We'd like to go in to the New Year having surpassed 1000 Twitter followers. If you are a Twitter user and you'd like to be the first to learn of public beta releases and other special Newsbin related announcements, please Follow Us!
When upgrading to 6.50 from 6.42 there are three common snags users have been reporting:
If you have any other questions after upgrading, check the Newsbin Forums to see
if someone else has already asked the question. If not, you can either post your own question there or Contact Us.
Version 6.50 is available on the Newsbin Download Page. You can
click on the "Upgrade Notes" tab on that page for more information about what to expect upon upgrading.
We have released Newsbin Version 6.50. It is now the official production release. This is a free
upgrade for all registered users since Version 4. You can download the release from the Newsbin Download Page.
Notable new features are RAR5 support, better RAR/PAR processing, and better password support for encrypted RAR files. There is a host of other
new feature explained on the Download Page.
We hope you took advantage of the free search day yesterday. If you are not currently a subscriber, you can sign up for the Newsbin Internet Search service through the Newsbin Control Panel. If you don't have your control panel username and password, you can use your key and email address to log in. Feel free to contact us if you need help.
Due to popular requests, we have decided to jump on the "Cyber Monday" bandwagon and turn on free searching for all Newsbin users.
If you do not have a subscription, we encourage
you to take this opportunity to give the Usenet Search facility a try. Click on the "Search" tab within Newsbin and make sure the dropdown is set to "Internet"
to make use of this feature. When you decide tomorrow you can't live without it, you can sign up through the Newsbin Control Panel.
If you have a "Standard" account, any searches you perform today will not count against your limit.
Enjoy!
We are very close to final production release of Version 6.50 and are up to the forth Release Candidate, RC4.
If you are wondering what happened to the releases since the last MOTD announcement back in October, they have
all been announced through the Newsbin Forums,
Facebook, and Twitter.
We don't announce through the MOTD until the release seems stable enough for broader distribution.
We believe RC4 is at that point and it can be downloaded from the Beta Download Page.
If you have any questions or find issues with this release, contact us through our Technical Support Form
We have completed server maintenance for today. If you experience any odd issues, please contact us through the Technical Support Form
Internet Search will be down for 15 minutes or so. Server Maintenance. Go get a cup of Coffee. Sorry for any inconvenience.
We don't often promote deals from Usenet providers but UsenetServer just announced one that we felt we had to pass along. They are offering new unlimited accounts for $5.00 for the first month of service. Yes, it goes up to $10.00 next month but this is a great way to pick up an additional server to help with your completions. If you sign up through us they kick a few bucks back to us so you'll be helping support Newsbin as well. What's not to like?
Follow this link to sign up for the special deal.
The latest beta release now supports RAR5 archives and has a much improved RAR Password capability. You can provide a list of possible passwords and Newsbin will apply them in turn until one works. This option is under Options/RAR Passwords in the Newsbin menu system.
You can go to the Newsbin Beta Page and click on "Change History" to see the details. The download link is on that page as well.
If you have any questions or find issues with the beta release, contact us through our Technical Support Form or post to the Newsbin Beta Forum (Need to be a registered user to access this).
If you haven't noticed, we updated our website overnight. Check it out and let us know if you find something strange or if you have questions or suggestions. We already caught a number of small issues since it was enabled early this morning.
Also, we are announcing Version 6.50 Beta 16 as being a reliable beta and ready for wider use. We released it a couple of weeks ago and have no critical issues reported so far. We plan maybe one more beta and then will enter Release Candidate status this month.
If you are having problems updating headers, click on the Logging tab and see if you are getting an error that says "Bogus MaxSpool" in it. If you are, it means your news server reset the article counts for this group. We have been getting more reports recently about this occuring so we are bringing it to your attention through this MOTD. The solution is to tell Newsbin that the articles numbers have been reset by following the procedure outlined in our Troubleshooting FAQ.
An issue has been uncovered in the 6.50 beta releases, including the most recent one, Beta 14, where the configuration file can get corrupted and cause 100% CPU use. We're looking in to a fix but the workaround is to go in to the Server Options screen and remove the bogus server entry that sometimes shows up.
We have started public testing of NBRemote for Android. This application allows you to control Newsbin running on your PC remotely from most Android devices. Files downloaded by Newsbin onto your PC can be transferred to your Android device for use. It has been tested with Android 4.x on several devices and we are looking for feedback on how it is working on other devices.
Information about the release is available in the Newsbin Forums
We have two Android projects under way: Newsbin Remote for Android and a native Newsbin for Android application.
