Newsgroup highlights week ending 10 december 2004
It is very tempting to say that there has been a ghostly silence on the NG this past week
The latest news is the fact as I had discovered the beta version of Google groups has now supplanted the original slow version
and both of my short links now end up on the improved version:-
http://www.newsgroup.shorturl.com and
http://www.newsgroup2.notlong.com
Ithe most important improvrement is that whereas before for some completely illogical reason after you posted a message or
reply you were told that it would take 3-9 hours before it appeared and it did which was simply ridiculous. Now it says that
your posting will appear "momentarily" and it does within as few seconds or minutes.
Three other things I spotted
1.The search box that on the old version you had to check the search alt.music.lightfoot box tgo avoid searching every group
has been replaced by a pair of boxes one to "search (all) groups' the other a more sensible specific "search this group"
2. there is now choice of "Sort by date of first message" or "Sort by date of most recent message"
3 If you click on a new "about this group" link
you get a set of statistices on "Last month's top posters" and "All time top posters"
plus a yahoo style archive listing by month and year starting at August 1995 so the oldest threads from Waynes initiation of
the group in 1994 have vanished
4. on the same page is a pair of useful links to either "new topics" or "new messages"
One feature I cannot get to function is "my groups"
when I click the relevant link I find:-
"All my groups
You are not a member of any groups. You can locate a group by searching or browsing the directory below.
You can then join groups that interest you by clicking the "Join this Group" link. "
And this was despite the fact that I had already I thought joined and had been posting so I searched for lightfoot then found
a subscribe link to alt.music.lightfoot and now all is fine strange
anmongst the plethora of ghostly threads that have appeared
you'd be hard pressed to find anything else worthwhile to read
Of the ghost stories be sure to read the thread subject
"cathy's cane story" at:-
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...e07c106c82fd16
where on December the 8th Bruna (silverheels) Zanelli- that's Zanelli with a ZED
revealed that she could not bring herself to say "boo" to a ghost!!
all this grew out of an earlier thread concerning an ebay auction of a peculiar grilled cheese sandwich leading Douglas Crowe
to find a ghost up for auction!!
see
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...5?dmode=source
all in all a slow news week or as Roger Guinn eloquently put it
"We in this group are definitely living in the past. I mean, here it is
nearly Christmas, and we are breaking out the Haloween stories...
Slow news day? Whatever--it's entertaining, anyway!
"Procrastinators, unite! Tomorrow."
-----------------------------------
and finally my weekly advert
an encouraging onumber dropped in for a chat last Friday
and some dicussion took place about our experiences in Hamilton earlier in the week. Golly two weeks ago we were preparing to
venture to the great white North!!
so this evening at the usual time 9pm EST and place
http://www.chatlink.notlong.com
John Fowles
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