giganews blog

newsgroups, usenet, book
Giganews "For Dummies"
Giganews gets mentioned in a new book
Giganews would like to send out a special thank you to Woody Leonhard the author of "Windows Vista Timesaving Techniques For Dummies" for mentioning Giganews in his book!

In the chapter "Technique 20: Downloading from Newsgroups" Woody states...

"I, Personally, use Giganews. It's fast. They claim 99%+ completion. Binaries stick around for 90 days or more."

(Obviously this was written before Giganews' last retention upgrades to 100 and then to 120 days.)

The chapter is one of the most comprehensive "how to" instructions on Usenet we've ever read, and is an excellent read for anyone looking to learn how to use Usenet (especially good for first time users!).

If you're running on Vista, purchase a copy of "Windows Vista Timesaving Techniques For Dummies" and check out the mention of Giganews on page 216.

Thanks Woody!

Labels: book, newsgroups, usenet

newsgroups, usenet, articles
1 Billion Usenet Articles
Observations on Giganews' 1 billion article capacity
As we were writing our recent announcement regarding our upgrade to 120 days retention, I was surprised to discover that our news servers were offering nearly 1 billion newsgroup articles in over 100,000 newsgroups.

This is a significant achievement for Usenet, which was originally designed to handle only a few dozen articles per day.

In Usenet's beginning there was a steady march of Usenet server software development centered on the evolving challenges of a growing community. These evolutions of server software were primarily spearheaded by graduate students working in their spare time to solve problems with matters such as naming conventions, performance, and portability.

Since the early days of Usenet, a lot of things have changed. Internet access in the developed world is commonplace, personal computers are widespread and readily available, and Usenet has grown to over 100,000 newsgroups.

Now that Usenet is a global network with countless participants, the landscape has changed. No longer will the collaborative efforts of graduate students working in their spare time solve the challenges of operating a Usenet network processing nearly a billion newsgroup articles. These challenges require significant investment, time, and experience.

Luckily for Giganews, we have a loyal customer base which allows us to focus our efforts on reinvesting in our network and technology. This investment has been used to develop a scalable, patent-pending news server software platform designed around plug and play storage upgrades.

It is this technology that allows Giganews to perform massive retention upgrades with no service interruptions. Seamless upgrades are one of the more understated things that we do at Giganews, and are something our company and our customers tend to take for granted.

Service improvements like our 120 day retention upgrade represent huge engineering challenges, but thanks to tremendous efforts by our programmers and engineers, Giganews is able to deliver these advancements with little to no impact on our service.

Now that Giganews has taken Usenet to the next level and is making Usenet more accessible than ever before, I wanted to take a second to thank our engineering staff for developing systems and technologies which allow Giganews to improve service for our customers with virtually no downtime. If you enjoy Giganews' service, post a comment on this blog post and let our engineers know how much you appreciate them!

Labels: articles, newsgroups, usenet

newsgroups, usenet, travel
Giganews in Cambodia
Giganews makes an appearance in Cambodia
Below is a picture of Jerry from Giganews' design department with his Giganews t shirt on at the Angkor Wat temple in Siem Riep, Cambodia. Jerry snapped this photograph on his trip to Bien Hoa, Vietnam to visit family. Thanks Jerry for the cool pic!

Labels: newsgroups, travel, usenet