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While the 'Net has come to mean the WWW for most people, the 15,000 or so Usenet newsgroups still are extremely active and are a great source of information for travelers of all kinds. Instead of the one-way flow that looking at a Web page offers, newsgroups allow you genuinely to interact and carry on a dialogue with living, breathing people.

The best starting point for finding newsgroups relating to the type of travel or destination you're interested in is DejaNews. DejaNews is the preeminent resource for everything that is newsgroup. DejaNews

now has a separate category just for Travel Newsgroups and subcategories within that grouping. But you also can search by article or topic and use sophisticated filtering options to narrow your search. DejaNews also can be used to read articles and post your own.

The Culture of Usenet

Newsgroups have evolved a distinct culture, complete with mores and rules. There are a few basic principles and tenets you should know before putting your thoughts up for all to see. (See the tiny glossary that follows.) If you are new to posting, be sure to read the Frequently Asked Questions about Usenet. Almost every newsgroup has its own FAQ sheet; check out this directory of FAQs for almost all the individual newsgroups that maintain such guidelines.

All Kinds of Discussions: From Inflammatory to Naked

The soc.culture newsgroups are great sources of info for travelers, as are the rec.travel groups. They generally are composed of a combination of people from the culture in question and other people (such as travelers) who are interested in learning about the destination or culture. I recently perused the soc.culture.egyptian newsgroup (using DejaNews as my gateway) to see what the members had to say about the recent terrorism in Luxor. The discussions were very heated and made for some interesting reading. For some lighter fare, I also checked out recent threads in the rec.travel.cruises newsgroup about naked cruises. And a quick look at alt.vacation.las-vegas revealed a recent conversation about the best swimming pools in Vegas.

So next time you want to visit the world, chances are good that people are discussing your destination or interest in some newsgroup somewhere. Join in and find out the 411.

A Tiny Glossary of Newsgroup Terms:

• Spam -- Any self-serving post that is unsolicited or otherwise blatantly promotional in nature. Beware of trying to sell goods or services on newsgroups by posting unwarranted information. You may get flamed.

• Flame-- "A 'flame' usually refers to any message or article that contains strong criticism, usually irrational or highly emotional." It is not uncommon to find long threads that have been initiated by an inflammatory statement.

• Thread -- A thread is a conversation or discussion of one topic. A thread generally is initiated by a provocative subject or statement by an individual or a moderator. They are the essence of newsgroups.

• BTW, WRT and other Acronyms -- Frequent newsgroup users have developed abbreviations for common phrases to speed posts and save bandwidth. BTW is shorthand for "by the way." WRT is "With respect to." If you ask a stupid question you may get this response: RTFM. It generally is used as an admonition and means "read the f***ing manual."

• If you don't know what this is, tilt your head to the left. It's a smiling, winking face, meaning you wrote something amusing. Or maybe you're being laughed at ’cause you're not bright.

Have you ever used newsgroups to get travel info? Click here to tell us how it went down.