Computers & Networked Information                                                                  Computer Science 1604

News on the Internet

Much information on news, weather, and sports is available on the Internet. All of the major television networks and major national newspapers are on the web. Local newspapers also have an Internet presence, as well as local communities and municipalities. Some, like the Wall Street Journal require an online subscription to get more than the headlines. Others are freely available. Here are some starting points:

There are also many specialized sources for information on such things as weather, sports, stock markets, and geographics and maps.

Network News

In addition to web sites on news, electronic bulletin boards exist where people can post topic-sorted messages. The most popular of these online newsgroup systems is called UseNet. Usenet organizes messages posted into topics called a newsgroup, a misnomer since they are more like interest groups. Currently, there are over 2000 newsgroups on Usenet.

Most web browser software now include newsgroup readers. There are also readily available freeware and shareware newsgroup clients you can download from the Internet. Some newsreaders to consider are rn and tin for UNIX systems (a sample tin screen), NewsWatcher and Nuntius for Macintosh, and WinVN for Windows.

When you start your newsreader the first time, you have the option of subscribing to all or some of the available newsgroups to which Virginia Tech subscribes. The VT news server is news.vt.edu. Future uses of your news client show only the groups you have subscribed to.

Newsgroup names are composed of several fields that provide a description of the topics discussed by this group. For example, comp.sys.mac.apps discusses Macintosh applications. bburg.general is a local newsgroup. For person first connecting to a newsgroup, news.announce.newusers and news.newusers.questions are good to look over.

You should always read a good number of postings before joining in the conversation of any new newsgroup that you have subscribed. That way you will know the types of questions and answers to expect and not submit a posting that others will think out-of-line. If you don't follow this suggestion, and perhaps even if you do, you mighlt be flamed. Flaming occurs when someone takes exception to your posting and lets you and the world know he/she does not care for your comments. Be warned that some groups do not care for new user questions while others are very tolerant. It is always a good idea to read the FAQ for a newsgroup.

A Sample WinVN Session

Start the application. From the Network menu, choose Connect to Server . When you see the dialog box asking "Request the latest group list from server?", say No. (You may want to do this occasionally to pull in new groups and discard non-existent ones.) Subscribed groups will be at the top. Other available groups will be listed, in a different color, below.

Subscribing to Groups

Use the scroll bar to see the various groups available. When you find a group you think you might be interested in, hold down the control key and click the group. Continue through the list until you have selected all groups of interest. Then go to the Group menu and choose Subscribe Selected Groups. Those groups will move to the top of the list.

Reading News

To see the postings to a newsgroup, double click on the group. You will see a dialog box asking you how many articles to retrieve. Select a number and the article headers appear.

Double click to see an individual article. Press <control-N> to move to the next article.

Replying

You can reply to the newsgroup, to the author of a posting, or forward a posting. While reading the posting, go to the Respond menu and choose the appropriate action. A reply box appears.


USENET News Tutorials
Netscape News Reader Tutorials


Further Exploration

Some online tutorials for newsgroup clients.

Author: J. Watson
Curator: Computer Science Dept : VA TECH. © Copyright 1994.
Last Updated: 9/4/95