One of the Internet's most popular features is getting a facelift from CSIRO.

CSIRO will launch Oz Insight *, its new Usenet client/server solution at the ISPCON conference in Melbourne next week.

The Usenet is a worldwide bulletin board that contains over 35,000 forums, or newsgroups, and is regularly used by around 25 million people. It caters to a huge diversity of interest groups.

Unlike e-mail and web pages, newsgroups carry the independent contributions of thousands of people. They are real 'electronic meeting places'.

"The Usenet is unique in its democracy and immediacy - but it doesn't cope well with today's requirements," says Jack Bhalla, CSIRO's Oz Insight Project Director.

Mr Bhalla says that users are frustrated by slow downloads, duplicate postings and because they cannot preview large items.

"CSIRO has developed Oz Insight to bring speed and convenience to the Usenet to save time and money for users and Internet Service providers (ISPs)," says Mr Bhalla.

Mr Bhalla says that Oz Insight lets users preview multimedia items like image, sound and video files before they are downloaded and it removes duplicate postings.

"Existing Usenet users will appreciate the new features and improved efficiency offered by our system while a new generation of users will discover the unique characteristics of the Usenet."

Dr Arkadi Kosmynin is the scientist who developed Oz Insight.

"The Usenet emerged in the mid-eighties and was originally designed for on-line discussions in the form of text-only messages," he says.

"However, the situation has changed dramatically since then. With rapid improvements in processor power and the emergence of multimedia, most Usenet resources are now consumed by binary objects – images, video, sound and software."

"A big source of frustration for ISPs and Usenet users is duplicates. People post the same message or file to many different newsgroups, often with different names. Oz Insight automatically recognises and removes duplicates so you don't waste time with multiple identical downloads," Dr Kosmynin says.

The Usenet traditionally encodes binary files resulting in much larger file sizes. Oz Insight manages files as decoded binary objects and compressed text. This delivers benefits in reduced storage needs and faster file transfers.

For ISPs, the use of intelligent dynamic handling of news feeds will deliver reductions in storage requirements, transfer times and spam volumes.

A further benefit is the smart article expiration policy, allowing ISPs to hold more popular articles and multimedia objects in cache for longer whilst allowing less popular ones to automatically expire sooner.

ISPs will also gain substantial revenue from increased use of the Usenet through the companion client software.

Oz Insight is a next generation Usenet software suite built to efficiently work with Usenet multimedia content. It includes a fast and economic news server, news client and news-to-web gateway. Oz Insight makes the Usenet easy and quick for everyone to use. The suite is compatible with existing software and standards and is capable of operating on multiple platforms.

ISPCON runs from 14-16 August at the Melbourne Convention Centre.
Oz Insight will be on display at booth 52B.

* Worldwide patents pending

More information:

Dr Arkadi Kosmynin, CSIRO 03 8341 8214
Email : arkadi.kosmynin@cmis.csiro.au

or

Web: http://www.cmis.csiro.au/ozinsight