Networking With People

News Groups and Personal Networking:

 

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NewsGroups Listservs Binaries Filters		Spam & Trolls      Personal Networking      IRC      Warning      Other Help Pages

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News Groups are the core of net news.
    Net news is one of the oldest parts of the internet. There are tens of 1000s of news groups covering every range of interest from techy news to sports, support groups to want ads, movies to programs, and religious to frivolous. There is bound to be group(s) that cover your range of interest. Though often overlooked for its glitzy cousin the World Wide Web (web pages); News Groups are one of the best sources on the internet for free information, support groups, graphics, programs, and meeting people with similar interests -- all free.

News Groups look and feel like Listservs (mailing lists) and e-mail.
    E-mail is the most commonly used and known about networking program. It now is equal to phones in popularity, and is now used far more than snail-mail (U.S.P.O.).

There are thousands of Listservs.
    You subscribe to them and they are delivered directly to your e-mail account where u can read, reply or delete them. There are links below to find lists of listservs, and how to subscribe to them. Just remember: When u respond to a listserv or a newsgroup you have the choice of responding to the group or the individual or both. If it is sent to the group, your message may be read by 1000s of people. Be careful in what u say and how u say it. A common netiquette practice is to lurk (read but not post) for awhile to get to know the group. You also have a choice to have the messages delivered individually or in digest form -- this gives u a day's or week's worth of messages in one message instead of many (this unclogs your mailbox).

News Group messages are not delivered to your e-mail.
    You have to go to them through a special program. There are some e-mail programs that deal with newsgroups as another folder along with the folders you already have for your e-mail, such as: MS's (Microsoft's) Outlook Express, or Netscape's Messenger.  Otherwise, a seperate program is used to read your news groups such as MS's News Reader (win 95), Agent and a number of others. All these programs are fairly easy to use, and you read, respond and delete messages just as you would in e-mail.

When you first start your news reader,
    it will need to pull in a list of news groups that are available from your ISP (internet service provider). If it doesn't do this automatically you will need to tell the program to update/refresh groups (which you can do on occasion later to see if new groups have been added). This may take a few minutes since most ISPs carry thousands of these groups.
    The next step is to subscribe* to the news groups your interested in (*figuratively, since your not really subscribing, you are just telling the program which newsgroups you want to view and read). Many programs have a search capability that helps you look through the long list of groups for key words such as "support," "music," or whatever your interest is (they can also search through messages for key words). After you have subscribed to the groups you want, you can tell your program (if it doesn't do this automatically) to only show the groups you are subscribed to.

You are now ready to read your news groups.
    Warning: Some programs pull in the bodies for messages as you read them using minimal storage space. Other programs store these messages on your hard drive -- this can use up a lot of hard drive space depending on how many newsgroups you read and how long you keep old messages. Most programs will give you options on whether to pull in all the bodies for all new headers or not.
    Typically all the headers for that group are pulled in first (this amounts to the subject line (the subject thread (a thread is one subject header that has had a number of responses) and the senders info). The message bodies for these headers are up to you to pull in (all of them automatically, one at a time, or groups of them). It is also up to you how long old messages are kept. These options vary from program to program, and you should check out your program so that you can fine tune it to your needs and not overload your hard drive space.

Remember that when you respond to a message in a newsgroup,
    your message will be read by potentially hundreads of people (the same for listservs), and netiquette should be followed -- basically be nice, be aware that words (without facial expressions) can be taken in the wrong way, and be aware of the following: most programs give you an option to respond to the group, or the individual sender, or both -- be aware of where your message is going.
    Cross-posting is usually frowned on -- this is when a post and followups are being posted to more than one newsgroup. This often results in off topic discussions showing up in your group and is also a tool used by Trolls and other trouble makers (cross-posting can be ok if the subject matter is on topic for all groups). Your program often gives you an option to respond to all the groups or just the one.

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Binaries are a way to translate binary information (files, graphics, programs) into a text format so they can be posted to news groups and e-mail, and then they are decoded back into their original format. Some news readers can automatically decode these binaries and save them to your hard drive, other programs only do it when you tell them to, and others can't do it at all (and you have to save these binaries to your hard drive and decode them later with another program). Most of these "binary" groups are dedicated to every kind of graphics (fractals to scenic), programs, sound files and fonts.

