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Deja News Launches Simplified Usenet Access

Newsreader accesses newsgroups on Deja News Web site from browser.

By Brian McWilliams, PCWorld   

Deja News, the Texas firm that operates the largest archive of Usenet postings on the Web, on Tuesday launched a new service called My Deja News.

My Deja News enables users to subscribe to more than 50,000 newsgroups using nothing more than a Web browser. The interface looks a lot like the Deja News archive search engine--but its not as easy to use as some stand-alone PC-based newsreaders, such as Forte%squots Agent, or the readers that come with Netscape Communications%squot and Microsoft%squots Internet groupware suites.

According to Deja News vice president of marketing David Wilson, the service filters out the junk postings and spam that users of newsreader software often encounter. And the biggest attraction of My Deja News is also what accounts for the popularity of Web-based e-mail: You can access the service from any computer with a Web connection, including, says Wilson, the one in your office. %dquotAlmost nobody can get to the Usenet with a PC-based newsreader from work--with the firewall issue, you just can%squott do it. So people will use Deja News to ... get to their newsgroups easily, pick up wherever they left off, and since [the user%squots newsgroups are stored on the Deja News server], they%squotre always in sync, always kept up with the latest.%dquot

Wilson concedes that Web-based newsreading won%squott satisfy everyone%squots needs. My Deja News doesn%squott offer binary attachments to messages, whether photos or programs. Nor can you download and read your newsgroups offline, as you can with PC-based readers.

Julie Murdoch, marketing coordinator for Forte, says downloading newsgroup articles and reading them directly on your PC with a product like Forte%squots Agent is much faster than a Web-based reader could ever be.

%dquotWe find that our customers don%squott view Web browsing as even in the same category as Usenet and e-mail conversations,%dquot says Murdoch. %dquotMost of them aren%squott looking for that capability, mainly because of the speed--it would slow everything down.%dquot

But Deja News%squot Wilson says the company expects many users of PC-based newsreaders to switch over to a Web-based Usenet. My Deja News is currently in beta form and missing some planned features, but Wilson says it will soon surpass the features of client-based readers and will be easier for Internet newcomers to use.