If you’re familiar with Usenet, you’ll be well aware that the newsreading platform is, well, not longer about newsreading. In fact, most Usenet providers are, by necessity, experienced data storage providers. That being said, GoldenFrog has just announced DumpTruck, a WebDAV file-sharing resource that, in the wrong hands, could end up a SOPA target.
The service lets you store data in the cloud. It’s free for holders of “Diamond” Giganews Usenet accounts and costs $99 for a full terabyte of monthly storage. DumpTruck promises anonymous, worry-free storage with, interestingly, no data reduplication. This means DumpTruck won’t compare your files with other files and save only one copy. Your folder is your folder, no matter how full. → Read More
Oh dear, another Usenet post. Quickly now, as we don’t want to draw too much to the last interesting place left on the Internet. Giganews recently hit 900 days of retention, and they’ve announced that they expect to his 1,000 days of rentention—just think about that for a second—on May 2. To celebrate, they’re having a bit of a contest. → Read More
Uh, oh: the second Usenet story of the day, this time from Newsdemon. Someone check to see if the planets are still in their orbits, or whether or not that second sun has popped up yet. They’re running a contest over there that I thought I’d point out for a minute. The prize? A couple of free games up for grabs. Nothing wrong with that. → Read More
Look at that: Giganews now has 900 days of binary retention. And to think I actually remember a time when my ISP-supplied news server had a whopping two days of retention time! It sure made things tricky way back when. → Read More
Giganews, the biggest Usenet provider around, has a new feature for Diamond members that’s certainly worth mentioning here. They’ve teamed up with Golden Frog—yes, the same people who developed Giganews’ VyperVPN service—to create a brand new Usenet browser. It’s called Mimo Usenet Browser, and could be an easy way to get acquainted with the many wonders of Usenet, which is still, to this day, the best part of the Internet. → Read More
“[W]ebsites and hosting services should not be ‘fads’ any more than forests and cities should be fads – they represent countless hours of writing, of editing, of thinking, of creating. They represent their time, and they represent the thoughts and dreams of people now much older, or gone completely. There’s history here. Real, honest, true history.” And thus did the Archive Team set out to save the entirety of Geocities. → Read More
How did I miss this? Giganews, the biggest Usenet provider out there by some margin, now has 800 days of binary retention. A year and a half ago I wrote a similar story, but the number was 365 days of retention. Man, I remember the days when I had two days of retention! Granted, it was an ISP-provided feed, but it worked just fine. → Read More
Well that didn’t take long. Newzbin.com has shut down, just about six weeks after the High Court in the UK ruled against the Usenet indexing site. You had to see this coming. → Read More
Thus begins the countdown to the Death of Usenet. It’s capitalized because it’s important. The High Court in the UK has ruled against famous Usenet index site Newzbin, saying that the site can be held liable for the copyright infringement of its users. Hear that? That’s the sound of the world’s Usenet users screaming “OH DEAR GOD NO!” You knew this day was coming. → Read More
Sorry for beating the Newsdemon horse, but I just noticed they had a few deals for bloggers, students, and other animals. Usenet is really nice. → Read More
It’s the tree of life, and for no particular reason, either. As a corollary to Biggs’ “cable companies are doomed” article from earlier today, I thought I’d demonstrate how easy it is to accomplish what he was threatening. That is, live a happy and successful life without having to pay $100+ a month to Comcast, Time Warner, DirecTV, or whomever. (Note: I’m neither happy nor successful, so this advice is spurious at best.) Here, I’ll teach you a pretty basic method of automatically downloading things like TV shows, and movies, and whatnot from Usenet. Yes, this breaks the first rule of Usenet; sorry. → Read More
Six months ago, Giganews announced that it would expand its server capacity to 365 days of retention. It passed that barrier some time ago, and just yesterday reached the magical 400-day mark. In plain English, that means if someone posted Some File to alt.binaries.boneless back in July, 2008, you should be able to find it on Giganews’ servers. And to think, back in my early days of Usenet use (2001ish), I was putting up with two days retention. → Read More
Come September 30, Verizon will completely drop Usenet access. (It had already been limiting access for some time now.) To that end, a number of Usenet providers, including Giganews and Newsdemon, have special deals set up for Verizon users to make the hurting stop. → Read More
This doesn’t look like it’s advertised yet – it’s not linked on the NewsDemon front page – but for a limited time you can get their unlimited plan with 20 connections for $10.95 a month. → Read More
Jealous of the likes of CNET and Scobilizer getting to play with Microsoft Office 2010? Well don’t be! You, too, can edit spreadsheets and send e-mail if you’re willing to fire up your newsreader or BitTorrent client. → Read More
Ladies and germs! If you’re an AT&T Broadband customer you should know that your ISP is shutting off access to Usenet at the end of the month. Why? Yup, it’s related to that whole smear campaign from last year. Some nonsense about illegal content that may or may not be there. Anyway, Giganews has a little sale for you guys: 50 percent off three months of the Diamond Plan and 20 percent off other Giganews plans. → Read More
It’s safe to say that I shed no tears yesterday when, for all intents and purposes, The Pirate Bay ceased to be. Suffice it to say that if Usenet comes under attack next I will not be a happy camper. (I know, I know: The first rule of Usenet is not to talk about Usenet, but bear with the story for a minute.) The RIAA just won a lawsuit against usenet.com, which, as you might guess, is a premium Usenet provider. → Read More
Panic, the maker of shockingly good Mac software, is having itself a nice little sale that you may want to take advantage of. From now until 11:59 PM PDT on May 29 (so, a little over a day) you can buy Transmist, Coda, Candy Bar and Unison for 50 percent off. → Read More
Heads up, Usenet users. We just got word that Giganews is in the process of upgrading its server retention capacity to 365 days. An entire year of binary group goodness, right in your newsreader! (That’s a screen shot of Panic’s Unison, one of the better Mac newsreaders.) Starting next week there will be a little counter on their Web site showing the race to 365. Keep in mind that it’ll take a few months for the Giganews crew to get all that data in order, though. To that end, starting next week, there will be a countdown timer on their Web site, counting down to the day the 365-day retention servers go live. Look for the fun to start by July. And if you can’t wait till summer to troll all that Usenet has to offer, Giganews is running a limited time special offer! → Read More
The nice guys at NewsDemon just offered you guys a coupon for 50% off monthly service between now an next Wednesday. Why? Because they want to pull Usenet out of the file sharing ghetto and expand their audience to cool people like you (us). → Read More