    Warning: The rest of these binary groups (most are called alt.binaries.some.name) are often dedicated to pornography (mild to hard). For parents concerned about what their children see on the internet, these groups are often easy to avoid and built into the Parental Locks. But: There are many idiots and spammers who post this stuff to some of the most unlikely groups. So, even a binary group dedicated to cartoons will get pornography posted on occasion, or a pornographic rendition of "Beauty and the Beast" (I'll leave it to your imagination) posted. This makes news groups very hard to control for content. Even newsgroups dedicated to support will get unwanted and unsolicited messages and binaries posted to them. To combat this problem you can use filters.

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Filters: Any good news reader or e-mail program will support Filters, often referred to as Kill Files. You can easily add a persons e-mail address, or a subject line, or certain words that show up in the subject line so these posts will be ignored by your program. You will usually have an option to tell the program to ignore them completely or download them and mark them read, etc.
    Also, be careful in what you choose to put in the filters. Certain word groupings in the subject line filter, that can also show up in headers that u want to read, will make the program ignore all of them. A program will ignore all posts from a certain e-mail address, not just the one post that offends.

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Spammers and Spam are the posters and posts that can infest even the most dedicated groups. The posts are sent to advertise or sell their web sites or products. Get Rich Schemes are often chain letters or other schemes that are best ignored. Most of them are illegal. You can battle spammers by adding subject word strings, or addresses to your filters.
    Trolls are people who have nothing better to do, or are sick enough to get off on posting contoversial or sick posts aimed at getting as many responses as possible from the irate people who see them. These posts are often off-topic, or obviously aimed at irritating the regulars in a group. They are best ignored, and the subject line or their e-mail can be put in your filters, and at the very least -- do not respond them -- that is what they want you to do. Trolls are trolling for responses. Their success is measured by how many people they can get to respond -- just ignore them.

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Personal Networking programs include many, usually small programs for easy live communication with friends. After developing a friends list, the program can notify you when your friends are online as well as notify your friends you are on line (user controlled). Instant messages and chat windows can then be used.
    Most support sending messages, urls, and chat windows. ICQ also supports off-line messages, instant file transfers, and is one of the most popular. Net Meeting supports audio and video, and business applications such as a "white board" that both parties can draw on. It is a larger and harder to use program (it's Microsoft, what do u expect?).

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IRC is the realm of chat rooms. It has been around for a long time. IRC programs allow you to pick a "handle" and enter chat rooms. For the most part, it is very simple to enter, talk, leave and create your own rooms. Chatting is also very complex, for those into IRC, running macros, ascii pictures, multiple chat windows, and multiple "logon names" is the norm. It's a world unto itself.
    Microsoft has a comic chat program that puts a nice twist to the whole thing by giving each person a multi-emotions comic character (user controlled), and a comic strip interface is created on the fly.

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Warning: With any of the networking programs, you may want to keep personal info to yourself. Email addresses are the most usual thing that u can give out, but it is wise not to display any personal info like phone numbers, addresses, or even your full name. For the ladies this is particularly important. There are bad people out there, we all know that -- play it smart.

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Good Luck. ----- Happy networking

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For more info on the above subjects and more, visit these sites:

Zen & the Art of the Internet. Book text online.

FAQ's. MIT ftp for FAQs (frequently asked questions). Great collection of faqs for newsgroups.

Tile.Net / Mailing Lists. Lists of Listservs, Vendors, Newsgroups, Internet sites, Ftp sites -- Sign up for mailing lists.

NetGuide. A nice online collection of how-to's and tips.

Trolls -- what to do: A good info page on what to do about trolls and abusive posts on newsgroups.

Trolls and net abusers: A good site on who/what are trolls and abusers on newsgroups.
 
 

Sections: . Newsgroup readers . Personal Networking . IRC (chat rooms)

. Agent News Reader. This is the Home Page for Free Agent (free) as well as their pay-for news reader. One of the best news readers around that supports filters, all the other bells and whistles, and binary files. It is also a good e-mail program.

