NewsBin Review Usenet is a massive resource where you can download all sorts of movies, music, pictures and even software. The problem for many people is that they either don't know how to access it, don't know where to start or can't find what they're looking for. If you've never heard of Usenet, think of it as a giant group of forums called newsgroups on every subject you can think of. One way to access it is by having your e-mail program point to the newsgroup server that your internet service provider gives you. You select the newsgroups you want to see and then wade though millions of postings until you find the files you want and download them one at a time. My newsgroup server has over 100,000 groups on it which makes for LOTS of searching. NewsBin ends all that. Now you can quickly filter out the unwanted groups to get what you're looking for and download entire series of files with little effort. What Web Vacuum has done for the internet, NewsBin will do for Usenet. You may want to download NewsBin and follow along with the examples. Please note that NewsBin has only a ten (10) day trial period so don't install it until you're ready to evaluate it. Following the examples here will get you downloading in ten minutes. Also, you should remember that NewsBin is primarily for DOWNLOADING information from Usenet and may not be the best tool available if you're interesting in posting. As with any downloads from Usenet, care should be taken to make sure the files are virus free by having an up to date virus scanning program. Check out the Security Page for some programs that add extra protection. After reading the review, you may find some other helpful programs on the Digital Picture Programs Page. Configuration Before installing NewsBin, check your connection to usenet using your email program. If you use Outlook, a usenet configuration page has been created to quickly get you set up to test your connection to usenet. You'll find the configuration page informative even if you use another email program since the information it requires will be the same that Outlook needs. The first piece of information you need is your newsgroup server. You can join larger newsgroups and pay a monthly fee but you should have more than enough to look through with the one that your internet service provider gives you for free. Newsgroup servers generally have a name followed by the ISP name. If you use myweb.net as your ISP, then your newsgroup name would be something like "funnews.myweb.net". A real example is comcast's newsgroup which is netnews.comcast.net. If you don't know what your newsgroup server is, call your internet service provider and ask them. After you have your newsgroup server name, install and run NewsBin. This screen will come up first: Actually, you can select the groups later. Click OK and this screen will appear: Type the newsgroup server name in the top text box. Your password and user name could be the same you use for your e-mail or they could not be needed. Many ISP's allow you to use the newsgroup server as long as you are a customer and require no username or password. For now, uncheck the "Authentication Required" box and leave the two text boxes empty. If you can't connect later, you can change this from within the program. The next screen that comes up will ask you to select some news groups to get started. If you know which groups you want, select them, if not, don't pick any and you can do this later. If your not familiar with usenet, it will make more sense to do this later. Next is an "all done" screen; you're ready to go. Select groups The first thing you'll want to do is to select some groups to download files from. 1) Click this icon to open the add groups window. 2) Under the label "Group Names Filter" are a series of check boxes. Check the boxes for "Binaries" and "Filter Out Low Post Groups". In the example, this will reduce the number of groups you will search from 102399 to 1755. Still quite a bit to choose from but not quite as overwhelming. 3) Click the "Download Group" button which will populate the main panel of the "Add Groups" window with a list of available news groups. This will take awhile. The list of available groups you get will not exactly match the ones in this example but it will be similar. 4) Click the checkbox next to alt.binaries.automobile.pictures. Notice the name appears in the groups servers column at the left in the abbreviated form of a.b.automaobile.pictures. 5) Close the groups window by clicking ok at the bottom of the window. 6) Right click on the newsgroup just placed in Servers/Groups column. In this example it is a.b.automobile.pictures. 7) The following pop up screen appears. 8) Select "Download all Headers" and the screen to the right will begin to get populated with files. This will take awhile depending on the number of posts in the group. After the initial download of files is done, this information can be recalled quickly by accessing a record of the posts that is kept in something called the spooler. To recall this information again, select the "load spool" command. New posts can be added by using the "Download Latest" command. 9) If you follow these directions and don't get any files, and the "a.b.automobile.pictures" line in the Servers/Groups column turns red, you probably have configured your newsgroup server incorrectly. To correct the problem: a) Click this icon b) This will bring up a screen similar to the one you saw when the program first started. When I first ran this program, I assumed I needed to enter the same password and user name that my e-mail account used. It turned out that this kept NewsBin from connecting to my newsgroup server since my ISP doesn't require a user name and password at all. If you have any questions, call your ISP to be sure. Download If everything in the above section worked, you're ready to download. 1) First you want to select where the downloaded files go. Click this icon to open the settings page and click on the Setup tab. 2) Select the directory where you want to place your downloaded files in the textbox. Folders will be created in the download path that will have the same name as the newgroups that they are donwloaded from. In the example, a folder named "alt.binaries.automobile.pictures" is created at the end of the download path and all downloaded files from that newsgroup are placed there. 3) Select the files you want to download by clicking on the box to the left of the file listing. They will automatically start to download. The icon on the left of the post will turn green if this is happening. 4) If you are downloading an image, a thumbnail of the image will appear at the bottom of the window. If you want to select an entire series of pictures, select the pictures you want using CTRL Left mouse click or SHIFT Left mouse click to highlight them. One highlighted, right click on them and select "add to download list". The entire list will start to download. Newsbin has many more options that allow you to control searches, downloads, and even make simple posts. The goal of this review is to give you an overview of the basic operation and not to rewrite the user's manual. NewsBin contains a detailed set of help files and animated tutorials inside the program that will help you progress quite a bit past this point. I urge you to experiment with Newbin further. As the number of your downloaded images increase, you find a need for some of the other products offered on this site. Image Master 2000 will allow you to view your new images while Super Compressor will allow you to save storage space by reducing the size of a JPEG by up to 80% with no reduction in image quality. Most Zip programs will reduce a JPEG image by about 3%. Binary Post Indexes Usenet is so large that you may still be lost even with the great filtering devices in NewsBin. Fortunately, indexes of Usenet binary files exist that allow you to download summaries of these in the form of .nzb or bnb files. NewsBin supports both of these file formats but you should check that your server supports retrieving posts by Message Id. Most commercial servers do. The index sites can be found at: Newzbin BinNews Both of these offer some free services and their paid services are very low. (only $4 or $5 a MONTH last time I checked). I won't go into the actual usage of these files since NewsBin contains an excellent tutorial on the subject. Conclusion and Registration I've just covered a few basic things in this review to give you an idea of the potential of NewsBin. If your a novice to newsgroups, NewsBin will introduce you to a new source of downloadable files. If you're a newsgroup junkie, you'll find NewsBin to be a tool that you'll wonder how you lived without. In either case, you no longer have to be shut out from all that Usenet offers. NewsBin's easy interface and powerful features allow you to tap into a resource of immense proportion without wasting valuable hours. If you decide that Usenet is something you want to use, you'll find that using NewsBin will save you enough time in one week's use to justify the registration cost. To register NewsBin, click the "register NewsBin" selection on the top menu bar and then click the "click to go to order page" button. This will open the Order page in your default browser. The Order page works well with Internet Explorer but poorly in Opera; I haven't checked how it works in other browsers yet. Click on your choice of payment plans available at the bottom of the page to continue the registration process. You can download the trial version of NewsBin by clicking on the button below. I hope you find the program useful and would like to hear your comments at If you use digital images and pictures, be sure to check the digital picture page for more helpful programs. - The Genie - News || Reviews || Utilities || Home/Office || Web Tools || Web Utils || Graphics || Security || Games || Other Categories || Program List || FAQ || Forum || About Us || Contact Us || Home Strategy Games || Action Games || Puzzle Games || Card Games ||