zerolight

I’ve been using newshosting.com for ages, getting a consistent and reasonable download speed of 500 KBytes/sec from their servers. However they don’t take Maestro, which is making my subscription payments a little problematic. I was all set to switch service when I noticed that they’re now offering a European Usenet server. What a difference. This morning I’ve been averaging a whopping 3 MBytes/sec download. That’s Bytes not Bits! That’s very fast. So I’ll stay where I am.

One clever feature in OSX is Smart Folders. This little nugget hidden away in the Finder is something I’ve overlooked this past year, but it’s actually very useful. Think of them as automated Spotlight searches displayed within a Finder window. I’m currently using this one to parse through my downloads folder and pull out a single PAR file for each download, saving me trawling through folders hunting for, and double clicking on, one per download in order on repair and un-rar files. I have this one which displays a list of all unrared media in my downloads folder which makes locating and organising said downloads easier. Very handy if you’ve got loads of downloads to work through.

There’s a public beta of Newzbin V3 available to all members. Your regular login will let you in to enjoy the new features and layout. That said, it’s a mixed bag.

The moveable toolpanels on the left are a nice touch. The advanced searching now allows you to limit searches to your own custom grouplists, a boon if you’ve got a Mac. The look and feel is now that of a CMS or Wiki, which is no bad thing, just different. My one real gripe is that the unnecessarily large “Report Actions” tool panel takes up the top 3rd of the screen. I’d rather this was at the bottom, out of the way until you need it.

You’ll notice as soon as you login that the report view only shows 3 posts per page. Fear not, this can be changed in the preferences, where you’ll see that it was already set to 10, despite showing 3. I set it to 20 and all was well. There’s a few theme options you can choose to format the way the list of posts is displayed. I settled on V3 Newbin (with popups) for everything. All in all, it’s a nice upgrade. Obviously still in beta. Perhaps a little less friendly to novices. Check it out.

Note: Newzbin are no longer taking on new members, so if you’ve held off of subscribing to their terrific service, you’re out of luck.