My Deja News is a personalized news service from the Internet's premier Usenet news search engine, Deja News. The Deja News web site presents users with extensive options for searching its complete archive of all Usenet posts dating back to 1995 (more than 175 Gigabytes of information!). The web-based My Deja News newsreader offers nearly all the essential features of a typical newsreader and at the same time provides seamless access to the unparalleled Deja News search capabilities. Even better, the service is free -- for users that can live with the standard web ad banner or two, My Deja News is the most cost-effective newsreader this side of Free Agent. As a newsreader, My Deja News provides a fast and efficient interface for getting the latest news articles from your favorite Usenet newsgroups. Filtering out old or unwanted information so that you can quickly access important articles is one of the newsreader's many strong points. One area where My Deja News really sets itself apart from the competition is its news searching features. In addition to powerful search capabilities for finding newsgroups and specific information in news articles, you can also search for articles by subject or by author. Additional options allow you to limit Deja News searches to a set of dates or a subset of the Deja News archive. Results can then be sorted by a relevance score, newsgroup, author, subject thread, or date. Additional features in My Deja News include free access to more than 50,000 newsgroups (especially useful if your ISP has a limited or nonexistent supply of newsgroups), automatic SPAM filtering, a simplified and intuitive web-based interface, and the ability to access the newsreader from anywhere (although you won't have access to all of your settings without your default web browser's Deja News cookie). The service is still relatively new, so expect more features to be added in the near future, including one of the more eagerly awaited features -- e-mail SPAM filters. These filters will allow you to post messages through My Deja News using your own e-mail address without having to worry about being flooded with SPAM from companies that harvest mail addresses from Usenet posts. There are a few drawbacks to using My Deja News as opposed to a standard newsreader. First, My Deja News filters out all graphics, so if one of your hobbies happens to be downloading binary image files from certain newsgroups, My Deja News is definitely not going to be your best bet. My Deja News also lacks some of the more advanced features found in newsreaders like Agent and News Xpress, including article sorting capabilities, mark for later retrieval options, customizable font and screen options, multilingual support, and thread ignoring capabilities. Finally, although My Deja News is a free service, you will have to suffer through the standard fare of web advertising banners when browsing newsgroups. Despite its shortcomings, if you're looking for a way to combine fast and simple newsreading with the most advanced search capabilities around, My Deja News delivers like no other newsreader. Pros: Quick and efficient web-based interface, excellent search capabilities, anti-SPAM features, free service Cons: Lacks some of the more advanced features found in standard newsreaders, banner advertisements For the latest information on My Deja News, check out: http://cws.internet.com/32news.html#dejanews apps conference Main Menu