Technical Library

Internet Services

Usenet Support

Glossary

Introduction to Usenet News

The Internet's greatest attribute is the free exchange of information and ideas. Indeed, all of its tools relate in some way to the access and exchange of information. Usenet News is a medium where the exchange of information is paramount and the breadth of subjects seems endless. Information is circulated in the form of articles to any news server that will accept them. An article can be plain text, a binary image (GIF, TIFF, etc.) or source code.

It is possible to look at each article directly on the machine but this is tedious and inefficient, especially with the amount of volume being transferred. News readers are used to organize the news in a consistent and meaningful way. Here are a few well known news readers. The lists are broken down by platform.

Macintosh News Readers

• Internet Explorer
• Netscape

Windows Based News Readers

• Agent
  Free Agent
  
  
• Netscape
• NewsXpress
• Internet Explorer
• Trumpet
• WinVN

Miscellaneous News Readers

• Knews (Threaded News Reader for X)
• Netscape (UNIX)
• Tin (UNIX)
• Trumpet (DOS Version 1.06)