In the beginning…
Way back in the dark ages of the Internet. You know, back when web sites were created using notepad or some other text editor? Back when putting up a commercial web site was considered evil? Back when all the amazing tools we have now weren’t available? We had this technology called NNTP. This was the predecessor to forums.
The main difference between NNTP and forums is that you can use a news reader to visit message boards that use NNTP while message boards that don’t require you to visit the web site they are hosted on. The big advantage of NNTP is that all the ads you see on the web based forums just don’t exist.
There are a ton of resources available on NNTP that are not available anywhere else. Some forums are actually using NNTP as the underlying storage mechanism and will let you participate using either an NNTP news reader or the web based interface many of you are currently using.
The problem with Outlook…
For those of you who use Outlook Express to read your email, there is a news reader built in. That’s the good news. For those of you who use Outlook, you’ll need to find some other way.
Since reading NNTP with a news reader feels a lot like reading email. Or even reading RSS feeds using a feed reader, it has amazed me that for all of these years Outlook has never had a news reader built in. This has meant that if I want to read the NNTP feeds, I have to use some other program.
The problem with using another program is that I’ll probably forget to load it. I like getting all of my information in one place as it happens. I don’t want to open multiple applications just so I can keep on top of the topics that impact my personal and professional life.
The solution…
So, I was happy to see a company called MAPILab come up with a product called MAPILab NNTP for Outlook. This product is a plug-in for Outlook that will allow you to subscribe to NNTP feeds inside of Outlook.
There are a few things that I wish it would do, or that I haven’t quite figured out how to make it do, but on the whole, for $24, it’s a pretty nice program that is relatively easy to setup and use.
There is a free download that will let you use the product for 30 days. So, you can give it a try before you buy it.
Make sure you watch the videos tutorials so that you understand how to use the product correctly or you are likely to be frustrated.
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Tagged with: nntp • outlook • programs