We plan to start beta testing the Android Newsbin Remote application by the end of this month and it will be free for registered Newsbin users.
The Newsbin for Android is targteted at Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) devices with lots of horsepower and you'll be able to run this version of Newsbin directly on your Android tablet or modern Android phone. We are targeting the end of the summer to enter beta testing for that.
We've had many Beta cycles since the last announcement. We are now on Beta 11 and it is getting more and more stable. The biggest news is that it now a new Server Priority Scheme. The concept of Fill Servers now gets set by assigning a lower server priority. Priority 1 is the first priority and Priority 10 is the last. A full history of the changes since the last beta announcement and the download link is available on the Newsbin Beta Page.
You can provide feedback through our Technical Support Form or, if you are a registered user on the Newsbin Forums, you can do so in the special Version 6 Beta Forum available to registered users.
We've been beta testing 6.50 for over a month and are now at a point where we are ready for a wider audience to check it out and provide feedback. The big new feature is Watch Lists. You can set Newsbin up to monitor a group for specific keywords and show you a list of matches as they appear. If you have very specific keywords, you can have Newsbin start downloading matching files immediately without you even being there. Read more about it and find the download link on the Newsbin Beta Page.
You can provide feedback through our Technical Support Form or, if you are a registered user on the Newsbin Forums, you can do so in the special Version 6 Beta Forum available to registered users.
We are still working on getting Version 6.50 beta up to snuff before we make a public beta announcement. We have a number of people testing it already but there are enough small issues with it that we have not announced a wide distribution yet.
Also, we are performing work to the Internet Search database to try to address the growing number of incomplete posts being returned. One of our sources for headers has decreased dramatically in reliability and we are testing a method to fill in the gaps it is leaving. We appreciate your patience while we work through this and hope to have the solution in place this week.
If you have an iPad, iTouch, or iPhone, you'll want to give the Newsbin Remote Control for iOS a try. Especially now that there is an Easter sale going on. Purchase NBRemote for only 99 cents from now until Tuesday, April 2, 2013. Go to the app store on your iOS device and search for NBRemote. More information is on the Newsbin Remote App Page.
We are also very close to a beta release of 6.50. The new feature is Watch Lists. You'll be able to configure Newsbin to notify you whenever posts matching your criteria are posted to Usenet. More information coming soon.
Our Usenet Search engine has been improved to look deeper at the data to provide more relavent information for some obsurely named posts. Access it through the Search tab within Newsbin when it's set to "Internet" mode. Searching is free but the ability to queue search results for download requires a subscription. More information here.
This was a pretty significant change so if you notice any issues, please
contact us and include details about the difference between your expected results and your actual results.
Version 6.42 has been released! It is worth the upgrade to pick up the bug fixes to the timeout handling. All upgrades are free to registered users. Just download and run the installer and it will automatically perform the upgrade, retaining all your settings (assuming you are upgrading from 6.40 or 6.41). If you are upgrading from Version 5 then most of your settings will be retained but you have to manually import your header database and will have to change your download path settings.
More information and the download link is on the Newsbin Download Page.
We have promoted 6.42 to Release Candidate status. This is actually the 3rd Release Candidate iteration, not all of them are announced here depending on early stability reports. This one is very stable and we are ready wider usage before determining if it is eligible to become the final release. This one solves many small issues and is worth an upgrade if you are running an earlier 6.42 beta. It is available on the Beta Download Page.
Some people are reporting seeing the following error in the Logging tab when downloading headers:
"Server Reports bogus MaxSpool > MaxGroup Numbers...."
It happens if the server resets their article numbers. There is a one time procedure that will allow Newsbin to recover from this:
1) Go under Options/Setup and set the Download Age to something small but reasonable, like 10
2) Right-click the group, select "Post Storage" and then "Use Download Age"
3) Right-click the group and select "Download Latest".
After that, subsequent header updates should work again.
If you still have problems, or are running a version of Newsbin without this option available, contact us.
We've been made aware of an inexpensive solution to running Newsbin on a Mac without having to buy an expensive Windows Emulator or Virtual Machine software. It's called WinOnX and is available in the Mac App Store for $5.00. The discussion thread where this was reported is in the Newsbin Forums.
We have addressed some issues that have come up since 6.41 was released:
- Changed behavior of "Download to Folder Named for Subject"
- Added logic to handle new obfuscated subjects
-
Fixed potential crash problem if a news server returns unexpected results
-
Fixed incorrect error message if Internet Search times out.
More details and the download link is on the Newsbin Beta Page.
If you find any issues in this version, please contact us through our Technical Support Form
