have to say about each release. Because its a public torrent site some fake posts are around so its best to be cautious on what you download.

Final Word: Well known and full of content. An often first and last stop for your piracy needs.

Freecall.com lets you make free long distance calls with the help of your computer. You can make a call from your computer to a land line or from a land line to a land line. By putting in your own phone number as the callback number Freecall will call your phone first then connect you to the person you want to call. This a great feature but also a little scary in that you can make other people call whoever you want (as long as they stay on the phone long enough for the second person to pickup). The free service is limited to North America and certain countries around the world. See the list of counties you have to pay to call on the homepage.

I personally use Skype to make my computer to land line calls but thats only because I bought a year of Skype before I found out about Freecall. Ive tested both and find the reception to be the same.

Final word: Free alternative with Skype with its own feature set.

Dodgeit.com lets you temporarily make up an email addresses that you can check. This is great for signing up for sites  that require a password. You make up a name@dodgeit.com and submit it to the site thats asking for it. Then go to dodgeit.com and type that name you made up in the search field. You’ll be directed to your temporary inbox so you can reply to any activation links needed to access the site.

I recommend using an original name@dodgeit.com (maybe a name with numbers in it) since many people use this service and repeated names give you a lot of inboxes to search through.

Final word: Great for keeping your email address private and keeping your spam count low.

I’ve been a long time digg fan and still am but have recently found myself spending more time on Reddit. Reddit is essentially the same site as digg only not as pretty. Users submit links they find online and a community of readers vote on whether the link is interesting or not. A great concept. But in the wrong hands could lead inoccent internet users into the evil greedy grasp of online marketers. In my opinion, Kevin Rose (founder of digg) endangers the purity of user driven content. Plane and simple, the dudes a sell out.

[ratings]

Grouphug.us is a site where people can confess their deepest darkest secrets. Its all totally anonymous with no required sign up to post. This allows for a lot of content but also opens the doors to alot of spam. Recently the moderators have been screening posts before they appear on the main page. So you’ll have to wait a little bit to see your secret reveiled.

This site can make you laugh out loud but also I cringe in terror. Believe it or not this site changed my perspective on humanity. Call me sheltered, but I had no idea how sick and perverse people are… I’ve recently submitted a secret and I must admit, it feels pretty nice sharing something I wouldn’t dare tell anyone.

Final word: Good for a laugh, maybe more… youll have to try it.

Radioblogclub.com is a site that lets you search for music and play it live stream off the net. I know there are many sites that do this but this ones original in that it will link your search to many other popular songs of the same genre. So one search can give you hours of continuous playback and let you discover new music. Radioblogclub has a built in flash player or you can download the standalone player. I believe you can even listen to radioblogclub on your wii.

Ive been on this site for almost a year now. Im not a big mainstream music fan but when I’m in the mood for it I connect through radioblogclub. Easiest one of its kind I have found to date.

Final Word: Nice selection of popular music and continuous play so you don’t have to keep searching.

 

Releaselog.net reports on the latest 0day releases to appear on the torrent scene (aka: newest movies, video games and programs you can pirate).

The site updates daily and links most of its releases to a site call NewTorrent.info for a direct download.

I’ve been browsing this site for a few months now and something always catches my eye. Thanks to this site I waste a lot less bandwidth downloading crappy files that are potentially dangerous.

Final word: A must surf site for anyone that downloads torrents.