Volume 4 Issue 6

January, 1999

New World-Class NewsFeed!

One of the lesser-known Internet services we provide is the USENET NewsGroups service. Subscribers are able to interact with these newsgroups through their browser or a separate newsreader program.

Newsgroups are basically discussion groups arranged in order according to the topic. Newsgroups have been a dynamic part of the Internet for over 20 years and today cover close to 40,000 different topics.

Subscribers ‘interact’ with a newsgroup by starting a new article or reading a posted article and then replying to that article, which is then posted for all other readers of that newsgroup to view. The process is very similar to using email and chat. Though you don’t have to carbon copy everyone who subscribes to the newsgroup, as with email. While newsgroups may lack many of the features of chat rooms, newsgroups cover a much wider range of topics in an organized fashion.

There is still a strong following of newsgroup readers as the newsgroups cover virtually ANY topic one can imagine.

This month, we changed our newsfeed to one of the best NewsFeeds in the country! This feed provides access to all NewsGroups, including the commercial ClariNet newsgroups. There are currently 37,782 NewsGroups available for your use! The NewsFeed processes around 850,000 messages each day and keeps all articles for at least 15 days, but most up to 30 days.

With these impressive stats, and guaranteed uptime of 99.9%, we believe we are now providing you with the best NewsGroup service available anywhere in our service area!

The Community Bulletin Board

As mentioned in last month’s newsletter, we have developed a full-featured Community Bulletin Board. It is located in the Community Section of our website.

This bulletin board works like a group of chat rooms and is being offered for people to post public announcements, discuss current events, share tips on using computers, etc.

Just to get the ball rolling, we started two discussion areas: one for Good Restaurants and another for Movies. Please feel free to leave messages in these areas or create your own area!

We are asking everyone to suggest topics for the bulletin board and are seeking volunteers to moderate the resulting topic areas. Practically any topic will be included on this bulletin board. Moderating a discussion area takes little time and is very easy to manage - no technical experience is required!

If you would like to moderate a discussion group, or would like to find out more information about it, please call the office or send an email to webmaster@cove.com.

New Subscriber Referral Promotion!

Are you pleased with our service? Do you know someone who is unhappy with their current Internet/On-line service?

Why not do them, and yourself, a favor?

We are now offering a New Subscriber Referral Promotion! Simply recommend our service to someone. If they decide to subscribe to our service, and tell us that you referred them, we will give you a free month of access!

They will appreciate your recommendation and you’ll save a little money!

Already, several subscribers are getting their access in January for free, from referring a new subscriber.

SysAdmin's Corner

The ink on last month's newsletter wasn't even dry when most of Salem got hit with an extended power outage. We were manned at the time and no damage was done.

Our New Years’ graphic caused several subscriber’s Netscape browsers to crash. The graphic was quickly removed on discovery of the trouble.

Our old NewsFeed was erratic for almost a week before we switched NewsFeeds. No problems seen with the new feed.

Our upstream providers had no significant outages to report.

Check the Internet Traffic Report at the bottom of the Internet Section of our website.

Internet Training

Until we can establish another classroom on Cape Ann, Cape Ann subscribers are invited to attend the Salem classes at half-price!

Classes will he held at our Salem facility in January on the 12th and 26th and in February on the 9th and 23rd.

What's New at the Cove is a monthly publication of Cove Communications.

Publisher, Bill Ostaski
Editor, John Trefry

27 Congress Street
Salem, MA 01970
(978) 741-5300
(978) 282-3399
office@cove.com

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