Essential Mac utilities for Usenet downloads

Despite the amount of time they’ve been around, Usenet newsgroups remain relatively unknown to the majority of Internet users. There are plenty of reasons for this, such as the fact that people who know about Usenet generally try to keep it a secret, or if not a secret then not as well known as, say, BitTorrent. Another reason most people don’t bother looking into Usenet is that in order to get a decent, reliable service you generally have to pay a monthly subscription.

But if you’re willing to pay for the extra security, anonymity and speed then Usenet newsgroups can be both a fun place to discuss any topic under the sun and a repository of as many open source apps and Linux distributions that you can think of. Apparently, some people have even found movies, albums and HD-TV shows on them. OnSoftware doesn’t endorse or condone copyright infringement or piracy, though. OK?

Once you’ve set up an account with a reliable newsgroup provider (I use the Giganews Diamond service which offers unlimited downloads via a secure SSL connection), you’ll need some software. Until recently, this was my setup:

Newsgroups reader: Unison

Unison (full version $25) is a nicely designed native Mac newsgroups reader. In essence, it allows you to browse through the thousands of groups available on Usenet, read and participate in discussions and download binaries (files). Simply configure Unison with your account details (including how many simultaneous connections you want) and you’re away. But if you’re anything like me, you’ll find the wealth of information and groups just a little daunting. So…

NZB search engine: Newzleech

Binaries are broken up into lots of fragments and you’ll need to download all of them if you want to be able to reassemble them afterwards. For this reason, it’s a good idea to use a search engine to find all the constituent parts of a file before you start downloading them. I use Newzleech because it’s quick, easy to use and generally helps me find what I’m looking for. To use it, simply add your search term (I often stipulate a filesize range too) and select the binary that looks most complete. E.g: searching for Ubuntu Jaunty with a minimum filesize of 700MB, I find one binary that’s tweaked for netbooks. Perfect! I hit the Get NZB button and open the resulting file with Unison. (more…)