The Searchable Usenet: Seek And Ye Shall Find

In another article, we examined how Usenet stacks up to peer-to-peer as a means of sharing and downloading binaries, and discovered that old-fashioned Usenet beats P2P, the new kid on the block, in terms of speed, reliability and privacy.

But if there's one area in which Usenet falls short, it's search-ability.  Usenet doesn't have a built-in mechanism for letting you search newsgroups for the files you want, so somebody had to create one – two separate somebodies, in fact.  There are not one but two web-based services that index most of the binary files posted to Usenet newsgroups, so that you can find out what's available and where.

In this article, we'll take a look at NewzBin.com and Binnews.com, and give you a quick tour of each so that you can see what they can do.

(Note:  This article was researched and written in October, 2004.  Because web sites can change their design, functions and policies at will, this article may not be completely accurate when you read it.)

NewzBin.com

Both of the services offer premium functions for a charge, but of the two, NewzBin.com offers the most functionality for free.  The NewzBin.com interface offers two ways to find files on Usenet (see Figure 1):

You can browse by category, by following the links on the left-hand side. Numbers next to each category reveal how many new files have been added since your last visit.

You can search by keyword, limiting the search to a certain category, such as "Music: MP3," or searching NewzBin's entire index.

Figure 1:  NewzBin.com main screen
(click to enlarge)

Browsing: The category-browsing feature is best if you already know what newsgroups you want to explore, and just need to see what's been added to them lately.  You start by browsing overall categories, but by clicking the name of any newsgroup in the list, you can see recently-added files in that newsgroup alone (see Figure 2).  There's also a master newsgroup list, if you'd prefer to bypass the categories.

Figure 2: A single newsgroup listing in NewzBin.com
(click to enlarge)

Searching: You can search NewzBin.com's index by entering your search terms in the box near the top of the screen.  The drop-down list lets you restrict the search to a certain category, like "Music: All" as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3:  A search result in NewzBin.com
(click to enlarge)

Whether you browse or search, you can find your way to a detailed and informative record of every binary file uploaded to any Usenet binaries newsgroup (Figure 4). You can get important details, like file size and the newsgroup(s) in which it was posted.  With this information, it's a simple matter to download the file with your favorite newsreader software.

Figure 4. A NewzBin.com file record
(click to enlarge)

NewzBin.com Premium Features: For a small fee, you can become a premium member, giving you access to extra features.  According to the NewzBin.com web site, these include: Watchdog, an agent that will notify you when new files appear that match your search criteria; lists of message IDs, which can send you straight to the individual posts you're looking for; and the ability to search uploads for the past 20 days.

Binnews.com

Binnews.com doesn't give away as much as NewzBin.com, but maybe that's because it has more to offer.  Like NewzBin.com, Binnews.com lets you browse categories of newsgroup binaries or search its index, and see complete information about each file, so that you can download it quickly, but Binnews.com adds a few extra goodies.

Message-id Export: Enter a search term, and Binnews.com will give you a list of all available binaries that match your terms.  You can then select the items you want, and Binnews.com will create a list that you can feed into many popular newsreaders, like NewsBin Pro and NewsLeecher.

Figure 5: Selecting message IDs for export.
(click to enlarge)

XML Feed: XML is one of the Internet's coolest new technologies, because it lets Binnews.com send you updates in real time to special software called an "aggregator."  Examples of aggregators include SharpReader and the RSS Headlines feature in My Yahoo! (Figure 6).  Binnews.com has over 60 XML feeds, one for each of its major categories.  Add the categories you want to your aggregator, and it will automatically check Binnews.com at regular intervals, looking for new files.

Figure 6: Binnews.com's RSS feed in Yahoo's custom My Yahoo! page
(click to enlarge)

Conclusion

Indexing Usenet's library of binaries is a great idea, so no matter which of these two services you like, once you use them, you'll wonder how you ever got by without them.