Unison and Newsgroups
I started using networked computers in college in the Fall of 1981. OK, it's been 20+ years, and I'm still using them, but hey... I've got experience. 🙂
As I was saying, back at Purdue I used the amazing tools - ftp and rn. Yes, this is when the Internet was called the ARPAnet and ftp was considered safe because there weren't script kiddies and most of the users had their own systems to admin, and they all existed on a mutual trust system. Alas, that's not possible anymore. Anyway... I would get files from remote ftp drops without a search engine, without the web. But the newsgroups functioned as message boards as well as places to find things organized by category. It wasn't perfect, but it was wonderful at the time.
It was always true that certain newsgroups had higher signla-to-noise ratios than others, and when AOL came online with the newsgroups a lot of folks ban lists included AOL. But there were still folks that preferred the groups to the newly created web-based message boards like Slashdot, etc.
I liked to keep up with the groups, and recently I've gotten tired of the crummy newsgroup service from Comcast and decided to try something different. The guys at Panic created Unison a next generation news reader and provides a news service for it as well. Since I was tired of bugs in the code I was using and liked the things I've used from Panic in the past, I decided to give it a whirl.
I'll say that it isn't perfect, but for a 1.0.2 product it's pretty darn nice. I like the basics, and while there are a few things in the UI related to navigation that I'd like to see - or at least know were there if they were already in the application, it's nice and solid. Also, one of the things I know of Panic is that they update their software when they find things to fix/add. This means to me that it's only going to get better.
Everything old is new again... gotta smile at that.