A Wizard
A month ago a client of mine asked me something. He manufactures a product which is in competition with the multinationals. The product required a ‘pre-application finish’ to be applied to it and he had tried a couple of methods, unsuccessfully. If he set up a website and called for help on a solution, would it be possible to get an answer?
The answer is no. The internet is like a jungle and setting up a website, in expectation of an answer, is a bit like putting up a poster on a tree deep inside a jungle. The chances of anyone seeing the tree, leave alone the poster, are remote. If the poster is to be seen, it must be put up in a place where people stop to read posters. Fortunately, there is such a place on the Internet. It is the Usenet.
One of the most popular service providers calls the Usenet an electronic community of people interacting with each other. It goes on to add that Usenet is, broadly speaking, the name given to a loose network of sites that carry Usenet newsgroups and Usenet news. These sites (called ‘news- servers’) involving thousands of computers worldwide, pass newsgroup postings back and forth, whereupon the users of these news servers can read them online.
The best way to find out about the Usenet is to browse through it. All the search engines (Altavista and Yahoo, to take two examples) have two alternatives in front of the search function. One is of course the World Wide Web which most people use most of the time. The other is the Usenet. If you type ‘sale of books’ as the keyword and do a search, you are offered a selection of postings by people wanting to sell books on various subjects. These are posted on various newsgroups, for example, rec.collecting; rec.hunting.dogs; ree.food.drink; rec.food.restaurants. Postings on a newsgroup like rec.food.drink and rec.food.restaurants are likely to be about books on wine. The term ‘rec’ stands for recreation. There are hundreds of newsgroups on various subjects. Usenet newsgroups are categorized into several large ‘trees” each of which is broken down into more and more specific topical sub- trees.
Now back to my manufacturer client looking for information on ‘pre-application finishes.’ What he should do is look for a newsgroup that fits his product. One problem is, of course, that the Usenet does not encourage commercial postings. But assuming that this is not the case with his query, he should then post his query on the newsgroup. This is simple and even someone having a shell account can do it without any problem.
To do this, you should access Deja News either through Yahoo or directly (www.dejanews.com). On doing this, you will see an icon called ‘Post. On clicking this a ‘From field will appear. In the ‘From field, you should type your e-mail address. The ‘Reply To’ field should be left blank. Don’t worry about making mistakes. The software will tell you if you’re doing anything wrong. In a couple of minutes after posting it, you will receive a mail from Deja News. This is just to confirm that the message hasn’t been sent by someone else who has forged your e- mail address. This mail must be returned after adding ‘Please Post’ in the ‘Subject’ field.
It is often advisable to post the same message to several related newsgroups. To take an example quoted earlier, if you have a wine book for sale, it makes sense to post it in both rec.food.drink and rec.food.restaurants. Usenets are friendly places. My cousin once saw a message in a Usenet offering a 1931 edition of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury (a book of poems) for US$250. He had a 1908 edition of the book which he thought was obviously worth much more. So, he posted a Usenet message asking how much the book was worth. Within two days he got two answers pointing out that Palgrave’s had gone into many editions beginning from the middle of the 19th century and that there were zillions of copies in print. A 1908 edition, they said, was worth about US$5.
The best thing about Usenet newsgroups is that they put you in touch with mailing lists. One of the replies I got told me to put myself on a mailing list by getting into http:/www.auldbooks.com/biblio/ index.htm. On doing so, I found myself getting hundred messages a day from people looking for rare books. So, readers, it is really worth putting your own billboards on this highway. This one is definitely going to get you that badly- needed response.
