Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

Newsgroups

Newsgroups don’t necessarily contain news; in fact, they’re Internet bulletin boards collectively referred to as Usenet(which stands for user network). Usenet started way back in 1980—about 10 years before the World Wide Web appeared—and has been growing ever since. There are well over 100,000 newsgroups on every conceivable topic: pop culture, computers, politics, and every other special (and very special) interest. More than 100 of them are just about the Macintosh. Fortunately, in addition to being an email and calendar program, Entourage is also a newsreader. You can use Entourage to read and reply to newsgroup messages almost exactly as though they were email messages.

In fact, Entourage lets you use multiple news servers (bulletin-board distribution computers), subscribe to individual newsgroups, filter messages in your newsgroups using Rules, and post and read messages (complete with attachments, if needed). See Figure 10-35.

Tip

Be wary of arachnids when posting to newsgroups. Email retrieval robots called spiders comb the Usenet for email addresses and gather them up by the millions. The spider’s owner then slaps the addresses on a CD and sells them to spammers. Does that mean you shouldn’t use newsgroups? No, but it does mean you should exercise caution when posting. One method to avoid unwanted spam is to create a Web-based Hotmail or Yahoo email account and use it only for newsgroups. Spiders can still retrieve this address, but at least you aren’t handing them ...