If you are like me, then probably you already familiar with Forums and their uses (other than searching Pornos ofcourse 
) … if you look at the history you will find that forums came to existence not too early … but their another form was here since early ages of Internet … it was is called NewsGroups …
Newsgroups are basically collection of messages posted by many users. They use NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) at application layer. So, in a way they are discussion groups or if I dare to say Forums … and believe me despite of present Twittered and Facebooked culture, there is a lot big user group still use these ancient technology of communication … when I first time used it, it felt more geeky to me … (I mean it was geeky to even a geek 
) … we can do almost anything that we are doing with all these Web 2.0 tools. and torrents (again other than searching Porn )… And what I liked about them is access to almost all posts / reposts of day and you don’t need to search for answers like you do in forums. Or the greatest benefit (atleast for me) is, if you are just browsing all questions to gain more understanding of practical problems and their solutions from all across the user base then its more easy to do in Newsgroup then Forums…
I have used couple of different newsgroup readers (all are free), and the two I liked the most are Windows Live Mail and Grabit … both has really good features to customize feel and look … with ability to control.
I will show few shots of How to Setup Newsgroup in Grabit .. actually, its pretty straight forward. Simply grab Grabit … and install it. Now, when you will run it at first screen it will ask to add News Server, but don’t do that instead click cancel and delete that default news server (because it won’t let you rename it !!)… then create new server, add profile name and Host name of your server … also feed ID and PWD if your server need them.
I think other options are pretty ok. Then, right click on server and say “Full update” if you are doing it for first time else click on “incremental update” … if everything worked out you will see all postings of a group you have subscribed. You can brows the posts, view them or reply them as well. You can even create your own post too …
I have been using MSFT’s SQL Server and ASP.NET newsgroups for a quite bit of time. Well, I am not an expert to answer posts there but those posts gave me good idea about what problems any user can face and what possible solution can be. And in a way its kind of practical training to me. Also, sometime if you find any question that you think is at your level, you can answer it and get other peoples thought about it too… I mean overall it is really good experience to me.
But unfortunately, MSFT is soon closing support to this great community and resource for it’s interest in forums !!
That is it for now…
It’s Just a Thought … 
