The NewsDemon Blog

Looking to access newsgroups while on the go? Nowadays its easier than ever, especially with current gen phones.

For the ever popular Apple iPhone, NewsTap is available as a Usenet newsreader for the devices, including the iTouch. Features include:

• It’s easy and simple to subscribe, manage and read news groups.
• The application fully supports the portrait and landscape mode.
• Limited support for binary groups so photos and pictures can be displayed as well. It’s possible to add photoes into the photo album.
• Quotes are displayed in different colors. Hyperlinks can be opened in the web browser Safari.
• Optimized article layout for the small iPhone display. The original layout is also available.
• Navigate articles via thread tree or by flicking with one finger.
• Filter available for read articles and quotes.
• Build-in help, which explains all the application features.
• Backup feature (requires a Macintosh computer and the Mac application “NewsTap Backup Tool”), which can be used to save and restore preferences and subscriptions. This feature can also be used to import export “newsrc” files so you can synchronize NewsTap with other Newsreader applications on your Mac. This feature requires a Mac, currently it doesn’t work with Windows.

It is available for $4.00 on the iPhone App Store. NewsTap is pretty easy to navigate and as noted by the list of features, has many different options to customize the iPhone newsreader to your liking. NewsTap Lite is also available for trial use.

For the Android platform, Almarsoft has released Groundhog Newsreader. Some of the features include:

• Online/Offline modes, so you can choose to download the messages anywhere or in bulk when you have a fast connection (like WI-FI.)
• Easy reading using colors for the different levels of quoting.
• Screen to easily select what lines to quote when replying to someone.
• Messages are grouped by thread using separators to clearly define thread changes and thread level indicators.
• Starring of users and authors.
• Banning by thread and author (don’t feed the trolls!)
• Mail forwarding of Usenet messages.
• Configurable text size.
• Group search.

Although currently in beta, the Groundhog Newsreader is pretty stable on the Android system with little to no comments of any crashing (as often is the case with 3rd party applications) with its latest releases. Best of all, its Free.

For Windows Mobile, you can use Outlook or your mail client as your newsreader. However, you may want to try a 3rd party Usenet newsreader such as Qmail or Qusnetsoft NewsReaders available for the device. These programs have not been tested by us, but does seem to get good reviews, which features:

• NNTP, RSS and RDF Transport support.
• SSL Encryption for NNTP support.
• NNTP Authentication support.
• Online and Offline reading.
• HTML and Attaches support.
• Working with several servers.
• Working without PC Synchronization.
• Today Screen Plugin.
• VGA Resolution Display support.
• Autobackup and Autorestore.