Click it: YOU CAN PURSUE ANY SUBJECT YOU FANCY

0 Comments | Sunday Mirror, Nov 10, 2002 | by Stephen Cawley

PC Live! Editor Stephen Cawley has some more hot tips for using your computer. This week his colleague Anne Walsh discusses newsgroups, the online forums where you can talk to people who share your interest .. and get exxpert advice free of charge

THE best place to find newsgroups relevent to your interests is at www.deja.com.

Here you will find that newsgroups are grouped under several headings. For example, newsgroup names that begin with 'comp.' are generally about computers.

Newsgroups that begin with 'alt.' [alternative] cover just about every kind of interest.

Search for the name of a person or a topic you are interested in to generate a list of newsgroups on this topic. Once you have found a newsgroup you are interested in you might consider 'lurking' for a while.

This means viewing and read other people's postings and conversations without making a contribution yourself. Usenet is text- based so it can take a while to download and read all the contributions on a particular topic.

If you wish to access newsgroups from your own PC, the first thing you will have to do is download a list of the newsgroups available from your own Internet Service Provider (ISP).

If you use Outlook Express, do this by Tools/ Newsgroups.

This can take several minutes the first time you do it (depending on your modem speed), but once downloaded you can view the complete list of newsgroups available - there are usually thousands on offer.

The next step is to type in a keyword search for the subject that interests you and then you will find the relevant groups.

If you know of a particular newsgroup that isn't provided by your ISP - a newsgroup concerning a rare disease, for example - if you contact your service provider they will usually make access available.

Random examples of some of the newsgroups on offer are: 24hoursupport.helpdesk, alt.agriculture.beef, and net.bicycles.general.