. Netscape's download page   I have had problems with the bugs/crashes with MS's package, and recently loaded Netscape's latest package (Communicater ver. 4.5), and I like it all a lot. The web browser, email reader, news reader (part of  e-mail) and web page maker (Composer) are all as good or better than Microsoft's. Nice package, I highly recommend it.

. Microsoft's OutLook Express. This is MS's general download page. Outlook does email as well as newsgroups. Outlook is an add-on to IE 4 (Explorer), and not a stand alone program. If you have IE 4 you have no problem. You might already have it on your computer or you can install it from your win98 disc. Or, try MS's News Reader which is probably on your computer already, or you can install it from your win95 disc. (I've had problems with Outlook, as well as IE4 crahing a lot (I ran them in NT 4.0)).
 

. ICQ program. Mirabilis's home page. Download the free ICQ program. Supports friend lists, notifying you if they are on-line or not, chat, file transfer, and off-line message sending. A nice personal networking answer in one sweet simple program. A very popular program.

. AOL's Instant Messenger. AOL's answer to instant messaging. Supports friend lists, notification of online/offline status and a nice, easy to use chat interface.

.  PowWow. A fully functional networking program that supports just about everything: file transfer, chatting, messages, community chat rooms, audio. Your friends list can also hold any chat rooms you belong to, automatically connecting and listing members. You can host a room, but that costs money.

. Yahoo's Pager. Yahoo's answer to messaging. Supports friend lists, notification of online/offline status and instant messaging. Yahoo also offers an extensive community with chat rooms, personals and directories.

. MS's Net Meeting. Microsoft's answer to personal networking. Aimed at business uses it supports video, audio, chat, file transfer, a white board both can draw on, and even sharing applications. You might already have this on your computer or can load it from your win95/98 disc.

. Speak Freely A nice, Free, audio program. Had problems with net meeting working with audio. I found this program ... that is fairly simple, small and works. Supports audio. Download the zipped file. Unzip into permanent directory. Create a shortcut to speakfre.exe, run it and go. Not a real friendly interface -- have to connect with a server (try bavard.fourmilab.ch (US I think), corona.itre.ncsu.edu (US), lwl.fourmilab.ch (Switzerland)). Then u can search for users (there are good help files). Give your friends a copy to load -- and Talk with them.

If anyone has had luck using audio (especially in connection with ICQ) let me know please

Mirc. A popular, sweet little program for connecting with IRC Chat Rooms.

Pirch. A full fledged program that supports all the bells and whistles that can be done in chat rooms.

. MS's Chat Options. Comic Chat is a cool twist on chat rooms where everyone can take on a comic character with multi expressions, and a comic strip type interface is created on the fly. They also support text chat with the same program.
 

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Emoticons are little text smiley, frowning, winking faces that can be added to your typed email, posts and chat lines to emphasize whether you are joking, serious or whatever. They replace the facial/body language that we normally use in conversations.

Common Emoticons: Be creative. There are many varieties.

C=}>;*{)) -- A drunk, devilish chef, with a toupee in an updraft, mustache, and double chin.

OK ... you get the idea. Do a search for emoticons and you will find many pages worth on the net.

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These are used to save some typing. Like jargon, some are specific to the group your on.

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Warning; The Dangers of Using Acronyms: -- hehe

Some years ago, the famous San Diego Zoo opened a second, larger branch called the San Diego Wild Animal Park. The Park is built around an enormous open-field enclosure where the animals roam free. To see the animals, visitors ride on a monorail called the Wgasa Bush Line which circles the enclosure. Here's the true story of how the Wgasa Bush Line got its name.

They wanted to give the monorail a jazzy, African sounding name. So they sent out a memo to a bunch of zoo staffers saying, "What shall we call the monorail at the Wild Animal Park?" One of the memos came back with "WGASA" written on the bottom. The planners loved it and the rest is history. What the planners didn't know was that the zoo staffer had not intended to suggest a name. He was using an acronym which was popular at the time. It stood for "Who gives a sh_t anyhow?"
 

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