Newsgroups
Newsgroups have often been mistakenly thought of as an area of the Internet only
visited by bitheads or computer nerds. Indeed, while newsgroups pre-date the
world wide web and may not be as sexy, it is a whole other world unto itself and
marketeering aplenty happens there. You can obtain helpful information about
your competition and promote yourself as a helpful expert whose website or
company should be visited, for example.
There are anywhere from 15,000 to 48,000 or more some odd newsgroups,
depending on which groups your particular ISP carries on its news server. Each
newsgroup (sometimes also referred to as "Usenet") is typically
dedicated to a particular topic.
Topics covered are only limited by human imagination and interest. If there
is a topic of interest not available to you, you may even start your own
newsgroup. The range of topics is enormous; from the very interesting and
extremely helpful, to the boring, and utterly useless.
Just what is a newsgroup? A newsgroup is nothing more than e-mails posted to
a public forum for all to see. Those posted which draw comments from other
readers become part of a "thread" of messages. Each "child"
comment or response is placed directly under and indented from its
"parent".
Most web browsers also have the ability to access the news groups. If you
haven't set up yours for this, there are two easy things to do.
First, look in your browser's setup, options, or preferences menu. There
is usually an area or tab specifically for newsgroups (sometimes it is just
called "news"). Don't be surprised if you find it buried in the
same area where you adjusted the settings for your e-mail.
If you are still puzzled, the second thing to do is to place a call to
your ISP's help desk.
Setting the news properties is very similar to, though more simple than,
e-mail. Where your e-mail is often something like: mail.yourisp.net; newsgroups
are: news.yourisp.net. You don't have to specify any other items as they are
taken automatically from your e-mail settings on an integrated browser.
Your first use of newsgroups will require that you download (or sometimes,
"refresh") your ISP's newsgroups. Don't be concerned if this seems to
take some time. As mentioned above, there are typically many thousands of
newsgroups. Also, it should be noted that you are just downloading the newsgroup
names. The actual content of any particular newsgroup, known as the header,
still remains to be downloaded.
It is similar to walking into a large, well stocked book store. The books are
arranged in sections (read "newsgroups") by category. Discovering
individual book titles (read "headers") happens as you go to
particular sections and start scanning (read "downloading headers")
the shelves. It is useful to know that some newsgroups contain anywhere from
several hundred to several thousand current (i.e. not yet read by you)
headers. (You can control how many you want to view when downloading new
headers.)
Thankfully, it is more common to find header numbers of a much lower order of
magnitude. This is also a good way to judge the popularity of an individual
newsgroup.
Newsgroups are listed alphabetically and are in the form:
topic.topic.topic.etc. Some of the most eclectic groups are the ALT. groups.
These are the "alternative" groups that don't seem to fit other
categories. An example of this would be "alt.business". Other groups
of interest here would be:
Finally, if you can't find a particular newsgroup which you're sure exists
(your favorite brother-in-law insists that you just have to
cruise this group...) you can ask your ISP to add it to their listing. Most
ISP's will be happy to comply.
First, look in your browser's setup, options, or preferences menu. There
is usually an area or tab specifically for newsgroups (sometimes it is just
called "news"). Don't be surprised if you find it buried in the
same area where you adjusted the settings for your e-mail.
