A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on the World Wide Web. Newsreader software is used to read the content of newsgroups.
rn is a news client written by Larry Wall and originally released in 1984. It was one of the first newsreaders to take full advantage of character-addressable CRT terminals. Previous newsreaders, such as readnews, were mostly line-oriented and designed for use on the printing terminals which were common on the early Unix minicomputers where the Usenet software and network originated. Later variants of the original rn program included rrn, trn, and strn.
A news server is a collection of software used to handle Usenet articles. It may also refer to a computer itself which is primarily or solely used for handling Usenet. Access to Usenet is only available through news server providers.
The Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) is an application protocol used for transporting Usenet news articles (netnews) between news servers, and for reading/posting articles by the end user client applications. Brian Kantor of the University of California, San Diego, and Phil Lapsley of the University of California, Berkeley, wrote RFC 977, the specification for the Network News Transfer Protocol, in March 1986. Other contributors included Stan O. Barber from the Baylor College of Medicine and Erik Fair of Apple Computer.
The alt.* hierarchy is a major class of newsgroups in Usenet, containing all newsgroups whose name begins with "alt.", organized hierarchically. The alt.* hierarchy is not confined to newsgroups of any specific subject or type, although in practice more formally organized groups tend not to occur in alt.*. The alt.* hierarchy was created by John Gilmore and Brian Reid.
Newsgroup spam is a type of spam where the targets are Usenet newsgroups.
Google Groups is a service from Google that provides discussion groups for people sharing common interests. The Groups service also provides a gateway to Usenet newsgroups via a shared user interface.
Forté Agent is an email and Usenet news client used on the Windows operating system. Agent was conceived, designed and developed by Mark Sidell and the team at Forté Internet Software in 1994 to address the need for an online/offline newsreader which capitalized on the emerging Windows GUI framework. By 1995, Agent had expanded to become a full-featured email client and remains a widely used application for integrating news and email communication on Windows. Agent supports POP email but not IMAP.
tin is an open-source text-based and threaded news client, used to read and post messages on the Usenet global communications network.
Opera Mail is the email and news client developed by Opera Software. It was an integrated component within the Opera web browser from version 2 through 12. With the release of Opera 15 in 2013, Opera Mail became a separate product and is no longer bundled with Opera. Opera Mail version 1.0 is available for OS X and Windows. It features rich text support and inline spell checking, spam filtering, a contact manager, and supports POP3 and IMAP, newsgroups, and Atom and RSS feeds.
GrabIt is a freeware Usenet newsreader for Windows developed by Ilan Shemes.
NZB is an XML-based file format for retrieving posts from NNTP (Usenet) servers. The format was conceived by the developers of the Newzbin.com Usenet Index. NZB is effective when used with search-capable websites. These websites create NZB files out of what is needed to be downloaded. Using this concept, headers would not be downloaded hence the NZB method is quicker and more bandwidth-efficient than traditional methods.
Unison is a shareware Mac OS X client for Usenet, developed by Panic Software. It requires access to a news server and supports binary file downloading, group browsing and segmenting and error checking utilities. The software won the Apple Design Award for Best Mac OS X User experience in 2004, as well as being a runner-up in the "Best product" category.
yProxy is a Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) proxy server for the Windows operating system. yProxy's main function is to convert yEnc-encoded attachments to UUE-encoded attachments on the fly. The main purpose of this is to add functionality to NNTP newsreaders that do not have native support for yEnc. The inventor of yEnc recommends yProxy for use by Windows users whose newsreaders do not support yEnc decoding.
Usenet Explorer is a news client for the Microsoft Windows operating system. It is designed to handle binary and text Usenet posts, and is capable of handling newsgroups as large as hundred million headers. A Usenet indexing service with 3000 day retention and boolean wildmat as search pattern language is integrated into the program.
Usenet, USENET, or "in full", User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980. Users read and post messages to one or more topic categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to the Internet forums that have become widely used. Discussions are threaded, as with web forums and BBSes, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.
NewsLeecher is a binary Usenet client, launched in 2002, compatible with the Microsoft Windows operating system
Usenet, a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system, can be accessed through Web browsers as well as through dedicated news clients.
Spotnet is a protocol on top of Usenet, providing a decentralized alternative to usenet indexing websites, and the NZB format in general. Spotnet allows users to create and browse private 'newsservers', or decentralized repositories of files and information. Members share spots with one another, similar to the seeding process in torrent sharing. Spotnet experienced tremendous growth since the closure of FTD in 2011.
