MODULE 2 - Email Lists

I've just discovered Yahoo Groups and joined my first group; Everything Christmas. Can't wait to see how it all works.

I also joined a Usenet newsgroup which I selected from the link in the curriculum. It's religion: Christian favourite books.

TRIVIA: I loved reading about the 3 students in North Carolina who started the first newsgroup in 1979 so I decided to see what they were all doing now. After googling "Newsgroups originated in North Carolina back in 1979", I found the names Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis & Steve Bellovin.

Steve was the one who wrote the first Netnews program and he is now a professor in the Computer Science dept at Columbia University. Tom Truscott now works as a "software developer at SAS Institute, a Business Intelligence software vendor particularly strong on data analysis". This was quoted from link: http://www.giganews.com/usenet-history/truscott.html.

The above site also stated that Jim Ellis worked as an Internet Security Consultant for Sun Microsystems before he passed away in 2001 after battling Lymphoma.

Usenet is said to be the world's largest online community aka as the "soul" of the internet and I'd never even heard of it until today. I guess there may be an answer to my pondering of a few days ago (5th Mar 08), was usenet the beginning?