Participating in Newsgroups

In addition to email and the Web, Usenet is another part of the Internet. You can think of Usenet as a worldwide bulletin board system, where people from everywhere can post messages and join discussions about subjects that interest them. Each subject is called a newsgroup. More than 25,000 newsgroups cover virtually every subject imaginable.

Finding newsgroups

To find a newsgroup that interests you, you have to know a little about the structure of newsgroup names. A newsgroup name has several parts separated by periods. The first part specifies the general subject, the next part narrows the subject, and subsequent parts narrow the subject still further. Table 6-1 shows the most common top-level newsgroup names, and Table 6-2 shows examples of full names of newsgroups.

Table 6-1: Common Top-Level Newsgroup Names

Identifier	Included subjects
alt	Subjects that don’t fit into one of the other official categories
biz	Business
comp	Computers
misc	Miscellaneous subjects
news	News and other topical information
rec	Recreational hobbies and arts
sci	Scientific
soc	Social
talk	Debates

Table 6-2: Sample Full Names of Newsgroups

Newsgroup name	Subject
alt.tv.simpsons	Adventures in Springfield
comp.sys.mac.advocacy	Let’s hear it for the Mac
rec.sport.triathlon	For the Iron man in all of us
sci.med.nutrition	Scrutinize your diet here

Accessing the news

You can find the newsgroup of your dreams using a variety of programs. Two Mac OS X newsreaders are Thoth, available at www.thothsw.com, and Microsoft’s Entourage (which has a built in newsreader). You can also browse and search newsgroups from your Web browser by going to the Google Groups site (http://groups.google.com).