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Internet
News is not unlike public email. You can imagine a news server
as a collection of public email boxes. Each box is dedicated to
messages (articles) discussing a particular topic. Such boxes
are called news conferences, or more commonly newsgroups.
Normally, names of newsgroups reflect what topic they are dedicated
to and are arranged into hierarchies. If you have access to a
news server, you can select newsgroups of your interest, and read
articles and post your own articles.
Usenet
works in such a way that everything that you post to your local
news server will be passed to other servers and eventually appear
on every server that carries the newsgroup that you posted to.
So, other people will be able to read your articles from their
local server. After some time, older articles are removed from
servers to make space for new ones.
MAKING
THE BEST OUT OF THE USENET
Although
originally invented for text discussions, now the Usenet is very
actively used as file exchange medium. People post files as
attachments to their articles. There are special ("binary")
groups that carry such posts. The Usenet carries a large amount
of goodies, such as pictures, videos, music, software.
Many people spend large amount of money and time downloading this
stuff from the Web. Try using your ISPs news server. You will
discover a very reach source of virtually everything. And this
source is fast and free.
Every
ISP provides their users with (usually free) access to a news
server, exactly as ISPs provide you with a email box that you
can use. This is a part of a standard service package. To use
email, you need two things: access to a email server (email account)
and a email program, such as MS Outlook. Exactly the same is true
about the News. You need access to a news server and a newsreader
program. You should be able to find information about news server
available to you on your ISP information pages, where you find
other information, such as your mail server address etc.
If
you want only to participate in text discussions, then a program
like Outlook or Outlook Express is sufficient. You can use it
as a newsreader as well as a email program. But, if you would
like to post or download multimedia items ("binary stuff"),
you should use a newsreader that is designed to make it easy for
you. You can check a list of most
popular binary groups. Sure you will find something interesting
for yourself.
THE
BEST NEWSREADER TO USE
There
are many binary newsreaders available. We would strongly recommend
you at least to try Ozum,
our newsreader. It has the most complete set of features, and
it is the simplest one to use. Ozum is 4 applications in one:
a binary newsreader, a cross-group search engine, a programmable
news scanner and autoposter. Read more about
Ozum.
RECOMMENDED NEWS SERVERS
Newsburg.com
- 3 farms of high quality servers, plenty of subscription plans
to choose from. They give you a registered copy of Ozum to use
with their servers.
Titannews.com
- a popular usenet access provider..
USENET RESOURCES
Usenet
binaries (pictures, music, video, software...) search and downloading
engine:
http://www.binjet.com/
You
can also find a wealth of Usenet related information, including
software, here:
http://www.newsreaders.com/
There
is an incredibly useful and free source of help for almost any
problem. Whatever question or problem you have, you can almost
certainly be sure that someone has had this problem before, has
asked the questions similar to those that you want to ask, and
most likely received helpful answers. You don't even have to ask
your questions, you just have to find the answers.
Google
are maintaining a searchible archive of newsgroups. We highly
recommend using this archive:
http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search
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