OT: Newsreader for Android

[Roger Mills]

I know it's OT, but there are lots of knowledgeable people here who know all about usenet and newsreaders.

I've just acquired a Google Nexus 10 (Android) tablet for use when travelling, and it would be useful to be able to read this and other NGs in the same way as I use Thunderbird on a PC.

I get my 'news' from News Individual Net. Their website tells you how to set up your account for Groundhog or PhoNews but I'm not sure whether either of those works with my version of Android - 4.2 and/or allows just headers to be downloaded, messages within a thread to be grouped, threads to be expanded or collapsed, newsgroups to be marked as read, etc. - in a similar way to TB.

Anyone got any recommendations?

[Mentalguy2k8]

Not really, there aren't any apps that come close to what you can do on a PC. I tried the imaginitively titled "Newsgroup Reader" and "Groundhog" but they're both far short of what you'd be used to.

There are very, very, very few scenarios where it's actually an improvement to use Google Groups through a web browser, but trying to make text newsgroups work on Android is one of them. Non-binaries Usenet is probably so obsolete that developers don't bother with it.

[polygonum]

Groundhog is usable. As is something on an iPad (can't remember what). Not fantastic but workable.

The problem I see is synchronisation. I want to be able to read a post on any platform and then not re-read it on the other platforms. A complete pain if circumstances mean you are switching back and forth repeatedly within a short-ish period.

If I currently had an always-on machine, I think I'd be tempted to use my chosen newsreader on that and access it using RD, LogMeIn, VNC, whatever.

[Mentalguy2k8]

Sometimes if I'm out or in the garden, I leave the laptop on indoors and use RealVNC on that & the tablet, usually only for finding & downloading TV shows and films, but I can use Windows Mail on the laptop via the tablet (or phone). It's not an ideal solution though.

[John Rumm]

Yup, they should work (certainly the former anyway)

I had a brief play with Groundhog - its not exactly feature rich and seemed aimed mainly at offering some functionality on a small screen device.

"Android Usenet Reader (DEMO)" might be worth a look - slightly confusing UI but better features.

On a 10" tablet, you could also consider a VPN back to your desktop to use your normal newsreader as an option.

[Roger Mills]

Looks interesting, but the 'paid for' version says:"It is reported that this app is not usable on android platforms >4.1 that don't have a menu button". I don't know whether that applies to the Demo version, but I'd probably want to buy the paid for version if it's any good.

I have Android 4.2 with no menu button!

Also sounds interesting, but totally outside my current experience. Any pointers as to how I would go about setting this up? [It might have other uses if I could run PC programs via a tablet while sitting in the lounge!]

[Mentalguy2k8]

All you need is a VNC server on the PC/laptop and a VNC client on the tablet/phone.

I use RealVNC on the laptop, it's free and does everything I want it to, and "android vnc viewer" on the tablet/phone. You can pretty much do anything remotely (on the tablet screen) on the laptop that you could do if you were sat in front of it. It's a bit fiddly on a phone but on a tablet you get a pretty good experience. It can take a bit of fiddling to get everything just right, but it's worth it. Make sure you set a decent security level, though.

[Dave Liquorice]

I've played with that but didn't get on with it.

I don't do much newsgroup reading on the tablet but when I do I use "NewsGroup Reader" (Red icon, white lettering "News Groups"). That has it's quirks but is probably the best out there.

News doesn't work like that... unless you have the same client everywhere and can shift an "index" of read messages of some sort between each device.

[polygonum]

Precisely - that is the problem. I *** know *** news itself does not work like that. But it would not be impossible to come up with clients that co-operate and send "read it" messages to each other.

[John Rumm]

Well the easy way with a "normal" router, is you setup a forwarding rule on the router to direct incoming traffic on a specified port number (typically 5800 or 5900 for VNC) to a specified machine on the lan. Install a VNC server on the PC in question, and give it a strong password. Then setup the phone/tablet the the VNC client software, and specify your ISP supplied IP address. If you have a dynamic IP, then you may need to use DynDNS or similar on your router (we can cover that if required later!)

That will get you a functional setup, but not the ultimate in security since anyone will be able to attempt to connect to the VNC server on the PC if they probe about and find something responding on the port. You can up the security a little by shifting to a non standard port. Or you can up it a lot by using a virtual private network (i.e. an encrypted tunnel connection to your LAN). This is easy to do if you have a router with the capability to act as a VPN end point. Common or garden ones typically don't, posher business class ones and prosumer kit like Draytek Vigor etc may have. Android already has the VPN stuff built in on its end. With a VPN setup its just like your tablet is connected straight to you lan via wifi - it gets an "internal" ip address and can see all the devices etc.

[John Rumm]

Its what I in effect do on my desktops - they all share a common thunderbird profile folder on the network, which achieves this goal with NNTP and POP3 feeds.

[polygonum]

There is always the option to use something like LogMeIn which makes life easier. Not sure how much that compromises security in the real world. Quite possibly by very little.